Thread: Long Island legis. approve anti-illegal immigration bill

http://www.silive.com/newsflash/metro/i ... st=simetro

Long Island legislators approve anti-immigration bill
9/19/2006, 7:57 p.m. ET
By FRANK ELTMAN
The Associated Press


RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) — Stepping into the national debate on illegal immigration Tuesday, county legislators overwhelmingly approved a new law that requires contractors doing business with the county to certify their employees are legally in the United States.

The bill was seen as anti-immigration by supporters of day laborers and others but won the support of Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the influential chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

The Suffolk County Legislature's final vote was 15-3 and followed about 12 hours of public comment and debate over several weeks.

The county executive, Steve Levy, was the leading proponent of the bill and defended it as a vital tool in helping crack down on illegal immigration.

"The thing that feeds illegal immigration is the hiring," Levy said in an interview with The Associated Press after introducing the legislation. "If every county and town and state used this type of law, it would go a long way in mitigating the immigration problem. If you dry up the jobs, you dry up the flow of illegal immigration."

It was not immediately clear when Levy would sign the bill.

The legislation affects about 6,000 companies and agencies that have county contracts. The penalties include fines and potential jail time, and repeat offenders could forfeit their contracts.

Legislator Vivian Viloria-Fisher, a Democrat who said she came to America as a child from the Dominican Republic and was a legal immigrant, contended there was "no empirical data" to show contractors are hiring illegal workers.

"I don't believe this bill is truly enforceable," said Viloria-Fisher, who voted against the proposal.

Levy, a Democrat who co-founded a national coalition called Mayors and Executives for Immigration Reform, received critical backing for his proposal last month from King, whose district includes parts of Suffolk County.

"I don't know anyone in the country who is more reflecting the view of the American people than Steve Levy, and he does it under terrible abuse, attack and distortion," King said.

Others decried the legislation.

"I think the vote confirms an image that the legislators are impotent political cowards," said the Rev. Allen Ramirez, a longtime advocate for day laborers on Long Island.

Noting past attacks on day laborers and the firebombing of a Farmingville house inhabited by Mexican immigrants, Ramirez said he feared Tuesday's vote may incite further strife.

"This vote is a validation of the street violence and the vigilantism we've already seen," he said. "No one has shown that any companies doing business with Suffolk County hire undocumented people. They are glossing over the fact there is no need for this law."

Suffolk County, on the eastern half of Long Island, has experienced an influx of day laborers from Mexico and Central America over the past decade. Levy estimated the number has grown to 40,000. There are about 1.5 million people living in Suffolk County.

In 2000, two men lured a pair of Mexican day laborers to an abandoned basement in the county with a promise of work and then beat them with tools. The men were convicted in separate trials in what prosecutors said was a racially motivated attack.

That should be anti illegal immigration bill

You're correct and I changed the thread title to what the author should have made it.

"This vote is a validation of the street violence and the vigilantism we've already seen," he said. "No one has shown that any companies doing business with Suffolk County hire undocumented people.

Oh the irony!! If they aren't hiring illegals, then WHY are you so terribly upset!!! What a moron! That's almost as ironic as the Pope's statement along with the headline today..."Miltants Vow War On Church of the Cross"...oh no, they aren't violent!!

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longi ... news-print

Advocates lose fight to block immigration bill

BY JAMES T. MADORE
Newsday Staff Writer

September 19, 2006, 11:34 PM EDT

The Suffolk legislature overwhelmingly approved County Executive Steve Levy's controversial immigrant workers bill yesterday despite widespread acknowledgment by lawmakers that the measure will have little impact on the problems tied to undocumented workers and already has increased .racial tensions.

Legislators who supported the resolution joined with opponents in criticizing Levy for bringing it forward, saying he should have acted administratively. Some accused Levy of playing politics with a divisive issue. Others said they were forced to vote "yea" because to do otherwise would be "political suicide."

For Levy, a Democrat and staunch advocate of stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States, yesterday's 15-3 vote in the Democrat-controlled legislature represented a major victory. Previous initiatives, including empowering local police to enforce federal immigration statutes, were blocked by the then-GOP majority.

Passage of the immigrant workers bill, which requires county contractors to file sworn affidavits that their employees are eligible to work in this country, will "ensure that all businesses getting county tax dollars are following federal law, and that no one company is gaining an unfair advantage by engaging in the illegal, underground economy," Levy said. "The legislature took a bold step .forward today in the name of fairness and equity."

Three legislators who voted "nay" -- Ricardo Montano (D-Central Islip), Elie Mystal (D-Amityville) and Vivian Viloria-Fisher (D-Setauket) -- disagreed, predicting an increase in discrimination.

"If this is political suicide, so be it. I have never wanted a office so much that I would compromise my .conscience," said Viloria-Fisher.

Legis. Kate M. Browning (WFP-Shirley), while voting for the bill, decried how it has divided the community, particularly organized labor. "This bill has been a horrible bill. ... People think it will make changes, but it won't."

Majority Leader Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor) agreed, saying Levy "better not even think about introducing anything like this again."

Levy's bill, the first in the state, seeks to strengthen a 20-year-old federal worker verification law. And starting Jan. 1, Suffolk will require businesses, charities, town governments and other contractors to verify they are in compliance with that federal statute.

Failure to do so could lead to fines of up to $2,000 or 6 months in jail or both for a first offense, and permanent exclusion from future contracts after a third offense.

The measure affects 6,000 of Suffolk's 10,000 contracts, .including those that are 100-percent county-funded and all public works contracts.

Union leaders representing electricians, insulators, painters and laborers said their wages and jobs were being undermined by builders who hire the undocumented to avoid paying prevailing wages and benefits.

The legislature's nonpartisan Budget Review Office estimated the price tag for monitoring contractors could be as much as $332,000 per year.

Before the vote, the Long Island Immigrant Alliance, Jobs with Justice, the New York Civil Liberties Union and other opponents brought out a wooden coffin draped in black to symbolize their contention that Levy's bill is "burying the Constitution" by seeking to supplant federal law.

Speakers expressed a mixture of sorrow and anger at the legislature's decision but vowed to derail Levy's resolution through legal challenges.

The Rev. Allan B. Ramirez, an advocate for Latinos, compared Levy's bill to the South's segregation laws in the 1960s. "Mr. Levy may be fond of saying that his position on immigration is very popular," said Ramirez, "but so were the laws of the old South, and that did not make them right."

The Rev. Allan B. Ramirez, an advocate for Latinos, compared Levy's bill to the South's segregation laws in the 1960s.

How can one's imagination stretch this far to come up with this inane comparasion??!!