Residents turn out in force to approve city's rental ban
By PATRICK McGEE
Star-Telegram staff writer
FARMERS BRANCH -- Voters in this Dallas suburb overwhelmingly approved a referendum that prohibits landlords from renting to illegal immigrants, setting the stage for continued lawsuits and national attention over the immigration issue.
The referendum passed with about 68 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results. Pro-rental-ban City Council candidates David Koch and Tim Scott also won easily.
The city reported that 5,999 voters went to the polls, a record for city elections.
Councilman Tim O'Hare, who has led the city's anti-illegal-immigration efforts, said Farmers Branch will move forward with implementing the ordinance, scheduled to take effect May 22.
"I thought it would pass by a wide margin," he said. "It's the right thing to do, and most people support upholding the law."
Ban opponent Elizabeth Villafranca said she's confident that her side will prevail in court.
"This is the beginning of the end for Ordinance 2903," she said.
"It will never see the light of day."
Months in the making
Residents, activists and political action committees worked feverishly on the issue for months trying to get their supporters to the polls. Nearly $90,000 was raised in campaign contributions.
Justice Department officials had promised to monitor the voting. But few confrontations were reported during the election, which was covered by the national media.
Supporters of the referendum say illegal immigration has placed too much of a burden on local services, such as schools. They say that the law needs to be enforced and that the federal government isn't doing that.
Opponents say that immigration is a matter for the federal government and that Farmers Branch's stance is alienating Hispanics. They also say that landlords shouldn't be responsible for verifying citizenship.
Ana Reyes, a longtime Farmers Branch resident, was among the opponents trying to get voters to the polls Saturday afternoon. When one man told her that his daughter had left for work, she urged him to call her and ask her to vote.
"I can't tell you how urgent this is to our community," Reyes said.
At one of the city's seven polling places, City Council member Ben Robinson predicted victory an hour before the polls closed.
He said he had seen a few signs of animosity but nothing as dramatic as the shouting matches at some council meetings.
Rick Johnson, another ban supporter, pointed across the street to where he said a campaign sign had been stolen.
"We had a lot of signs come up missing. We were prepared for that," he said.
An important debate
Bill Brewer, an attorney who opposed the referendum, said the question created an important debate.
He noted that no other North Texas community has followed Farmers Branch's lead and that he'll press forward with his lawsuits against the rental ban.
But O'Hare said during a celebration at a hotel that he believes the city will prevail in court.
I love the message in that picture:
ReplyDelete"Learn your True History, this is our Homeland"
Revisionist propagandistic "History" presented by racist invaders, perhaps.
With a mere assertion, they think they have wiped the slate of history clean of the Chumash, Navajo, Hopi, Nez Perce, and etc.
As a caller to Miller said:
ReplyDeleteIf someone breaks into my house, and expects to stay without my permission, I don't say he has immigrated illegaly, I say he has broken, entered, and invaded my house!
The people don't want open borders, benefits for illegals, Muslim Kosevar, Iraqi, African, and etc "refugees."
ReplyDeleteThe Federal Govt does.
"Power to the People"
THE USS NEW YORK HAS ARRIVED
ReplyDelete24 TONS OF SCRAP STEEL FROM THE WTC WENT INTO HER BOW. HER MOTTO, "NEVER FORGET"
USS NEW YORK
SHE WILL CARRY 360 SAILORS AND 700 COMBAT READY U.S.MARINES
If someone breaks into my house, and expects to stay without my permission, I don't say he has immigrated illegaly, I say he has broken, entered, and invaded my house!
ReplyDeleteNo, Habu says, "hey look at the very dead guy on my floor!"
But, doug, a house is not a home.
ReplyDeleteIt takes a village.
First he'd have to get over the fence, through the interior patio walls, then past the dogs and the locks.
Had an employee, years ago, that carried a .45, daily, strapped to his hip. I always thought it a bit "over the top", but hey, no harm, no foul.
So one evening he and his wife are sitting at home, watching tv. The cocked and lock piece of Mr Browning's engineering on the coffee table, when the front door was kicked in. Two home invasion fellows came storming over threashold. Each took two rounds, double tapped, center mass.
