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U.S laws regarding housing, aiding and abetting illegal aliens is clear, yet many have tried to ignore these laws, or outright broke them to benefit in their pocketbooks.  Now the law is catching up to them and their pocket books are being affected. As they are crying foul, they have illegal alien activists and the ACLU shouting along with them. 

SOURCE: http://www.kentucky.com/454/story/354769.html

Immigration activists and the ACLU are accusing the federal government of overreaching in the prosecution of two Lexington landlords who had rented to 60 illegal immigrants.

The case, possibly the first of its kind in Kentucky, potentially places landlords in the uneasy situation of being on the front lines of the U.S. crackdown on illegal immigration. It’s a task that opens the door for discrimination claims and is something landlords are not trained to do, say civil libertarians and lawyers for landlords and immigrants.

The charges, says Michael Aldridge of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, are an attempt by the federal government to intimidate landlords and immigrants.

“It fuels a phobia, it creates this feeling of discrimination in the community, and I am sure it heightens everyone’s uneasiness across the board,” said Aldridge, the group’s executive director. “It’s a horrible situation.”

Father and son landlords William Jerry Hadden and Jamey Hadden are accused of harboring illegal immigrants from 2000 to November 2007 at the Woodridge Apartments and Cross Keys Apartments in Lexington. Authorities said they were renting to 60 illegal immigrants.

The charges elicited cheers on conservative blogs and talk radio. Anti-immigration activists see it as a bold new front in the crackdown that will discourage illegal immigrants from settling in Lexington.

Businesses that profit from illegal immigration, they say, should be punished.

But civil libertarians and advocates for immigrants are alarmed by the case.

They note the Haddens were charged even though it is not illegal to rent to undocumented immigrants. Outside of landlords who accept federal Section 8 housing subsidies, landlords have no obligation to check a tenant’s legal status.

“That is why these charges are so shocking,” said Cori Hash, a lawyer for the Immigrant Rights Project at the Maxwell Street Legal Clinic. “When I heard about it, my jaw dropped.”

On Feb. 29, a federal grand jury in Lexington indicted the Haddens on 32 criminal charges, including harboring, conspiracy, money laundering and encouraging and inducing illegal immigrants to live in the United States.

The majority of counts stem from 60 illegal immigrants the Haddens had rented to. Authorities say the men harbored illegal immigrants from 2000 to November 2007. The allegations might technically fall under the legal definition of harboring, Aldridge said. But the Hadden case goes far beyond the law’s original intent, he said.

The charges aren’t likely to hold up in court, Hash said. Harboring laws were intended to target human traffickers or employers who are trying to hide their work forces.

But the indictment alleges that the Haddens did far more than simply rent to illegal immigrants.

According to the indictment, the Haddens knowingly hired two Mexican citizens to manage the apartments and weakened their application process to accommodate illegal immigrants. They stopped requiring credit checks, Social Security numbers, past addresses, employment history and references for applicants, ostensibly so illegal immigrants would not be rejected for apartments.

One of the employees would encourage undocumented applicants who did not have Social Security numbers to provide IRS tax identification numbers instead, according to the indictment. The tax numbers are used to process tax returns for illegal immigrants.

Applications were translated into Spanish. And after Kentucky Utilities started requiring Social Security numbers to obtain electrical service, the apartment complexes opened accounts in their names and distributed the billing statements to tenants.

This concealed the identities of tenants, according to the indictment.

Officials at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Lexington and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Chicago could not point to any similar cases where landlords had been prosecuted.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Gail Montenegro declined to comment on the Hadden case since it is pending in U.S. District Court in Lexington.

“Anyone who is knowingly harboring, or housing or transporting illegal aliens is subject to criminal prosecution,” Montenegro said. “They shouldn’t be surprised if they are facing criminal charges.”

The Haddens’ attorney, Tucker Richardson of Lexington, declined to comment. But he has said he will aggressively fight the charges.

News of the charges against the Haddens made landlords all over town uneasy, said Stephen Marshall, a Lexington attorney who represents several landlords.

Marshall said he received several phone calls from concerned clients.

It places landlords in a particular bind, Lexington lawyer Charlie Ward says, because they do not have grounds to evict a tenant simply because he or she is undocumented.

Landlords do have grounds, however, if they can prove the tenant lied on the application, or if the lease requires the tenant to have legal status, Ward said.

But landlords who are not thorough in their screening are pretty much stuck with them, he said.

Marshall said he is working with the Lexington Fair Housing Council to develop guidelines for landlords. Landlords must be careful, he said, because they have to treat each applicant the same; they can’t give an applicant more scrutiny just for being Hispanic or foreign.

Hash is worried the Hadden case will lead to illegal evictions and homelessness for illegal immigrants. But she said she has not heard reports of that yet.

Nonetheless, the Hadden case raises several red flags, said Jody Williams, president of the Greater Lexington Apartment Association. The apparently relaxed to non-existent screening policy at the complexes is alarming. It seems to support the claim that the men were knowingly renting to illegal immigrants, she said.

