Thread: Mamaroneck to close day laborer hiring site

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs ... /601250312

Mamaroneck to close day laborer hiring site
By CANDICE FERRETTE
AND ERNIE GARCIA
(Original Publication: January 25, 2006)

MAMARONECK VILLAGE — A parking lot near Columbus Park will no longer serve as an official hiring site for day laborers as of Feb. 1 — a move that is already drawing criticism from Hispanic advocates.

Laborers who wait there for work have become a liability for the village while neighboring communities aren't doing their part, according to a resolution adopted by the Board of Trustees in a 3-2 vote this week. The site could reopen April 1, but only if Larchmont and the town of Mamaroneck agree to open their own sites, the board decided.

"These are not residents of the village. They are locusts. They are takers. They come in here and take, and they won't ever give back to the community," Trustee Joseph Angilletta said about laborers from other communities who gather in Mamaroneck village. "I was elected to protect the residents of the village."

The decision comes as day laborers — and controversies around them — proliferate throughout the region. On Jan. 7, a half-dozen Rockland County residents opposed to illegal immigration protested near a hiring site in Spring Valley. On Jan. 9, Brewster police arrested eight day laborers on trespass charges because they were playing soccer on a school field while class was in session.

Some Mamaroneck village trustees said the parking-lot site was being used by laborers and contractors from outside the village — particularly since a site in New Rochelle closed in December.

Angilletta said that in recent months, the sharp increase in the number of laborers lingering in and near the park and public-safety complaints from neighbors in the Washingtonville section of the village prompted him to propose the resolution at the village board meeting Monday night.

The trustee cited the cost of policing the site and responding to incidents there as a liability for the village.

"You could say that it's already cost us $2 million, because nobody wants to go to that park, and that's how much the park costs," he added.

It was unclear yesterday exactly how the village's resolution would prevent the laborers from congregating in or near the public park.

"You can't stop people from standing around, and you can't tell people where to stand, but this will no longer be the village's official site for day laborers," Village Manager Leonard Verrastro said.

Mayor Phil Trifiletti, a Republican, was joined by the only Democrat on the board, Tom Murphy, in opposing the resolution.

"It's time for Larchmont, Rye and Harrison to do something," Trifiletti said. "It can't all fall on the small village of Mamaroneck. Other communities need to step up to the plate and open up their own sites."

Trifiletti said he voted against closing the site because it would economically hurt the laborers who are residents of the village.

The site is not expected to close until Feb. 1, but Marianna Boneo, co-president of the Hispanic Resource Center of Larchmont and Mamaroneck, said that when she went to the site yesterday morning she saw two police cars blocking the entrance.

"What does this mean? The men are standing there. They will go where they find work, and Mamaroneck has always been where they've found work," Boneo said.

Boneo and the laborers are expected to be out at the site, waiting for work this morning.

"This is like throwing cold water on us when we've been seeking for months and meeting regularly with the mayor and other stakeholders to discuss a better site," Boneo said. "Such a motion is hurtful to the community."

Pablo Alvarado, national coordinator of the National Day Laborer Network, has visited Columbus Park. He said yesterday that his group would consider protesting against the village or even taking legal action against the move.

"I remember when cops used to come and prevent workers from going to potential workplaces," Alvarado said. "If they go back to these practices, they will go back to increasing community tension."

Columbus Park has been a well-known gathering place for day laborers for the better part of a decade but was made into a formal village hiring site about a year and a half ago by the village board with the Hispanic Resource Center. The center hired a coordinator to monitor the site, helping laborers negotiate fair wages and avoid behavior that might anger residents or prompt a police response.

Day laborers gather in communities throughout the Lower Hudson Valley, from Spring Valley to Yonkers. The most organized official hiring site in the area is the Neighbors Link center in Mount Kisco, which has a $300,000 budget and a team of volunteers offering English classes, job training and family activities.

Other municipalities, like Mamaroneck, created designated sites with some kind of assistance for the workers.

On Monday, the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at the University of California, Los Angeles, released a comprehensive national survey of 2,660 day laborers at 264 hiring sites in the United States. The survey found that just over three-quarters of day laborers were illegal immigrants and that day laborers are spreading into small and rural towns throughout the country.

More than half said they regularly attended church, almost two-thirds said they had children, and about 40 percent said they had been in the United States for more than six years. The median wage paid nationally to day laborers was $10 an hour, the study said.

Yonkers resident Julio Castillo is a former day laborer who is active with Yonkers day laborers in their struggle to have Yonkers designate an official hiring site, which the city is trying to do. Castillo called the village's decision disappointing.

"What a shame for the day laborers. These days everything is turning out badly for day laborers," said Castillo, adding that he understood the village leaders' motives for revoking the site's official status. "If they created a space for their people ... that's what the other municipalities should do."

It's good to see what happens when ignorant liberals realize the stupidity of their ways.

Greetings:

It is about time this site was closed, and it SHOULD NOT be reopened. I am a licensed contractor in Westchester County, work in these areas, though NOT AS OFTEN as I used to. It's not that I do not want to work in these areas, but the reality is simple...A) I hire illegal aliens so that I can compete when submitting a bid, or B) I act legally and morally responsible, and do not get the job.

Bush says these scab laborers (illegal aliens) take jobs we do not want to do...that is simply untrue. Illegal Aliens depress middle class wages some 200 BILLION dollars a year by bringing a CHEAP WAGE SCALE to many jobs we would gladly do. Since they work under the table, they can discount their rates by around 40 percent. A day laborer in our area of the country charge 100 dollars a day, PLUS LUNCH. A tax paying American laborer would have to charge around 150 per day to take home that same amount.

Next time you look to save a few bucks on a landscaping job, or in having home repairs done, I would ask you to look at the REAL COST to our nation before hiring and illegal.

