Thread: NYT continues to keep giving -Day Laborers’ Rights

And still, the facts are either left out or skewed.

Editorial
Day Laborers’ Rights

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Published: November 24, 2006

You cannot abuse people through selective enforcement of the law. You cannot single people out for special punishment without cause. You cannot instruct the police to harass people for being Latino and poor. Cities and towns across the country have overlooked these basics in their eagerness to punish those they presume to have violated federal immigration laws. But thankfully for all of us, the Constitution still has the final say.

On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Mamaroneck, a village in suburban Westchester County, N.Y., had waged a discriminatory campaign of ticketing and harassment to drive Latino day laborers out of town.

In Freehold, N.J., last week, advocates for immigrants hailed the settlement of a three-year-old lawsuit sparked by similar mistreatment. Day laborers there will no longer be ticketed for soliciting work in public places, and building inspectors and police officers will stop entering homes without residents’ consent in what the advocates said was a selective crackdown on Latinos in rental housing.

That followed a heartening ruling issued last May, when a federal judge ordered the city of Redondo Beach, Calif., to stop arresting day laborers for violating a local ordinance against soliciting work in public.

Together these victories send an important message about basic rights and promise to help stem a tide of local vigilantism. The underlying problem, however, remains. The righteous ardor of the Mamaronecks and Freeholds of this world has risen in direct proportion to the federal paralysis on immigration. It underscores the urgent need for Congress and the president to step up to the perennially difficult task of determining who may cross our borders and how, and of creating a fair and viable path out of the shadows for deserving immigrants who are living and working here illegally.

And while the courts have upheld the basic rights of an abused minority, they have not made day laborers any more welcome in their communities or helped local governments find ways to treat them with dignity while upholding residents’ desires for a reasonable amount of order. The judge who assailed Mamaroneck, saying it was beyond doubt “that the village acted with malicious or bad-faith intent to injure the day laborers,” added that she had also found no law that would compel it to create a hiring site for them.

That would be the practical and decent approach, the one most respectful of civic order and common sense. But you can’t impose common sense from the bench.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/opini ... ref=slogin

And no doubt, these numbnuts, are far removed from having to put up with day laborers and their abuses.

I took the time to read the decision, as well as many of the supporting court documents. I don't often agree with the New York Times, but this is one time I do agree.

This case is not about illegal immigrants, but about the Village of Mamaroneck targeting Latinos as a group for harassment. I don't believe this is a case of amnesty or open border advocates playing the race card.

The plaintiffs even had photographs of police harassing Latinos and sworn testimony of people who had nothing to do with day laborers and witnessed harassment of Latinos and non-harassment of others, and public comments of town officials referring to the day laborers as "locusts" who didn't even live in the town (turns out many of them do).

Some Latinos who were harassed were not even day workers. Some were just driving by in their cars and were ticketed for minor offenses, while non-Latinos were not being ticketed for the same infractions. One Latino, who had a regular day job, merely sat down on a public park bench to enjoy a quick breakfast before starting his regular job nearby, when police threatened him if he didn't leave at once.

One revealing clue is that the town did not even know the immigration status of the day laborers, a mix of illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, and citizens. Probably the only thing in common was being poor, unemployed, afraid of the police, and mostly if not all Latino.

The proper way to deal with illegal immigrants working as day laborers is for ICE to get involved, check documents and fine employers who hire illegal immigrants. One cannot assume with 100% certainty that all day laborers are illegal immigrants. If some are illegal immigrants or legal immigrants who aren't authorized to work, then ICE can charge them with immigration violations and deport them.

If ICE is not responsive enough to the town's concerns, often a valid concern, there is a program where State and Local police departments can receive immigration enforcement training and Immigration can delegate enforcement powers. Florida and a number of counties and cities across the U.S. already participates in the program. Mamaroneck isn't one of the participants, and there's nothing stopping them.

Contrary to skewed news reports and the biased lib judge appointed by klinton, the day laborers harrassed the citizens of the town and destroyed taxpayer property. That is a FACT.

