Thread: CASA feels pain of day laborers' full bladders

http://washingtontimes.com/metro/200609 ... -3864r.htm

CASA feels pain of day laborers' full bladders
By Tom Knott
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published September 21, 2006

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CASA of Maryland, an advocacy group that champions illegal aliens, staged a march in Gaithersburg in celebration of public urination yesterday.

This march for a pain-free bladder was held in response to those residents who complained of the two-legged irrigation systems watering their front lawns.

Police, however reluctant, have started to enforce trespassing laws with warnings, citations and, if necessary, arrests of the day laborers who gather on a parking lot in the neighborhood each morning.

Police are promising to be nice. They even handed out fliers in advance that warned of the change ahead.

Police also say they will not try to determine if those seeking a hard day's work are legal immigrants or illegal aliens, the distinction unimportant to them and perhaps even to the neighborhood residents who object to the loitering in the parking lot, the wanderers in the neighborhood and, of course, the undisciplined bladders.

Osama bin Laden could be among the day laborers, but no one in Montgomery County would want to violate his illegal-alien rights.

To be fair, bladders gone wild is hardly endemic to Gaithersburg. Residents who live near the besieged 7-Eleven hard by the Dulles Toll Road in Herndon have voiced a similar concern.

And to be culturally inclusive, D.C. residents of Brookland and Georgetown each have endured the shaky bladders of university students in the wee hours.

CASA of Maryland, predictably enough, is not in the advocacy business to be sensitive to the grumblings of homeowners, although its leaders probably would not appreciate it if its grounds were used as an open-air lavatory.

Gaithersburg officials are endeavoring to resolve the issue, urging the day laborers to seek refuge at the town's employment center. The day laborers apparently do not find the employment center as convenient as the lot that sits between a shopping center and church.

As CASA of Maryland sees it, Gaithersburg officials have had two years to open a day-laborer center and still are not close to achieving the goal. That is partly because the town's open-minded residents have a way of becoming close-minded if a potential site is in their back yard.

That also is partly because a day-laborer center is a tough sell to taxpayers, many of whom object to the notion of their money being used to help those who have entered the country illegally.

The principle is fairly easy to comprehend, despite the loopy thinking of those who support the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the nation.

The supporters would be well-advised not to practice what they preach in a Latin American country of their choice.

Latin America's notoriously sensitive authorities would convulse in laughter if a gringo started making demands after setting foot in one of their countries illegally. They probably would not even provide you with a comfortable bed in your cell.

In a nation without borders, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have failed their constituents.

It is one thing to speak of the illegal-alien issue in a distant sense. It is another thing entirely to be overburdened with it, as the residents of Gaithersburg and other suburban locales across the region have discovered.

That is no concern to Kim Propeack, who is with the National Capital Immigrant Coalition.

"Any time there has been an offer for property [in Gaithersburg], it has been nixed," she said, no doubt with a sniff.

That is easy for her to say. That is not her home being irrigated. That is not her small business functioning as a front porch of the day laborers.

Lease a building and they will come, she says.

And darn the residents who have the temerity to wonder if a day-laborer center is a selling point of a neighborhood.

Motivated home sellers could spin the situation: Four-bedroom, three-bath split level, with a free front-lawn irrigation system; close to major shopping centers, increasingly crowded schools and an adorable day-laborer center. Priced to sell.

http://washingtontimes.com/metro/200609 ... -7145r.htm

Activists assail action against day laborers
By Keyonna Summers
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published September 21, 2006

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Immigration rights activists in Gaithersburg yesterday protested a crackdown on day laborers, but no arrests were made at the rally.

"The workers held a meeting and concluded that they did not want to risk arrest," said Kim Propeack, a spokeswoman for CASA of Maryland, an immigrant-advocacy group. "I think that people are afraid of being arrested, and certainly some people have immigration issues related to that.

"But I think that the workers are a really strong community to the extent that the members wouldn't want to create unrest," she said. "They want to create a strategy that supports everyone."

Miss Propeack was one of about three dozen laborers, religious leaders and supporters who marched yesterday to City Hall and demanded a meeting with City Manager David Humpton.

Police yesterday began enforcing trespassing laws at a parking lot outside a shopping center where laborers have been congregating after the property owners asked city and police officials to patrol the area in the face of pressure from nearby residents.

The lot is at 117 North Frederick Ave., between a strip mall and Grace United Methodist Church.

Residents complained that some of the men drank, urinated and trespassed on their property as they waited to be hired.

Most laborers yesterday stayed away from the lot, where 50 to 100 men -- many of them Hispanic illegal aliens -- typically gather for work, and no arrests or citations were issued.

A police officer posted inside the lot each morning "for the next couple of weeks" will ticket or arrest on trespassing charges anyone who is not a customer of the shopping center or going to the church, one official said.

The officers will not check the immigration status of those they arrest.

Grace United church leaders said laborers can wait on their front lawn for work, but police said contractors cannot enter the lot or park on the main road or residential streets beside the church.

"So really what it boils down to from the day laborers' perspective is, they're going to have to find another place to find pickups for hire," said Gaithersburg Police Chief Mary Ann Viverette.

"This isn't an immigration issue. It's private property, and the owners have asked to get the shopping center back to normalcy," Chief Viverette said. "We're not targeting day laborers. For us, it's just an issue of trespassing."

The lot's closing occurred a day after the first anniversary of the Gaithersburg's City Council's first public meeting on opening a permanent center for the laborers.

City officials said that more than 30 property owners have blocked the plan by refusing to lease space for a center, and residents have complained that two other potential sites for the center were too close to homes and schools.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01082.html

Tensions Mount As Day Laborers Face Arrest Threat

By Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 21, 2006; B05



Police told day laborers yesterday that they would face arrest if they continue to gather at a Gaithersburg parking lot each morning to wait for employers to hire them.