All landlords, Williams said, should require identification, Social Security numbers and credit histories.

“Otherwise, they’re not doing their responsibility to protect their communities,” she said.

In much the same way that a bad marriage is not healthy if one partner is in it for what they can get out of it, and the other is co-dependent on that partner. Illegal immigration is unhealthy for the co-dependent country involved.

Almost daily we hear how our crashing economy is causing an exodus of illegals returning to their homelands when the work, money, and handouts runs out. Many of these are represented in the media as hardship stories built to display the “poor undocumented worker”, “poor businesses”, and in some cases “poor community” who are being affected by the loss. While no one can dispute the effect this loss has on those elements, they are in essence, no different then those who are co-dependent marriage partners who suddenly find themselves struggling to learn to survive.

What needs to be understood, and understood firmly, is that illegal immigrants are not here “for better or for worse”. They will not hang around when this country struggles. They will not hang around if the country falls. Their loyalty is not to this country at all and they will return home to the place their loyalty lies, or move on to another country that has what they desire. In this case money, work, and someone to take care of them.

American citizens and many legal immigrants have a deep loyalty to the United States. No matter how hard it gets in the nation, they will hold on, they will struggle through, and they will work to improve the situation of the home they love unconditionally. “For better or for worse” is not even a thought for them, it’s a way of life.

Just as one would not support a loved on, or friend in an unhealthy relationship. America needs to not support this unhealthy relationship that’s been created by illegal immigrants and their advocates. Americans need to support and advocate for healthy relationships with Citizens and legal immigrants who had a deep unseated love for this country. Who will stick with her through thick and thin, no matter how thin it gets. It is that, and that alone that makes for a healthy relationship and a healthy nation.
As for the “woe is me” tales, well just like the co-dependent partner learns to live again. These co-dependent individuals, businesses, and communities will also learn to live again. In many cases they will learn to be stronger, stabler, and healthier then before when they were in the unhealthy relationship. In some cases they might not ever break the bonds of co-dependency but above all they will learn what the signs of co-dependency are and be able to advocate against it, while helping awake other co-dependents to be able to survive the “life without” too.

Hispanic exodus is under way
Workers leave Lee as jobs disappear
The News Press
March 9, 2008

In this case, cold, hard statistics don’t tell the story.

“I am not aware of anyone who would track that locally,” said Glen Solier, business development specialist for the Lee County Department of Economic Development.

“Those people are off the grid. Undocumented,” said Susanna Patterson, economic analyst for the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation.

But the oh-so-human snapshots of everyday living are revealing.

Like a weekend soccer league down from 32 teams to 25 because more than 100 players have had to leave.

Or a church that has cut two Sunday services to one because about 200 former members have returned to their homeland.

Or the western-wear clothier who gave up one of his three shopping center units and said business is off by 40 percent because customers are gone.

Put these and other pictures together and the collage tells the story of Hispanics who are leaving Southwest Florida to find work or to return to the support of their families back home.

“There is a loss in the number of Hispanics in our communities,” said Robert Selle, director of the Amigos Center, which aids Hispanics with immigration issues and offers other services in Lee County. “The underlying reason is economic; the same reason they came here in the first place.”

Population drain

The loss comes from a good portion of Lee County’s population. The U.S. Census Bureau listed the county’s Hispanic population at more than 90,000 - about 16 percent of Lee’s 571,000 population - in 2006.

What the statistics further show is that work is gone. Unemployment in the Fort Myers-Cape Coral region has risen this past year, from 2.7 percent to 6.3 percent.

Many of the lost jobs are in construction, which has been put on hold as the sluggish market struggles with a glut of unsold houses.

Because many Hispanic construction workers are believed to be illegal immigrants, because construction and agricultural workers are a mobile population anyway, because many are single with families back in their native lands, and because their leaving was often spur-of-the-moment, no governmental or social service agency is keeping accurate records of this exodus.

Lee County School District reported a loss of Hispanics in all grades totaling 388 pupils through January of this school year - this after growing by almost 3,000 Hispanic students a year earlier.

But the white student population dropped as well. The big difference was while dropout rates tend to increase as the year goes on in the upper grades, the Hispanic population was the only one also to lose ground in the kindergarten through fifth-grade range. It fell by 87 pupils - an indication their families moved from the district, according to Michael Smith, director of planning, growth and school capacity.

“Many workers in the construction industry and related industry are leaving the area and following the money,” said Barbara Hartman, spokeswoman for the state’s Career and Service Center in Fort Myers. “It seems to be an increasing number of people who are temporarily relocating. I wish we did track that.”

Hartman said she knows people are leaving because they tell counselors when they come in seeking work, saying they need the higher construction industry wages, which begin at $10 to $11 an hour for the most unskilled, to maintain their standard of living……..

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