*(Scroll for actually city council resolution blocking this)*

When will the elected officials of my state stop embarassing us? If it's not Howard Dean and his "Civil Unions" it's Howard Dean screaming like a mental patient after the Iowa primaries... YAAAAAARGH. If it's not having U.S. Senate candidate and current congressman from VT Bernie Sanders being the only self-proclaimed socialist in Washington, it's crazy hippy ladies coming home after visiting their online Pakistani boyfriends in their homeland, flying with banned weapons and peeing on the floor of the plane. If it's not Howard Dean saying... well, I'll stop there because that could go on forever and I really haven't kept up with updating my Dean's List anyway.

It would seem that Vermont politicians are in a competition to prove their idiocy. Well, the mayor of Burlington (Vermont's largest city), Bernie Jr. Bob Kiss actually proposed making the city a sanctuary for illegal immigrants!!! I'm not putting on some Republican spin job, this is what he did. Luckily the city attorney and council wasn't having it, but he actually made the attorney look in to it. Locals may be familiar with the story already, but having not moved back until late June, I hadn't heard about it until my brother mentioned it to me at Al's French Fries earlier last night.

I figured he must have heard wrong, so I did a quick search and sadly I quickly discoverd via Burlington's City Council Agenda that he was all too right. What kind of fricken' twilight zone city do I live in? A mayor encouraging mass criminal activity by attempting to set up his city to host illegal immigrants. Not to mention that with the insanely high cost of living here, the last thing one should do is bring in a bunch of cheap labor.

Now for the goods... The City Council's resolution, blocking this crap after the mayor asked the city attorney to look in to implementing the "concept". Incase you don't have Acrobat to read the PDF, I've decided to reproduce the whole document below. Again, why should this even have to have been done?

CITY ATTORNEY EFFORTS ON SANCTUARY CITY CONCEPT

In the year Two Thousand Six………………………………………………………………
Resolved by the City Council of the City of Burlington, as follows:

That WHEREAS, the Mayor of Burlington, the Honorable Bob Kiss, has proposed designating the City as a sanctuary for illegal immigrants and directed the eminent City Attorney, Joseph E. McNeil, Esq., to research how such a concept could be implemented; and

WHEREAS, since the concept of a sanctuary city entails a municipality adopting a policy which would forbid its officials, including police, from inquiring into anyone's immigration status or cooperating with immigration officials, such a policy thus creates a safe haven for illegal immigrants by condoning their violation of Federal law; and

WHEREAS, while the United States is an immigrant nation and has been made great by the contributions of those who have come to our shores; and

WHEREAS, while we are all the children of immigrants and strongly support legal immigration, to become a sanctuary city would not only condone but encourage violation of Federal law on the subject and serve as an insult to the many millions of people who strove for the privilege of building their lives in this nation while adhering to the law; and

WHEREAS, in 1996, the United States Congress passed two bills enacted into law which dealt with the concept, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, both of which were later upheld and under which state and local governments can no longer prohibit employees from inquiring about immigration status or reporting to immigration authorities; and

WHEREAS, the Deputy Chief of the Burlington Police Department noted in response to the concept of a sanctuary city that law enforcement officers are bound to uphold federal laws on immigration and to make reports to immigration authorities; and

WHEREAS, however, it is not currently the practice of the Burlington Police Department, or any other City entity, to seek out illegal immigrants; and

WHEREAS, any influx of illegal immigrants to Burlington as a result of implementing the sanctuary city concept could place added burdens upon City social services and infrastructure at a time when both the municipal budget is overburdened with costs, to the extent that the Kiss Administration is proposing a 9% increase in property taxes that does not even include an educational tax component, and there is a serious affordable housing crisis; and

WHEREAS, the City Attorney has stated that his research indicates that while the criminal laws regarding immigration issues must be enforced, the civil laws are more complicated and has further stated that there will be "no recommendation from the City Attorney's Office that would involve anything less than full enforcement of our criminal laws. And with regard to the civil statutes there's a great deal of policy discussion that will have to take place between the research that we found and any implementation."; and

WHEREAS, the City Attorney's Office already has extensive tasks to complete on behalf of the City such as, most prominently and most importantly to the City Council, the Zoning Re-Write; and

WHEREAS, while the City Attorney's Office has always most ably and professionally served Burlington, there is a limit to how many demands can be placed upon its Staff and resources, particularly at this busy time; and

WHEREAS, since the Burlington City Council must ultimately approve any implementation of the sanctuary city concept;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the City Council does not now wish to consider the sanctuary city concept; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Council therefore directs the City Attorney's Office to terminate both any of its further research efforts into and any of its further development of a proposal for implementing the sanctuary city concept.

lj/KAS/c: Resolutions/City Attorney Efforts on Sanctuary City Concept
6/8/06