Witold "Vic" Walczak knows how it feels to be both a scapegoat and a stranger.
The son of a Polish Holocaust survivor, he emigrated to the United States when he was 3. He eventually graduated from Colgate University and Boston College Law School. He joined the American Civil Liberties Union in 1992 and became legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania in 2004.
But in December 2007, he went back to his roots to challenge a Hazleton ordinance penalizing businesses that hired illegal immigrants and landlords who rented to them.
With Walczak as co-lead counsel, the ACLU convinced the U.S. District Court to declare the ordinance unconstitutional.
To Walczak, the issue is clear: "We've got to stop scapegoating undocumented immigrants for the problems in this country."
Walczak will be one of four panelists who will take part in a Community Immigration Forum in Southern Market's City Council Chambers from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, March 26.
Lancaster City Councilman Jose Urdaneta said he wants the forum to find answers to three questions regarding immigration issues.
• Where does Lancaster stand as a community?
• Where is it in addressing some of the problems?
• Where does it want to go?
The forum developed as a result of the Lancaster Rotary Club inviting Walczak to speak at its meeting that same afternoon.
Hazleton Mayor Louis Barletta, whose administration authored and proposed the ordinance in response to an influx of Latinos into Hazleton, spoke to Rotary last August. His appearance then, as well as at a subsequent Lancaster County Republican Committee donor luncheon, provoked debate.
Walczak said the controversy Barletta's appearance sparked here can be expected again.
"Barletta's demagoguery is not without a price," he said. "When you focus on ethnicity, you create divisions."
When Urdaneta and other community leaders learned of Walczak's appearance before the Rotary, they wanted to give him a wider audience.
"It began as an idea for Vic to speak to the community, but then we wondered, 'Why have the same thing twice?' " Urdaneta said.
Organizers put together a panel of four speakers: Ahmed Bamba, a political refugee from the Ivory Coast (see related story); Nyasha Karimakwenda, an attorney with the Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center; Troy Mattes, a Lancaster attorney who specializes in immigration law; and Walczak.
At the forum, Each panelist will have 10 minutes to present opening remarks, said Urdaneta, who will moderate. The rest of the time will be devoted to questions from the audience.
The session will open with a PowerPoint presentation on the history of immigration in America by Franklin & Marshall College professor Dr. Susan Dicklitch.
Urdaneta and Jonathan Fox, one of the planners and a human relations representative and police community liaison with the Lancaster County Human Relations Commission, said they want to avoid attempts to make the forum a political discussion.
Fox said he wants the forum to focus on "humane immigration issues.
"Yes, it's a policy issue," he added, "but we need to take into consideration the blood, sweat and tears of the families who either come or are invited, perhaps tacitly, into this country. We have to take into consideration that this is not just pure politics or economics. These are people."
Jim Durkin, a member of the Rotary program committee that invited Barletta, said it was always the club's intention to introduce differing sides of the issue.
"Mayor Barletta was available early," Durkin said. "Vic Walczak had a very busy schedule and we weren't able to schedule him until this month.
"We have 260 members," Durkin said, "and we are a very diverse organization. We love to hear great speakers" address many issues.
During the trial over Hazleton's ordinance, Walczak said Barletta identified four areas negatively impacted by undocumented immigrants. Testimony included data provided by Hazleton school, police, government and health care officials. The data showed Barletta's charges were, Walczak said, "demonstrably false."
Walczak cited Barletta's arguments that undocumented immigrants contributed to a rise in Hazleton's crime rate.
But "they had no data," Walczak said. "In the course of discovery they were forced to compile data" that found that in the six-year period cited by Barletta, 8,500 crimes were committed in Hazleton. Only 23 of them involved undocumented immigrants.
Of the 428 violent crimes committed during that same period, four were related to undocumented immigrants.
In fact, Walczak said, the data showed "Hazleton's crime rate actually dropped" during that period.
Citing the resolution passed by Lancaster City Council "urging the rejection of all immigration reform efforts that criminalize individuals because of their immigration status; view immigration policy as a border-only security issue; and fail to recognize our common humanity and the values of our nation," Walczak said, "I want to praise Lancaster because it is taking completely the right approach to embrace these people rather than villify them."
The issue is perhaps a bit more complex in Lancaster, Urdaneta said, due to the large Puerto Rican population.
"We have a very visible community of immigrants," he said, "and the majority of Latinos in Lancaster are Puerto Rican who are actually Americans by birth. Some people don't make that distinction."
The Immigration Forum is sponsored by: the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania; Church World Service/Immigration Refugee Program; Friends of Farmworkers Inc.; the Governor's Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs; Urdaneta; Lancaster City Human Relations Commission; Lancaster County Human Relations Commission; Lancaster NAACP; Lutheran Refugee Services in Central PA; Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission; Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition; and the Spanish American Civic Association of Lancaster.
Chip Smedley is a staff writer for the Sunday News. You can e-mail him at csmedley@lnpnews.com.
