Thread: MD: Loans to day laborers could be in future

http://www.gazette.net/stories/011707/g ... 1985.shtml

Loans to day laborers could be in future
Leggett seeks a broader solution to addressing the employment needs of immigrant workers
Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2007

by Sebastian Montes

Staff Writer

As county officials are considering where to locate the latest employment center for day laborers, the new county executive is talking about loaning money to the workers so they can open their own businesses.

Montgomery County began funding day-laborer centers as a solution for immigrant workers more than 10 years ago, and County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) believes it is time to expand the thinking. He wants to move away from relying solely on the centers to address the employment needs of a growing number of day laborers.

‘‘I’m not interested in having sites all over the county,” Leggett (D) said in an interview last week. ‘‘I do not want that to become our standard operating procedure, that every community gets one.”

Moving workers from short-term hires to permanent jobs is the long-term solution, Leggett said. His idea is to tap into the county’s economic development money to make loans to entrepreneurial day laborers so they can create their own micro-enterprises.

The program would be similar to the one currently used to assist small business, Leggett advisor Chuck Short said last week.

‘‘My sense of these enterprises is that they ... will operate under the same principles, and receive nothing special other than a little more assistance in helping navigate the complexities of the paperwork,” he said.

Leggett hired Short, a former head of the county’s Department of Health and Human Services, to lead the effort to resolve the ongoing issue of opening a day-laborer center in the Gaithersburg area after city officials abandoned their search for a site.

Short acknowledges a move away from centers will be ‘‘years in the making,” and said that wanting to do so doesn’t mean the county will stop supporting them.

‘‘It’s not the desired outcome; it’s what we have to do right now. It’s economically essential and morally a reasonable thing to do,” Short said.

The county’s first day-laborer center opened in Silver Spring in 1994. A Wheaton center opened in 2005, and one in Langley Park is in the works to replace a temporary center in Takoma Park.

Last week, Leggett announced plans to open another on county-owned land in the Shady Grove area. The specific location has not been identified, though the announcement is expected this week.

Under the last administration, the county recognized the immigrant advocacy group Casa of Maryland as the only agency with the know-how to run the county’s day-laborer centers.

Besides providing a formal structure to the hiring process, Casa offers English and Spanish classes, legal aid, financial advice, vocational training and citizenship classes at its centers and helps immigrants tap into a range of outside government social services.

Casa received more than $1.28 million in noncompetitive county grants last year — $1.5 million of its $3.3 million income came from government sources, according to its 2005-2006 annual report.

Casa is neither surprised nor threatened by Leggett’s talk of change.

If anything, his ideas are ‘‘not that far afield” from Casa’s existing approach, said Kim Propeack, Casa’s advocacy director.

‘‘We talk about [centers] as starting places for the workers themselves, where the workers can continue to develop so that they can become permanent wage earners,” she said.

She also pointed out that Casa has a specific program to promote small businesses. The county backed that program last year with $115,000, she said.

Critics of the county’s current policy point to a growing distaste for day-laborer centers, which serve an undetermined number of illegal immigrants.

That dynamic played out bitterly last year in Gaithersburg as landlords, business owners and neighbors to more than 30 potential center sites objected loudly enough to convince city leaders that they would never find an appropriate site. After six months of trying, the city called an end its search in November.

Susan Payne, who lives outside Gaithersburg city limits, is among those who are weary of the county’s policy and who worked behind the scenes to thwart a Gaithersburg center. She founded the group Citizens Above Party a few months ago in part to plunge into what she said are ‘‘open government and accountability issues” raised by the county’s willingness to fund the centers without addressing the questions they raise about the taxpayers’ money going to help people who have come into the country illegally.

And her private meetings with county officials have left her wanting for proof that the centers are necessary in the first place.

‘‘Where is the data? There have been no impact studies, no cost analyses,” she said.

Casa maintains that there is abundant evidence to justify the centers, and the overwhelming sentiment at the Washington region’s first summit on illegal immigration in 2005 hailed the centers as the best available solution.

Casa data shows a drop in the group’s job placements.

Between July 2002 and June 2003, Casa put workers into more than 7,000 temporary and day jobs and 300 permanent jobs. Over the same period between 2004 and 2005, the placements fell to 4,181 temporary and 128 full-time.

After opening centers in Wheaton and Baltimore and supervising a temporary site in Takoma Park, the numbers rebounded to 7,776 temporary jobs and 240 full-time jobs between July 2005 and June 2006.

‘‘This is a phenomenon dictated by employers ... so we don’t see day-laborer centers shutting down tomorrow,” said Propeack. ‘‘They fill a real vital need for the economy.”

Opening a new center in the Shady Grove area is the most prudent course at this time, Leggett said.

‘‘It may not be the resolution all parties want, but we will not be hesitant in that resolution,” he said.

?????????? Who in their right mind would do that? The risks outweigh the benefit.

the new county executive is talking about loaning money to the workers so they can open their own businesses.

ROTFLMAO

Oops, I certainly hope this idiot isn't talking about taxpayer money????

Since people are defaulting on mortgage loans now in record numbers, I wonder how many illegal aliens have lost homes.