FARMERS BRANCH, Texas -- This Dallas suburb could soon become the first Texas city to adopt a sweeping ordinance intended to keep out illegal immigrants.

Farmers Branch is one of more than 50 cities or counties around the country that have considered, passed or rejected laws banning landlords from leasing to illegal immigrants, penalizing businesses that employ undocumented workers and making English the city's official language.

"This is the first town in Texas that had the guts to do what's right," Susie Hart, who grew up in Farmers Branch, said during a recent demonstration outside City Hall. "The education system is tanking, health care has gone through the roof, everybody is bilingual."

But such sentiments and the proposed ordinance, which goes to the city council Monday, is troubling to many throughout Texas, where Latinos have lived for generations. Many Latino families trace their roots here to a time before Texas was even a state.

"This is not just a Farmers Branch problem," Elizabeth Villafranca said of the proposal.

Villafranca, whose family owns a Mexican restaurant in Farmers Branch, said she worries that such laws will spread to other cities if the council approves the proposed ordinance.

Since 1970, Farmers Branch has changed from a small, predominantly white bedroom community with a declining population to a city of almost 28,000, about 37 percent of whom are Hispanic, according to the Census. It also is home to more than 80 corporate headquarters and more than 2,600 small and mid-size firms, many of them minority-owned.

The local debate over illegal immigration began in August and spawned demonstrations for and against the ordinance. Council members later adopted a resolution criticizing the federal government for not aggressively addressing the issue.

Recently, Councilman Tim O'Hare gave city attorneys drafts of an English-only ordinance and proposals to fine companies and landlords who do business with illegal immigrants.

The Farmers Branch proposals echo those approved in Hazleton, Pa. earlier this year. Council members there voted to fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, deny business permits to companies that employ them and require tenants to register and pay for a rental permit. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense, American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have filed a lawsuit against the Hazleton ordinance and a federal judge has temporarily blocked Hazleton from enforcing it.

More than a dozen other Pennsylvania cities have taken up similar ordinances, as have several others in the South and a handful in California. Many of the towns and counties have based their ordinances on a model provided by the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a group that favors limiting immigration and is affiliated with the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

"They've all expressed a great deal of frustration with the failure of the federal government to respond," to illegal immigration, said Mike Hethmon, the institute's general counsel.

Others worry the spread of local anti-illegal immigration rules will lead to sanctioned discrimination and racism.

"It's basically saying those people are illegal in their very nature, it is all right to be against them because they are lawbreakers. Many people are assuming that all immigrants are lawbreakers, and that people who are different, who speak a different language are to be shunned," said Cesar Perales, president and general counsel for one of the groups fighting the Hazleton ordinance.

Those sentiments particularly affect Latinos because they have become the face of the immigration debate, Perales said.

"Everybody gets caught up in this. Most people can't tell us apart," he said.

Adopting anti-illegal immigrant ordinances also could discourage businesses from moving to or expanding in Farmers Branch, said Bernard Weinstein, director of the Center for Economic Development and Research at the University of North Texas.

Some local businesses depend on immigrant labor and probably couldn't survive without it. Also, businesses generally don't like local government interference with their operations, Weinstein said.

"Despite its intention, it would cast the city as being anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic and racist," he said.