Farmers Branch City Ordinance Causes A Stir

A small suburb of Dallas is adding noise to the immigration debate. The city is actually my hometown of Farmers Branch, Texas. In November of last year, the Farmers Branch city council voted unanimously to establish new ordinances as the part of the city's crackdown on illegal immigration. The first ordinance requires property owners to confirm the citizenship of property renters, and fines those property managers who rent to illegal immigrants. In the second, the city council voted to permit the local police department to enforce federal immigration laws, and in the third, to make English the city's official language. In a nutshell, the city would be taking on federal law enforcement on its own.

The English-only ordinance is basically symbolic. Section Three of the resolution lists ten exclusions to the new English-only law, which include situations that promote commercial trade and tourism, collect payments allotted to the city, defend criminal rights and the rights of victims, and educational purposes. So where exactly is the English language being preserved and promoted? According to the ordinance, in "official actions of the City of Farmers Branch which bind or commit the City of Farmers Branch" or present the views of the city.

The action taken by the city council has brought a myriad of responses from the surrounding community and the rest of the country. Some have considered this action nothing short of racist, and some are fully supportive of the anti-immigration policies. One group of volunteer citizens, Support Farmers Branch, has created a website with a list of cities who have taken the same actions Farmers Branch has taken. While another community volunteer organization, Let the Voters Decide, have gathered signatures from voters to show the city council that not everyone in Farmers Branch is in agreement and that such serious decisions should be left to the citizens.

At the center of the hubbub is Tim O'Hare, a Farmers Branch city councilman who, according to the Dallas Morning News, believes illegal immigrants are responsible for a supposed decline in quality of life in the city. From the Dallas Morning News, Nov 23, 2006:

"Council member Tim O'Hare has said efforts to clean up the city were behind his drive to make it harder for illegal immigrants to live and work in the city, saying they don't maintain their properties, causing values of neighborhood properties to decline."

Groups such as United Farmers Branch and Let the Voters Decide came together with volunteers from all over the community to gather petitions to bring the ordinance to a vote in the May 2007 election. Let the Voters Decide has gathered more than the necessary 700 signatures to force the city council to either throw out the ordinance or bring it to a city-wide vote.

"It has divided the community," said Sebastian Lara, a volunteer coordinator for Let the Voters Decide. "We had one volunteer who was afraid of going door to door because she was afraid she might be attacked by racist remarks. What kind of world is it where you can't knock on your neighbor's door?"

As a resident of Farmers Branch, I still can't believe this tiny town had managed to make such a stir. My parents and grandparents were raised in this town. I spent many lazy summers feeding the ducks next to the town library. Farmers Branch is no bigger than 12 square miles, with fewer than 30,000 residents located within its limits. You can imagine my surprise when I turned on the television to find camera crews from every local news station at city hall, filming groups of protestors and reporting on lawsuits being filed by apartment complex owners.

It makes me wonder what sort of statement the city of Farmers Branch is trying to make. According to 1990 and 2000 census information, property values in Farmers Branch are increasing. Crime rate reports show that the city is just as safe as other Dallas suburbs. The city recently installed cameras at major intersections to catch red light violators. Now the illegal immigration and English-only ordinances are making Farmers Branch feel more like a gated community than the cozy town where I visited my grandparents. Is the immigration problem in Texas so bad that cities feel the need to have their local police officers enforce federal law? This is something we need to realistically ask ourselves. While illegal immigration may not be the motivation behind the city council's actions, it is undoubtedly an issue. More importantly, the illegal immigration concern may be acting as scapegoat for race-based discrimination.

Whether the motivation behind all of this commotion is purely racism or just local politicians wanting to gain publicity, the city of Farmers Branch won't be the same. For now, city council has voted to allow its citizens to vote on the matter in the May 12 elections, and the new immigration law was temporarily blocked from being enforced by Judge Bruce Priddy in the Dallas County's 116th District Court until a hearing on January 22. The restraining order was issued in response to a suit brought against the city by Guillermo Ramos, who claimed city officials violated Texas' Open Meetings Act by deliberating the ordinance behind closed doors. This is a story we'll return to in the coming months.