All immigrants have the same dream: Come to America, see the Statue of Liberty and head for Hazleton, Pennsylvania, The Crusted Jewel of the Rust Belt. Sadly, illegal immigrants flocking to this bucolic paradise will find that their plans of moving in and living off the fat of the land — not to mention partaking of the city’s school system and public hospitals — will find themselves thwarted, proverbial grooms left standing at the altar. For the city fathers looked at the rising tide of immigrants and declared them unwelcome. A new law fines landlords and employers for renting to or hiring illegal immigrants who, according to Mayor Lou Barletta, are destroying the fabric of the small town (pop. 22,000).

It may be a little late for that. I spent a few days in Hazleton in 2004, canvassing the local Democrats for John Kerry, and my impression was of a town that time, or certainly modern time, had forgot. Knocking on the doors of registered Dems to Get Out the Vote I met a number of middle-class voters looking forward to election day (we won that county, btw, as well as the state of PA — guess we should have mosied on over to Ohio) but I also saw a lot of beat neighborhoods on the fringes of a town that was dying from the inside out. Downtown businesses were shuttered and the liveliest scene was to be found at Jimmy’s Quick Lunch, home of the loaded hot dog and a proud member of the PA Hot Dog Hall of Fame.

But what if Jimmy’s started serving burritos or tamales? Where would locals gather then to discuss the absence of job opportunities? My friend Bill and I stopped at a local internet cafe that was hanging by a thread itself. We fueled ourselves on caffeine for the trip up to Wilkes-Barre and another day of GOTV and spoke with the owner, a pleasant woman more concerned with the lack of local support than the influx of immigrants. The week we were there Hazleton was hosting a Hell House, one of those born-again haunted houses filled with living tableaux of human depravity: abortion, drug abuse, loaded hot dogs… She said that the guy playing Satan had come in one day in full regalia, trailed by two demons, but had not broken character. Nor did he buy anything.

If local businesses would be happy for paying customers from the netherworld, let alone the Prince of Darkness himself, I suspect they are feeling the pinch as undocumented workers take their business elsewhere. That the national hysteria over immigration seeps down to communities like Hazleton, where there ain’t nothing shaking but the leaves on the trees, says plenty about this issue. Though Mayor Barletta, whose ancestors came here from Italy and who were doubtless greeted with the same scorn as they headed westward from Ellis Island, has pointed to rising crime as the impetus for this new law, I see something much simpler. It is a search for a new Satan. You’ve got to blame someone.