Thread: Crowd Overflows Herndon VA Meeting

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Crowd overflows Herndon meeting
Officials debate the creation of a pickup site for day laborers

Richmond Times-Dispatch Aug 2, 2005

The Herndon Planning Commission last night began considering whether to establish a town-regulated site where day laborers seeking work can be matched with employers offering short-term jobs.

The public hearing attracted an overflow crowd to the Town Council chambers. Commission Chairman Carl I. Sivertsen said so many people signed up to speak that the panel will need to reconvene tomorrow night.

For years, officials of the historic town near Dulles International Airport have been grappling with what to do about the growing number of primarily Hispanic men who gather each day in front of a downtown 7-Eleven. On some days, there are more than 200 workers.

Under the proposal, submitted by Project Hope and Harmony, a coalition of local church groups, the town would spend $170,000 to staff and operate a day-laborer site in a former police station.

Opponents claim that the town would be abetting illegal immigrants if it establishes the center because, they say, many of the laborers are illegal immigrants.

Backers of the plan, including Mayor Michael L. O'Reilly, said the town is not welcoming illegal immigrants, but merely trying to eliminate a downtown eyesore.

Town officials plan to couple approval of the day-laborer site with a new ordinance making it a misdemeanor for laborers to seek jobs at any site other than the official one.

Few argue that day laborers fill an economic need, doing difficult, labor-intensive work.

But the presence of large groups of men congregating in search of work can be intimidating, and police are reluctant to cite the men for loitering without evidence of criminal behavior.

Local police, moreover, have no authority to enforce federal immigration laws. That is left to federal officials, who have shown little interest in getting involved in day-laborer sites. - Paul Bradley

BUNK!! TOTAL BUNK!! Using tax payer money to violate federal law.

I say let them build it. Then have immigration officials in there. To start the process of deporting them and lead them out the back door to awaiting buses. To ship them home.
Then the employers that come to pick them. Have a nice little paddy wagon, with nice cold handcuffs to hall them off to the local lock up

Or...they could do what Arizona has just done and pass a law that will allow state and local law enforcement to 'help' the feds control illegals. We'd all love that, wouldn't we? Don't know why in heck it took so long to penetrate their great denseness that the feds AREN"T taking care of this and never have and don't even intend to. Nope. They're building 'a coalition' to have even MORE illegals here. To their great shame.

RR