Thread: NY Dept. of labor & Mex. Consulate: jobs, health and i.d

mmigrants rally to learn of health care, worker rights

BY DAVE MARCUS | dave.marcus@newsday.com
8:32 PM EDT, July 26, 2008

By the hundreds, Hispanic immigrants have flocked to a Hampton Bays church to seek information on health care and workers' rights.

They have been visiting a mobile unit of the New York State Department of Labor that sends Spanish-speaking staff members to explain the minimum wage and other laws. The five-day project, which ends Sunday, also includes a roving office of the Mexican Consulate in New York, which has issued Mexican ID cards and passports.

When the blue "Labor on Wheels" van arrived in Riverhead Wednesday, organizers expected a small but steady flow of immigrants. Instead, more than 500 people showed up in Thursday's drenching rains, said Mayra Peters-Quintero, director of immigrant workers' rights at the labor department.

Nearly 100 more arrived Friday. One of those was Marcela Ramirez, 25, a mother of two who said she has been in the country since 1995 without documents. She had relatives in Puebla, Mexico, send her birth certificate and then, for the first time, she had a passport.

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"It was scary not having any identification for so long," she said.

The mobile unit has come to Long Island four times since starting under former Gov. Eliot Spitzer a year and a half ago. This time, it arrived after the Suffolk Legislature tried to crack down on contractors who hire undocumented workers.

In some parts of the East End, hostility toward undocumented workers has reached the point where those without papers are afraid of the police and other local officials, said Sister Breige Lavery, of the Hispanic Apostolate of the South Fork, which helped host the fair.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy said he had no objection to the event as long as undocumented residents weren't being signed up for services paid by taxpayers.

The fair continues Sunday from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Centro Carazon de Maria, 31 E. Montauk Hwy., Hampton Bay

Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy said he had no objection to the event as long as undocumented residents weren't being signed up for services paid by taxpayers.

Hope they are telling the illegal aliens that they themselves need to PAY for their own healthcare and they have no workers rights. They have NO rights to work in this country, much less be here.

CORRECTIVE ACTION IS NEEDED, HAVE THESE ILLEGAL CRIMINAL ALIENS EVER BEEN TOLD, "NO"

ICE, ICE, AND ICE SOME MORE; WORK 24 HOURS A DAY