The city government of Hazleton, Pa., got in trouble when it passed a law intended to drive out illegal immigrants. The American Civil Liberties Union sued to overturn the ordinance, arguing that it is the proper task of the federal government, not municipalities, to enforce immigration laws. But when good remedies are absent, it's no surprise to see bad ones emerge.

The ordinance says landlords may not rent to illegal immigrants, employers may not hire them, and merchants may not sell to them -- with stiff penalties for violators. Anyone who wants to rent a home would have to prove his legal residency. And city documents are now provided in English only.

This measure was a response to what some locals say are the problems caused by an influx of people, many of them apparently illegal, which boosted the town's population from 23,000 to 31,000. Those include a surge in crime, an overcrowded emergency room and soaring costs for teaching English to foreign-born children in public schools.

Those suing make a good case against the law. It would discourage companies from doing any kind of business with people who look or sound foreign, promoting discrimination against Hispanics and other minorities. It would penalize U.S. citizens, such as natives of Puerto Rico, who may speak only Spanish.

It would sweep so broadly that some legal immigrants (such as a permanent resident alien who has lost his green card) could be barred from working or even buying groceries. Even the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors tighter immigration limits and stricter enforcement, says the ordinance overreaches.

The trial itself, which concluded Thursday and now awaits a verdict, has not shed flattering light on the competence of those who drafted the law. Mayor Lou Barletta said he was compelled to act when a resident was shot to death, allegedly by two illegal immigrants.

But he had trouble explaining why, if illegal immigrants generate crime, they have been implicated in only about 20 of the 8,500 felonies committed in Hazleton in the last six years. ACLU attorney Witold Walczak also pointed out that amid this supposed crime wave, the city has reduced the size of the police force, despite having a budget surplus.

If Hazleton's illegal immigrants are prone to crime, they're the exception. Despite the growth of illegal immigration in the last decade, crime rates have dropped sharply across the country. This may not be a coincidence. In every ethnic group, reports a recent study by Ruben Rumbaut and Walter Ewing for the American Immigration Law Foundation, young men born in the U.S. are far more likely to wind up in prison than those who come here later. Continued...