An immigration law passed six years ago but never followed because of court challenges still could help Hazleton's finances, Mayor Joseph Yannuzzi said.
Asked if he still would enforce the law if the panel of federal judges who held a hearing about it Wednesday in Philadelphia gave him permission, Yannuzzi said, "Definitely."
The law revokes business licenses of firms that hire unauthorized immigrants and prevents landlords from collecting rent if they lease housing to unauthorized immigrants.
Yannuzzi said unauthorized immigrants participate in a shadowy economy that the law could lessen.
"Underground cash businesses would probably be eliminated," Yannuzzi said after the hearing Wednesday before three judges of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
Repeating a point that he said his predecessor U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta made first, Yannuzzi said the city infers that money remains underground by looking at figures from the earned income tax.
"Our population went up, but our EIT didn't," he said.
U.S. Census Bureau figures showed that the population of Hazleton increased to 25,340 from 23,329 between 2000 and 2010. EIT receipts hit a high point of $1.4 million in 2005. They ranged between $1.309 million and $1.343 million for the next four years.
Barletta introduced the immigration law to city council in 2006 because he said Hazleton could not afford to provide services to people who are not allowed in the country.
"A dollar spent on illegal immigrants could be spent on" legal residents, he said after Wednesday's court hearing while standing with Yannuzzi and Kris Kobach, the lawyer who represented Hazleton. "Any crime committed by an illegal is a crime that could be prevented."
The law contains a preface that says "illegal immigration leads to higher crime rates, subjects our hospitals to fiscal hardship and legal residents to substandard quality of care, contributed to other burdens on public services, increasing their costs and diminishing their availability to legal residents and diminishes our overall quality of life."
At the hearing Wednesday, attorneys and judges did not discuss costs to the city or the impacts on crime and other qualities of life.
"It is important to note that the parties hotly contest whether aliens in Hazleton actually caused any of these purported problems and whether Hazleton officials had any valid reason to think that they did. The district court did not make any factual findings about the cause of any social or fiscal problems Hazleton may be facing, and our discussion should not be interpreted as supporting either side of that debate," Chief Judge Theodore McKee said in an opinion he wrote that declared the law unconstitutional on Sept. 9, 2010.
The U.S. Supreme Court instructed the Third Circuit Court to rehear the case last year after upholding an Arizona law that also punished employers for hiring unauthorized immigrants. McKee headed the panel that re-heard the case.
One of the original plaintiffs that challenged Hazleton's law, Casa Dominicana of Hazleton Inc., no longer wants to be part of the lawsuit, Victor Perez, the current president, said Wednesday.