About a dozen Gaithersburg police officers arrived before sunrise to monitor the shopping center parking lot at 117 N. Frederick Ave. in response to a request from the property's owner, D.C.-based S&B Partnership.

A demonstration at the parking lot yesterday drew few of the 75 to 100 day laborers who have gathered there regularly in recent years. Most of them feared arrest, said those who did turn out.

The dozen or so laborers who were there, all of them immigrants, had a prayer vigil and marched to City Hall with seven ministers and priests from local churches and officials from CASA of Maryland, a nonprofit advocacy group for immigrants.

No arrests were made, but Gaithersburg Police Chief Mary Ann Viverette said officers would continue to enforce trespassing laws indefinitely. "This is not an immigration issue," she said. "It's a trespassing law issue."

The controversy has polarized the city of 58,000 and heightened tensions between city and county officials. The County Council has pushed Gaithersburg, which is 20 percent Latino, to open a center similar to county-funded facilities in Wheaton and Silver Spring, where day laborers learn English and computer skills while waiting for jobs such as painting houses and laying brick.

Last year, the city agreed to refurbish a nearby building, at 17 N. Frederick Ave., if the county leased it. But those plans were scuttled when residents complained. Since then, city officials have been searching for another site, but county officials have questioned their commitment.

"We remain committed to assisting the City in getting a center operable, but are concerned that Gaithersburg has made little progress in identifying a permanent site," the county's chief administrative officer, Bruce Romer, wrote to Gaithersburg City Manager David B. Humpton on Tuesday.

Humpton said the city has worked for a year to find a center, considering and rejecting 30 locations. He said the city is in discussions with another shopping center owner. "It is difficult here," he said. "It is difficult everywhere to find a worker site."

Paul Meehan, the property manager of the shopping center, said S&B Partnership asked police to enforce the trespassing law because "the neighborhood put a lot of pressure on the owners to stop people gathering in the parking lot."

CASA of Maryland officials and the clergy members advised the laborers to begin gathering this morning in the parking lot of the county-leased North Frederick Avenue building that was going to be converted into a center.

Last night, county spokesman David Weaver said Humpton had sent county officials a letter asking them to authorize city police to enforce trespassing laws at the county-leased building at 17 N. Frederick Ave. Romer sent a letter declining to do so, and he said the county would consider accepting an offer from the pastor of Gaithersburg's St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church to place a temporary center there.

Similar controversies have divided communities throughout the country, including the Fairfax County town of Herndon, where voters this year ousted the mayor and two Town Council members who supported a day labor center. Some have called for a halt to the use of public funds in operating the center. Others want it moved, possibly to an industrial or commercial area. The council is expected to schedule a hearing on this issue this year.

In Gaithersburg, the proposal to open a site sparked the creation of the Maryland branch of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, an Arizona-based group that opposes illegal immigration. The Maryland Minutemen have periodically monitored the parking lot.

Stephen Schreiman, the Maryland chapter director, said yesterday that the group, which has about 100 members, would start a petition to recall city leaders if they open a center.

"I would hope that the city sees the writing on the wall and realizes that opening a day laborer center is an illegal activity, a violation of federal and state law," he said.

Yesterday morning, police officers watched quietly as clergymen and day laborers prayed and waved signs that read "To Work is Not a Crime" and "Dignity for All." The demonstrators had a brief news conference in the parking lot, and newspaper and television reporters, photographers and camera operators surrounded them.

"This is not fair. This is not justice," said David Rocha, pastor of Gaithersburg's Camino de Vida United Methodist Church and one of the day laborers' key leaders.

Isaias Hernandez, 36, a Gaithersburg resident who left his native Mexico 13 years ago, burst into tears as he told his story. "It makes me sad that we are treated this way," he said in Spanish. "I've been here for 14 years and believe me, I haven't done anything wrong."

Only one counter-demonstrator appeared, a man who carried an American flag and wore a National Rifle Association cap. He told reporters that his name was Jerry but would not give his last name. "I see all these illegals," he said. "It's not right. They broke our laws."

After a brief prayer vigil, the laborers and their supporters marched along Route 355 to City Hall to demand a meeting with the mayor or city manager.

Humpton complied. He sat across from Hernandez at a picnic table and heard his plea for a center. "I want you to know that the mayor and the overwhelming majority of the council supports a center," Humpton told the day laborers. "The question is where."

Only one counter-demonstrator appeared, a man who carried an American flag and wore a National Rifle Association cap. He told reporters that his name was Jerry but would not give his last name. "I see all these illegals," he said. "It's not right. They broke our laws."

What a brave soul he is. Oh, sure, some would call him a racist but we know that doesn't hold a grain of salt anymore. He just wants his country protected from the illegal invasion and laws enforced.

It is the employers who need to be addressed now.

In my opinion, should a center be built on tax payer dollars, those responsible should be arrested for aiding employers to hire illegal immigrants. Since it is against the law to hire illegals, it has to be against the law to aid them in being hired.

I'm sick of the whole mess!

It is a problem everywhere there are large numbers of illegals hanging around. You walk by a wall and can smell the urine, it is really disgusting.

In the neighborhood with the highest illegal polulation in our town, there is two light rail stations (known as "Max") which have brick half buildings when it is rainy and windy here (that is about 7 months out of the year!), while you are wainting for the train.

These shelters have to be sprayed down every other day with a steam truck that has some kind if sanitizer in it. It is horrible. As well some stations in other areas have elevators that go to a connecting overpass along the highway and they too have to be handled in the same way, that is nearly daily as well.