I was surprised to encounter my hometown of Altoona, Pennsylvania, near the back of the U.S. section of the New York Times today. I wish it had been less ignominious news:
Altoona, With No Immigrant Problem, Decides to Solve It
I hadn’t heard about this ordinance passing. I can see how this might have played out as good political theater — a revenge drama against all those gun-toting illegals who are no doubt just waiting to roll in over the Alleghenies to take over Altoona — but I think it’s a real shame, an echo of the racism and the deep, deep bitterness that seems to haunt the area. The triple homicide that made national news last year has been used as a lever to foist narrow-minded legislation on a frightened population in the name of safety and security. (Does this sound familiar?)
Fittingly, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, Councilman Rieker, after he finishes tarring the ACLU as “a nutso organization” standing between him and the maintaining of the “rule of law” in South Central PA, lays all his cards out on the table:
He said he worries more about the viability and livability of a rust-belt town that continues to lose population. He says he is weighing whether to resign his council seat and move his family and his insurance business to North Carolina.
This really gets me: a political opportunist not afraid to tarnish my home town’s reputation with a ridiculously overreaching “solution in search of a problem,” but also unwilling to stick around and deal with the consequences of the course he’s charted. I hope Altoona can somehow see past the small-mindedness of this kind of leadership, and past the isolationism and xenophobia that’s festering at its root; otherwise it’s doomed to decline and extinction.
Altoona should be listening to its religious leaders, who, happily, haven’t forgotten that Christianity carries at its core a message of inclusiveness and tolerance.
[Bishop Joseph V. Adamec of the local diocese] is not swayed by those who say that the three murders might have been prevented if the ordinance had been in effect in 2005.
“The one who did it, he came here when he was a boy and went to our schools,” Bishop Adamec said. “He didn’t come here already formed. He’s one of us.”
December 9th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Sometimes, I just try to see the inanity of laws like these as a comedy of unavoidable stupidity.
I’ve always felt that the most insulting thing about George W. Bush’s presidency has not been idiotic policies he’s carried out, the American nepotism that he represents, or the mangling of facts that allowed him to manipulate the American people, but his clear lack of intelligence as indicated by the fact that he’s given probably thousands of speeches at this point in his life, and he still can’t get through them without making an incredibly obvious grammatical error or repeatedly using a forced catchphrase that his political advisors have invented as a spin term to be picked up by the media (think “hard work” from one of the debates with Kerry or the more recent “sectarian violence”).
And when I think about the fact that many people in this country and our region still can’t admit that Bush is the most idiotic and worthless president in American history, this nonsense about our “illegal immigrant problem” in Altoona seems completely unsurprising and in step with the times.
I thought that this law was passed a few months ago. Did the Times just not run the story until now?
December 11th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
sorry dane, your comment got caught in my spam filter for some reason! overzealous comment spam filter, damn you.
yeah, the Times mentioned in that article that Altoona passed the ordinance back in October but they must have just gotten wind of the whole business more recently. I wonder how they hear about stuff like this?
December 13th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Maybe the spam filter just hates run-on sentences.
May 15th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Such nonsense, before you trash Altoona and cities around this nation that have taken the same steps that Altoona has chosen to take to deal with illegal immigrants, please do a better job of examining the facts first. What Altoona is doing in reference to the illegal Alien problem is more of a preventive measure, which is very smart. They see other cities in Pennsylvania (such as Hazelton) and across the country and do not want their city to go in that direction, which it could if this issue was not addressed. Then you would have thousands of residents in the region complain about what a very dangerous place Altoona is, along with how irresponsible and greedy the Altoona city government is.
Try to put up a better argument instead of calling people names such as racist, xenophobe, isolationist and small minded fear mongers. If you were truly able to mount a rational and sensible argument you would not have to stoop to that level.
If the good Bishop Joseph V. Adamec, was truly a caring person and not someone more concerned about filling his churches coffers he would not be quick to judge Altoona for protecting itself. The Bishop needs to go back and review the Ten Commandments and scripture more closely, especially the area of love thy neighbor and the Commandment in reference to coveting. Is it truly love of your neighbor when your nation dumps up to 20 million of your own people on your neighbor and expects their neighbor to flip the bill for it and at the same time these compassionate neighbors hope that they do not get robbed, rapped or killed for the inclusiveness and tolerance that they have shown their needy neighbors. Not to mention these loving inclusive neighbors have their hospitals close, and working class jobs disappear because they were too fearful or greedy to take the necessary actions. You cannot make an excuse for overburdening your neighbor to the point of possibly destroying their local economy, neighborhoods, language and culture because you chose to covet what your neighbor has and enter their country illegally in massive numbers.
If Altoona was to follow your lead it would have no problem with multitudes of poor uneducated illegal aliens in their city that would for the most part be jobless, have large numbers of children which they could not afford to have and expect the American tax payer to pick up the tab for things such as welfare, food stamps, social security/SSI, hospital visits, a much larger police force, incarceration, and variety of other entitlements, ect. Needless to say with all the social services these new residence would need, Altoona would go broke in a very short period of time, taking into consideration the tax base and local economy. You do not need to be an economist to picture the devastating effect that a large influx of poor illegal aliens from the third world would have on a place like Altoona.
The simple fact is that local cities and towns would not be burdened with enforcing laws that Altoona and Hazelton have felt the need to pass, if our wonderful Federal government was willing to enforce our laws at the Federal level to begin with.
As hosts we have been far too gracious and we are paying dearly for it.