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Commentary: Jupiter center for day laborers took nerve
By Emily J. Minor

Palm Beach Post Columnist

Saturday, September 23, 2006

When you're a newspaper columnist in a crazy place like South Florida, you're not supposed to gush about government.

There's plenty to kvetch about: public education, thieving politicians, unsolved crime.

Political backslapping?

It's just not done.

But I am obsessed with what's happening up in Jupiter at an old church at the corner of Military Trail and Indiantown Road, where they've created a place for immigrants to come look for work.

And here's what keeps me coming back.

The nerve it took to do this.

Jupiter, Fla., home to nice parks, family living and beautiful stretches of ocean, had a problem for years. A dirty problem. There was an underbelly to the town, a growing number of immigrant workers who would gather along Center Street and wait for someone to come along and hire them for a day. Or maybe two or three.

Everybody's got to eat and pay the rent and clothe the kids.

For a long time, it was easy to ignore the people and their problems, so that's what the town did.

But then, things started to happen, things that made the residents and its staff sit up and take notice. The numbers were growing, and at a somewhat alarming rate. It was intimidating just to drive down Center Street because, on any given day, there'd be hundreds of people standing out there waiting for a contractor to drive by and hire five of the 500.

There were no restrooms, no trash cans, little shade, and that translated into public urination, piles of litter, dehydration.

"I didn't know what day laborers were," says Town Manager Andy Lukasik, who was assistant town manager back then. "I didn't know what they were talking about."

Now he knows so much he could be on 60 Minutes.

The town has spent about $100,000 on the El Sol Neighborhood Resource Center. It's in an old church that sits on property the town bought a while ago and eventually will use to expand town offices. Catholic Charities runs the place. (Actually, Sister Marta's name keeps coming up.)

And Florida Atlantic University political science professor Tim Steigenga was the guy who got the grass-roots guilt going. Hundreds of others, including the immigrants themselves, greased the wheels.

It. Was. Not. Easy.

Illegal immigration is one of the most emotional and divisive social problems in our country — every bit the hot button of abortion, gay marriage and fake war heroes.

"Every single negative I heard translated into some sort of a solution," says Councilman Jim Kuretski, the first elected official to embrace the idea in 2004.

Opponents' worries?

Workers will come from hundreds of miles. (El Sol gives ID cards, i.e., job opportunities, only to town residents.) These men could be terrorists. You have no way of protecting people against unscrupulous employers.

They heard it all, eventually going to various spots across the country to research existing centers and see how they did it.

"What other option did we have?" Lukasik says this week. "We could ignore, enforce — which doesn't work — or do this."

The center's about two weeks old, and it's not perfect. The biggest problem is too many workers, not enough employers. But it's getting better. One recent day they matched 48 workers with jobs, the highest number so far.

"If I get run out of office, so be it," Kuretski says. "But at least I didn't sit around and do nothing."

You know what they say.

No guts, no glory.

And no gushing.