Pinto Bean
http://www.blogcharm.com/beltwaypintobeans/

Welcome to ALIPAC PintoBean.

We couldn't agree with you more that these Day Laborer sites should be closed. These Day Laborer Sites should never ever be reopened. As for the Contractor, the one's hiring them, should for Never ever be able to get a contractors license anywhere in America ever again. Second, they should all have to pay back the American Citizen for all cost that American tax payers have paid due to Educating, Hospital and every thing else that Illegals have cost us.

Hi PintoBean! Welcome.

We know here who's paying to subsidize the illegals and their families that scum sucking contractors and homeowners are so fond of using. They're saving billions in labor and we're paying billions to cover their butts.

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs ... 018/NEWS02

Mamaroneck day-labor site closing reveals possible divide
By CANDICE FERRETTE
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: January 29, 2006)

MAMARONECK — Joseph Angilletta doesn't mince his words.

If anything, the outspoken village trustee has no problem reminding his tony neighbors in Mamaroneck, Larchmont, Rye and Harrison that their manicured lawns and trimmed hedges come at the expense of his middle-class Washingtonville neighborhood.

The controversy last week over the closing of the village's day-laborer hiring site may have exposed a divide in the "Friendly Village" along income lines and attitudes toward the mostly illegal immigrant community.

On Wednesday, the village's official day-labor site near Columbus Park will close until other Sound Shore communities designate their own sites, according to a resolution passed 3-2 by the Board of Trustees last Monday. If other municipalities don't open sites for day laborers, it would only prove the theory that the mostly affluent and well-educated supporters of the Larchmont-Mamaroneck Hispanic Resource Center only sympathize with the laborers as long as they don't gather in their neighborhoods, Angilletta said.

"They are living-room liberals and closet conservatives," said Angilletta, 43, a Republican and an automotive repairman, who grew up in Washingtonville and now lives one block away. "They want to help, but they say 'just not near me.' "

Some experts say those who oppose the day laborers do so because they feel threatened.

"People who are rising in the work force, whose foundation has been hard fought for, are skeptical about those who shake their foundation. They feel more threatened because it took them so much hard work to get to that point," said Lisa Keller, a history professor at Purchase College, SUNY, who recently published an article about race and ethnicity in a new book, "Westchester: The American Suburb."

Keller said wealthier residents are more likely to sympathize with the day laborers, or the working poor, without realizing the "everyday issues of dealing with new populations and the pressing economic issues."

As the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, Ruth Obernbreit Glass, 54, of Larchmont believes the laborers are living the immigrant experience her ancestors once did.

"What's being said about the Hispanics right now is what has been said about the Jews and the Irish and the Italians," she said.

Glass, a Democrat, is a retired art therapist married to a software developer. She donates her time and money to the Hispanic Resource Center as a way of giving back to the community while carrying out the lessons of the Torah, the Jewish holy book.

She calls herself and others who have donated to the Hispanic Resource Center "fortunate" and said that if she thought there was a place in Larchmont where a hiring site could work, she would endorse it. She agrees with Angilletta that more sites need to open, but she also thinks that it's only natural to have one at Columbus Park.

"Because it is a working-class village and people have always gathered there. It's a reality he (Angilletta) might not like, but that's the reality," Glass said.

Dan Coyne, 33, of Larchmont, a Manhattan lawyer, volunteers at the center teaching English.

"I went to college. I went to law school. I feel incredible lucky to be where I am," said the registered Democrat. "They (the Hispanic immigrants) are where my family was four generations ago," said Coyne, whose ancestors are from Ireland. "I keep in mind that I could just as easily lose everything as well."

But there was no convincing Ron Garvey, 69, of Washingtonville.

"There are too many illegals. They are all over. It has to be better controlled because we are being overrun," said Garvey, an Independent and owner of a laundry and dry cleaning business, who blames politicians on all levels of government who do not support a strong immigration policy.

"With the liberal people, everything needs to be a project. Everyone has to be taken care of," he said, shaking his head.

it would only prove the theory that the mostly affluent and well-educated supporters of the Larchmont-Mamaroneck Hispanic Resource Center only sympathize with the laborers as long as they don't gather in their neighborhoods, Angilletta said.

Where have we heard that before

Keller said wealthier residents are more likely to sympathize with the day laborers, or the working poor, without realizing the "everyday issues of dealing with new populations and the pressing economic issues."

And this

She calls herself and others who have donated to the Hispanic Resource Center "fortunate" and said that if she thought there was a place in Larchmont where a hiring site could work, she would endorse it. She agrees with Angilletta that more sites need to open, but she also thinks that it's only natural to have one at Columbus Park.

How about your backyard

"I went to college. I went to law school. I feel incredible lucky to be where I am," said the registered Democrat. "They (the Hispanic immigrants) are where my family was four generations ago," said Coyne, whose ancestors are from Ireland. "I keep in mind that I could just as easily lose everything as well."

Were your ancestors in the US illegally? If so you should consider yourself very fortunate.

"There are too many illegals. They are all over. It has to be better controlled because we are being overrun," said Garvey, an Independent and owner of a laundry and dry cleaning business, who blames politicians on all levels of government who do not support a strong immigration policy.

Sounds like a citizen's not too good to mow his own lawn. Hey, it's great exercise and a push mower's guaranteed to take off pounds and tighten up sagging muscles.

"With the liberal people, everything needs to be a project. Everyone has to be taken care of," he said, shaking his head.

Sad but true.

Quote:

"You can't stop people from standing around, and you can't tell people where to stand, but this will no longer be the village's official site for day laborers," Village Manager Leonard Verrastro said."

Yes you can stop people frm hanging around because there is a law against it. Its called loitering. And since they are here illegally, they are breaking not one law, but two laws, by being in America illegally.