LINCOLN -- Wanda Kotas feels as if the Nebraska Supreme Court has restored her rights as a citizen.
Lourdes Gouveia feels as if civil rights are in danger.
Both were reacting to a Nebraska Supreme Court ruling Friday that clears the way for a Fremont vote on an anti-illegal immigration ordinance.
Kotas was one of three Fremont residents who prevailed in the case. She, John Wiegert and Jerry Hart had circulated a petition to put the ordinance on the ballot after the City Council rejected the measure.
The City of Fremont sued to prevent the ballot issue, lost and then appealed to the state Supreme Court.
After Friday's ruling, Fremont voters likely will go to the polls this summer for a special election on a petition measure that would bar Fremont residents from hiring illegal immigrants and from renting living quarters to those who can't prove their citizenship.
“The whole thing was basically about the citizens not getting to vote on it,” Kostas, a nursing assistant, student and grandmother, said of the court battle. “I felt that the citizens were deprived of their right to vote. . . . I'm glad that the state leaders still recognize our right to vote.”
She said she supports the ordinance “not because I oppose immigration, which is legal, but because of illegal immigration.”
On the other hand, Gouveia, who directs the Office of Latino/Latin American Studies at UNO, said the ordinance would lead to civil rights violations.
Gouveia likened the proposed Fremont ordinance to an Arizona measure that was signed into law Friday.
“It opens the door to racial profiling and other abuses of civil rights, not just for immigrants, but for everyone,” she said.
The Fremont election could be held as early as July, according to Fremont City Attorney Dean Skokan.
“We will act in accordance with the mandate,” Skokan said.
The election would add Fremont to the list of places that have tried to step in where the federal government has failed to act on immigration issues.
Campaigns for and against the Fremont measure could further split the city and inflame emotions among residents.
The ordinance is modeled after a proposal the Fremont City Council rejected in July 2008 by a 5-4 vote, with Mayor Don “Skip” Edwards breaking a tie.
Wiegert, one of the three who circulated the petition, said many Fremont residents were upset because it looked as if the council's decision was made without considering public opinion.
Wiegert noted the murder of an Arizona rancher that played a role in that state's new law, as well as a recent immigration raid at Fremont Beef Co. The raid led to 17 workers being indicted on suspicion of identity theft.
“We've got a serious problem on our hands, and we need to do something about it,” said Wiegert, who teaches school in Yutan.
Not everyone in Fremont agrees on what the problems are or what the solutions should be.
Jim Dake, who works as an attorney in Fremont and lives in nearby Ames, said that the Nebraska Supreme Court got the decision right but that enacting the ordinance would be wrong.
“If it does pass, it will undoubtedly be challenged,” he said. “It's going to end up costing Fremont a lot of money to do nothing.”
Kotas has heard that argument. She disagrees. She said illegal immigration itself is expensive to taxpayers because of health care and other costs.
“Hey, it's already costing us money, and it's only going to get worse,” Kotas said.
Kristin Ostrom, a Fremont leader in a “Nebraska Is Home” campaign that has held a picnic and cultural exchange for immigrants and native-born Fremont residents, said she hopes “this can begin to bring a resolution to the long, contentious debate within the community.”
She said she thinks two issues are being mixed up in the debate.
“One is, how do you integrate new people into a community that hasn't had new people come in for a long time?” Ostrom said. “And the second is whether we should have local enforcement of immigration laws.”
Ostrom said immigrants have grown from about 1 percent of Fremont's population in 1990 to about 4 percent in 2010, and the city's white population has gone from 98 percent to 90 percent in the same period.
Feelings about dealing with those trends have gotten mixed up with frustration about illegal immigration, she said.
“Good minds can differ about whether you want to have immigration enforced locally,” Ostrom said. “The community needs to talk about these issues. We would find we want to have a lot of common ground in wanting to welcome people.”
State Sen. Charlie Janssen of Fremont said it is time for the measure to go before voters. The petitioners followed the process, he said.
Janssen, who was on the council in 2008, voted for the ordinance, but he said Friday that he wants to see the language of the petition measure before taking a position on it.
The petitioners collected 3,343 valid signatures in early 2009, more than enough to put the proposal on the ballot in a special election.
Fremont officials challenged the petition measure in hopes of avoiding the potential cost of defending it, if it passed.
In its decision, the state high court refused to rule on the constitutionality of the proposed ordinance.
Attorneys for the city had argued that courts have uniformly ruled similar measures dealing with immigrant housing to be pre-empted by federal law and thus unconstitutional.
The court called the facts of the Fremont case “contingent and uncertain” because voters might not pass the measure or because matters affecting its constitutionality might change before it passes. The court said, however, that it could rule before the vote on whether the measure contains more than one subject, an issue which the court called “procedural.”
Nebraska law requires initiative measures to have a single subject.
The court said that although the Fremont proposal deals with both housing and employment, the ordinance has one general subject the regulation of illegal immigrants.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1057, christopher.burbach@owh.com
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