CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (AP) – This famously liberal city is serving notice that illegal immigrants are welcome, even while Congress is considering tough new penalties.

Police won’t harass you. Education and health care are available.

Here’s the hitch: You probably can’t afford to live here.

Back in 1985, when Cambridge first declared itself a “sanctuary city,” rent control kept apartments affordable.

Today, however, Cambridge no longer has rent control; cheap apartments were turned into luxury condominiums and the city – home of Harvard and MIT – is among the most expensive places to live in the United States. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is around $1,400 (euro1,103) a month.

So, while the city renews its open-arms declaration – as other US cities also are doing – it’s not exactly a magnet for new immigrants, particularly illegal ones.

“Like anybody else, we look for places we can afford,” said Elena Letona, a naturalised citizen from El Salvador and executive director of Centro Presente, a Cambridge nonprofit that spearheaded the 1980s sanctuary effort and which is backing the new push.

The Cambridge City Council is set to vote today to reaffirm its sanctuary status, which instructs police and other agencies not to inquire about a person’s immigration status when providing government services. The proposal would establish an immigrant rights and citizenship commission to “ensure the equal status of immigrants in education, employment, health care, housing, political, social and legal spheres.”

Portuguese and Brazilian markets and restaurants still dot a section of Cambridge Street, but locals say there are fewer immigrants – legal or otherwise – in recent years. A “for sale” sign hangs on the door of the Santo Christo Center, once a popular club for Portuguese immigrants.

“Now, everybody’s moving north,” toward New Hampshire, said Goao Cafua, taking a break while slicing fish at Fernandes Market. “The housing is cheaper.”

Cafua, 56, who like most Portuguese here hails from the Azores Islands, bought a home in Lawrence, an industrial city about 30 miles (48 kilometres) north of Boston.

Immigrants make up just over 14 per cent of the Bay State’s roughly six million residents, excluding the estimated 200,000 illegal immigrants. Nationally, there are estimates of 11 million illegal immigrants.

Some people think the city’s sanctuary policy is a waste of time.

“What’s the point? Why invite people? The only people who can afford to live here are graduate students whose parents are paying their rent,” John Murphy, 46, said while visiting the city’s Central Square neighbourhood, where he lived for 20 years before moving to Austin, Texas. “It’s creating false hope.”

However, Letona said it’s important to create a welcoming environment, especially in light of the anti-immigration voices nationally.

“A very basic human activity, which is migrate for survival, is now being viewed as a criminal activity,” she said. “Their very existence is denied and they’re called illegals. They’re being scapegoated for stealing jobs. They’re not stealing jobs. Jobs are being given to them because their labor is affordable.”

Several other cities, including Chicago and San Francisco have made similar declarations. The Los Angeles suburb of Maywood, which is 96 per cent Hispanic, recently disbanded a traffic control unit because it was perceived as a threat to illegal immigrants without driver’s licences. More than two-thirds of Maywood’s 29,000 residents are illegal.

But the movement has sparked a backlash. In Phoenix, a group called Protect Our City is collecting signatures for a ballot initiative to require police cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

An “anti-sanctuary” bill pending in Colorado would deny state funds to cities that discourage or prevent police from working with federal immigration authorities. It would affect Denver, which has refused to round up illegal immigrants for eight years on the grounds that federal law treats legal and illegal immigrants differently and unfairly punishes children and seniors.

The atmosphere is quite different here in the northeast.

“In Cambridge, of course, it has not been all that challenging because (Cambridge) has always been very welcoming to immigrants,” Letona said. “We’re based in Cambridge, so we wanted to start here. We’re going to go to other cities. I’m hoping that this will catch on.”