Seems he wasn't "over the top" but, like a Boy Scout, well prepared.
I stand with the citizens of Farmers Branch,and my gun is for hire.
ReplyDeleteThe US and Mexican governments along with Canada are pushing the North American Union so expect NO help from the Administration in fighting illegals. This will have to remain a citizens issue.
The Mexican revanchism (Etymology: French, from Middle French, alteration of revenche -- more at REVENGE
: REVENGE; especially : a usually political policy designed to recover lost territory or status)
The sign the Mexican holds "reminding" us of history is classic revanchism. The world doesn't work that way not that he would know about work.
The US citizen is being assaulted from many sides and unfortunately too many are still at the mall.
Soon we will see the MS-13 backed by Hugo Chavez handing out more pain.
Make no mistake, what we as Americans are made of is being tested right now all over the globe, including where the Farmers Branch citizens have planted the flag and said NO MORE
And perhaps the most chilling aspect is that Americans are now considered "fair targets " for assassination, regardless of sex or age ...just kill the Americans is becoming the motto for many.
Others, like Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who is facing a strong Democratic challenger next year, have their own specific ideas. Ms. Collins says she is looking for provincial elections, an oil law to be signed and put in place, and “a significant reduction in violence and attacks accompanied by a transfer of more and more authority to the Iraqi forces.”
ReplyDeleteMs. Collins, like Mr. Bennett, says much will depend on General Petraeus’s progress report. But she acknowledges that one man’s progress may be another man’s failure.
“To me,” she said, “the difficult question is going to be if the analysis is mixed, and I suspect it may well be. And for me, a mixed report is not sufficient to continue to have an open-ended commitment of troops.”
...
Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee announced last week that while he would support funding the troops, he also intends to introduce legislation to put the bipartisan Iraq Study Group report into effect. The report sets a goal of withdrawing combat forces by March 2008, a timeline Mr. Bush explicitly rejected when he announced the troop buildup in January.
Mr. Alexander said he was simply trying to bring a divided country together. “I don’t see any way for us to maintain a long-term presence in Iraq,” he said, “without more bipartisan support.”
For Mr. Bush, then, the clock is ticking. Mr. Kingston says he expects the debate to “become a lot more democratic” in the next few months, as more Republicans grow queasy and defect.
In the meantime, he hopes to come up with some useful way of figuring out whether he and his colleagues should abandon their president in September, or remain supportive for a little while longer:
“I’ve heard three years of nearly happy-talk in testimony,” Mr. Kingston said. “We always seem to be about to be around this elusive corner, but we never get there.”
Mr Kingston being
“No one knows how to define progress in such a mixed-up situation,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia and a member of the subcommittee that overseas military spending. “We’re having trouble measuring it. Imagine building a house without a ruler.”
rufus's old favorite Brookings Institiur's Iraq Index is mentioned, but it seems that it's authors do not see a light, at the end of the tunnel. No, that light is still a freight train, a comin' fast
... the latest report, dated April 30, includes a brief, and somewhat gloomy, summation in which the authors write that “on balance, the picture in Iraq has some signs of hope, but continues to present more grounds for worry than for confidence.”
See that train a comin', it's rollin' round the bend, we ain't seen sunshine, since I can't remember when.
Mark Steyn, discussing an aspect of the Fort Dix Six
ReplyDeleteThe three Duka brothers were (if you'll forgive the expression) illegal immigrants. They're not meant to be here. Yet they graduated from a New Jersey high school and they operated two roofing companies and a pizzeria. Think of how often you have to produce your driver's license or Social Security number. But, five years after 9/11, this is still one of the easiest countries in the world in which to establish a functioning but fraudulent identity.
Consider, for example, the post-9/11 ritual of airline security. You have to produce government-issued picture ID to the TSA official. Does that make you feel safer? On that Tuesday morning in September, four of the killers got on board by using picture ID they'd acquired through the "undocumented worker" network in Falls Church, Va. Half the jurisdictions in the United States issue picture ID to people who shouldn't even be in the country, and they issue it as a matter of policy. The Fort Dix boys were pulled over for 19 traffic violations, but because they were in "sanctuary cities," any cop who suspected they were illegals was unable to report them to immigration authorities. Again, as a matter of policy.
