City council has revised ordinance in hand

A newly revised version of an ordinance targeting illegal immigrants has been given to members of the Fremont City Council.

The new version of the proposed ordinance from city attorney Dean Skokan includes a section to prohibit hiring illegal immigrants. That section was missing from the original version introduced July 8.

At an earlier council meeting, members voted 5-3 to have city attorney Dean Skokan draft an ordinance including all three elements, but Skokan said including verbiage outlawing the hiring of illegal immigrants would hinder the city in any lawsuit because of a 1997 Nebraska attorney general opinion that says the state has no authority over that matter.

Furthermore, the opinion from then-Attorney General Don Stenberg stated that federal law preempted any state or local law that would impose civil or criminal sanctions on anyone who employs an illegal immigrant.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning on Monday stood by that opinion, stated a spokeswoman.

But Skokan said the second draft of the proposed ordinance now includes the hiring element of the city council’s original request.

Fremont City Council Member Bob Warner, who pushed for the proposed ordinance because he said he was tired of the ineffectiveness of federal immigration policies, said he believes this ordinance would free the city of illegal immigrants.

Skokan said it’s also likely that if the proposed ordinance would pass, it would land the city in court.

“We are a subdivision of the state,” Skokan said at the

July 8 meeting. “Going against our own state provision would increase the likelihood of a lawsuit, make the difficulty of winning such a lawsuit greater and make the consequences of losing greater. I have not read a single decree where this type of ordinance was upheld.”

At the July 8 meeting, several people spoke in favor of the ordinance, many of them naming Hormel Foods Corp. and Fremont Beef Co. specifically in their comments. But neither business is in Fremont city limits.

Warner said it doesn’t matter to him that those companies are outside the city limits.

“It makes no different to me,” he said. “I’m pushing for a city ordinance because that’s as far as my duty goes.”

Warner said he suspects the biggest offenders of federal laws that prohibit hiring illegal immigrants are packing houses and construction-related companies.

“I’ve gotten a lot of phone calls from people around Nebraska. I got a call from a man from Omaha (Wednesday) morning who said his company closed because he couldn’t compete with the illegal immigrants,” he said.

But Warner said he doesn’t want anything complicated from a city law.

“All I want it to do is prohibit harboring, hiring and or renting to illegal immigrants. That’s all. If they’re here documented, I’m fine with that. I am against illegals because they are breaking the law that all citizens must respect and obey,” he said.

Attempts to reach Hormel Foods plant manager in Fremont Donnie Temperley and Fremont Beef Co. president Les Leech for comment on this article were unsuccessful.

Also attempts to reach some construction-related companies for comment were unsuccessful. A man who answered the phone at a roofing company in Fremont refused to give his name when asked about the company’s policies on documentation required when hiring an immigrant.

But city council member Scott Getzschman said many of the bigger companies in the area use a federally certified system to verify an immigrant’s legal status when being considered for hire.

“A lot of the companies use E-Verify,” said Getzschman, president of Getzschman Heating. “The whole issue with this (local ordinance proposal) is that the laws are there already. It’s illegal for me or anyone else to knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The federal government has to step up to the plate and start enforcing that better.”

The online service E-verify is a system through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“E-Verify is free and voluntary,” information on the government Web site stated, “and is the best means available for determining employment eligibility of new hires and the validity of their Social Security numbers.

“Participating employers can check the work status of new hires online by comparing information from an employee’s I-9 form against SSA (Social Security Administration) and Department of Homeland Security databases,” the information continued. “More than 69,000 employers are enrolled in the program with over 4 million queries run so far in fiscal year 2008.”

The U.S. government’s fiscal year starts Oct. 1.

Getzschman said that he knows Hormel, Fremont Beef and Overland Products use the E-Verify system. Overland Products is within the city limits.

But this proposed ordinance is turning focus away from things that would be more constructive, he said.

“To have an ordinance on hiring like this is silly if people think the meat of the problem is at Hormel and Fremont Beef, which are outside the city limits,” he said. “Enforcement with any part of this is going to be nearly impossible to do. Quite frankly, it’s not up to the city of Fremont to solve this issue.”