http://www.nctimes.com

Friday, September 1, 2006
Last modified Thursday, August 31, 2006 10:38 AM PDT

Does Temecula have the courage?

By: MARK MUSH - For the The Californian

I found it a bit ironic this past Saturday that while I was cleaning one of the bathrooms in my house 60 people were protesting the hiring of day laborers and illegal immigration in Old Town. Had I known this I'm sure I could have swung by and picked up someone eager to clean my toilet.

Of course, I would never consider doing such a thing, but obviously there are many people who continue to hire day laborers. For a while this was a problem on Butterfield Stage Road but now the problem seems to be centered at one of the focal points for tourism in Temecula, Old Town.

Somehow I don't expect the Chamber of Commerce or the city to be rushing to post pictures to their respective Web sites of 50 or 60 day laborers hanging out in Old Town.

Rather, I would hope the city of Temecula follows the lead of Vista and enacts an ordinance strictly regulating day laborers and, more important, the people who hire them. The city did take steps to curtail the problems on Butterfield but now the City Council must address the ongoing situation in Old Town.

The Vista ordinance seems to have the desired effect of drying up the employer pool by forcing companies that hire day laborers to register with the city.

If this ordinance were in effect in every city, I dare say that illegal immigration to the United States would be dramatically curtailed.

You can easily blame many of the problems in California on illegal aliens, but blame also needs to be directed at the people responsible for hiring them. The city of Temecula can take a big step toward forcing employers to hire people within the legal framework.

Naturally, the existing federal laws state that certain rules should be followed by employers and the people they employ. But good luck in getting the federal government to enforce these laws. As a conservative Republican I am absolutely ticked off that the Republican Party that once said about gun control, "We need to enforce the existing laws on the books," now seems to have forgotten how to read.

Therefore it is critical that communities and cities at the local level intervene. Now the question is does the Temecula City Council have the political will to enact a measure that regulates employers' abilities to hire illegal aliens? Although I believe this proposal would be overwhelmingly approved by the residents of Temecula, controversial measures such as this are typically avoided by the council.

Day laborers, the vast majority of whom are illegal, may seem like they save you a few bucks here and there, but remember the costs everywhere else: the number of illegal aliens in prison, free health care for people who could care less about paying for their own health insurance, overcrowded schools with children from foreign countries who don't bother to speak English, and so on.

So the next time you hire a day laborer to clean your toilet you may be saving some money but you are costing everybody else a whole lot more.

-- Mark Mush is a regular columnist for The Californian. He can be reached at markwmush@hotmail.com.