On one hand, America creates a vast federal security bureaucracy to prevent another 9/11. On the other hand, American politicians and bureaucrats create a parallel system of education and welfare and health care entitlements, main- taining and expanding a vast network of fraudulent identity that cor- rupts the integrity of almost all state databases. And though it played a part in the killing of 3,000 Americans, leaders of both parties insist nothing can be done to stop it. All we can do is give the Duka brothers "a fast track to citizenship."
The Iranians already are operating in South America's Tri-Border area. Is it the nothing-can-be-done crowd's assumption that the fellows who run armies of the "undocumented" from Mexico into America are just kindhearted human smugglers who'd have nothing to do with jihad even if the price was right? If you don't have borders, you won't have a nation -- and you may find "the jobs Americans won't do" covers a multitude of sins.
Along those lines it is becoming more apparent that the National Guard is an impuissant political-military force to guard Americans on their own soil.
ReplyDeleteAnent that aspect of a deteriorating force to protect citizens interests I forsee a rise in the interest of "shooting & manuervering clubs" guided by the retired professionals of our volunteer forces will easily recognise the erosion of defensive capabilities of our normal citizenry in guarding THEIR contitutional rights.
Should be very interesting.
A few more Border Patrol trown in prison for shooting drug smugglers and a few more courts martials of troops using lethal (OMG) force in places like Iraq and you have the ingredients for a rumble.
Bring it on Pachucos.
L. Paul Bremmer tells US:
ReplyDelete"What We Got Right in Iraq"
over at the WaPo
Iraq's current condition, it has nothing to do with him.
From the American Thinker
ReplyDeleteWe've only made a down payment on the price of Tenet's failure
Clarice Feldman
Noting George Tenet's "sloppy analysis and imprecision with evidence," Richard Perle observes that the failure of Tenet and the CIA are costly and will be even more costly in the days to come. From the Washington Post:
But the greatest intelligence failure of the past two decades was the CIA's failure to understand and sound an alarm at the rise of jihadist fundamentalism. It is Wahhabi extremism and the call to holy war against infidels that gave us the perpetrators of Sept. 11 and much of the terrorism that has followed. In his attempts to blame others for CIA shortcomings, Tenet cannot say, "I told the president that our Saudi allies were financing thousands of mosques and schools around the world where a hateful doctrine of holy war and violence was being inculcated in young potential terrorists." Fatefully, the CIA failed to make our leaders aware of the rise of Islamist extremism and the immense danger it posed to the United States.
George Tenet and, more important, our premier intelligence organization managed to find weapons of mass destruction that did not exist while failing to find links to terrorists that did -- all while missing completely the rise of Islamist fundamentalism. We have made only a down payment on the price of that failure
CAIRO (Associated Press) -- The United States is willing to talk to Iran so long as the conversations are limited to Iraq, a spokeswoman for Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday. Cheney is visiting the region to try to encourage more support for the Iraqi government.
ReplyDelete"We are willing to have that conversation limited to Iraq issues at the ambassador level," said Lea Anne McBride. She said the willingness is not a new position, but reflects an earlier-stated U.S. position.
She spoke after Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said that Tehran has agreed to a formal request from the U.S. to talk about security in Iraq during meetings in Baghdad, the country's official news agency reported.
70% of all praise is sarcastic shows UCLA study
ReplyDeleteOoooo, really!
Sarcasm/UCLA
True.
ReplyDeleteTrue
Habu said, "SHE WILL CARRY 360 SAILORS AND 700 COMBAT READY U.S.MARINES"
ReplyDeleteWho will pass out probably 50,000 soccer balls and buff the hallways in about 500 madrassas.
Excellent thread, men, and welcome back Mother Teresita!
ReplyDeleteTime for Tiger to stop by and pass judgement.
...for some reason Mrs. Trish seems to miss most of the immigration discussions.
u
ReplyDelete