The police had every right to protect their citizens.

Most if not all of the day laborers in this area are hispanic.
ie: their unfounded claim that the police were targeting hispanics. The police were targeting a group of people who were harrassing Mamroneck taxpaying citizens.

Had the day laborers been British, law enforcement would have been protecting their citizens against the British.

This case IS about ILLEGAL ALIENS {they are NOT immigrants} as the charge was made by 6 ILLEGAL ALIENS. ie: case is directly related to criminals by their very nature of being ILLEGAL ALIENS.

No matter how hard the press attempts to skew the facts, they cannot.

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Thank you Sis, I love your way with words!

The judge, in her decision, very specifically looked at the question of whether the day laborers were responsible for the problems alleged by the town as justification. Her conclusions are detailed in her decision, in which she concluded the crimes took place blocks away from the site and mostly at night when the day laborers were not there.

As for the day laborer's immigration status, that wasn't even known by the town during their whole campaign. If the town's concern was that the day laborers were illegal aliens, then they should have looked at documents and only harrased illegal aliens or called in ICE to deport illegal immigrants, but instead they harassed all Latinos, even some that weren't day laborers.

Taking an entire group of one ethnic background and presuming they're all criminals and illegal immigrants demonstrates profound prejuidice, or at the very least pandering to racist sentiments among some voters.

Further confirmation lies in public statements like town officials about how the day laborers are "locusts" who don't live in town and only take. Turns out all the plaintiffs reside in the town, and not all are illegal immigrants.

In my opinion, the judge was correct in that at least a part of the town's actions were motivated by racism.

It is so funny to me that any time anyone tries to enforce our Immigration laws they are always taged as being racist! This has nothing to do with race but with immigration laws, if it happens to be mostly Hispanic, that is no ones fault. People from all walks of life and race, including Hispanic, are here in this forum because we are tired of our laws being walked on by illegal aliens. we are tired of hospital after hospital's closing their doors because they are simply swamped by illegal aliens a good many of them coming there to have their anchor babies. They are what they are illegal, if there are legal immigrants there, I am sure they are treated as citizens of this country, I ask you though why would legal immigrants have to be looking for a job at a day labor pickup, I really don't believe that is the case. These people who are illegal should go home and have the decency to come in the right way just as all legal Immigrants are doing and have done in the past. Do you really think we would be treated so well as they are if it were we illegal in Mexico looking for a job? No, I didn't think so, we have every right to have our laws enforced, as the President keeps saying we are a nation of laws right?

And did anyone check the papers of the dozens of day workers at the site. Answer: NEVER was done! So how do you know they were all illegal?

To some, Latino is synomonous with illegal immigrant. Target any group of Latinos for aggressive enforcement of laws intended to be neutral, and yes, you will also harass many legal immigrants and citizens as well.

Target Latino day workers, and you'll get even closer to harassing only illegal immigrants, but still not 100%, perhaps 80% right. Who cares about the other 20% who happen to be legal immigrants or citizens?

Why not just pass a law making it illegal to hire any Latinos and just deport them all? It surely would have an impact on illegal immigrants wouldn't it? We interned Japanese-American citizens in World War II, didn't we? Didn't that prevent sabotage? But wait, Hawaii didn't intern except a few known security risks, and didn't have any sabotage. How could that be?

The town admitted they did not EVEN KNOW the immigration status of the day laborers, not to mention the status of Latinos who weren't day laborers and had the misfortune to be driving by or visiting the park nearby when the police were involved in their campaign.

The plaintiffs all told the court they wished to remain anonymous because they were afraid of the police. If the police had spent months following you around, chased away all the people who wanted to hire you, had kept a day laborer in a car for two hours, had stared at you while holding his hand on his gun, wouldn't you feel intimidated too? I know I would, and I'm a U.S. Citizen.

We need to make life difficult for illegal immigrants. But we are also a country of democratic values and the rule of law. As much as we find illegal immigration loathsome, we can't abuse the rights of those who are here legally just because they have similar appearance or national origin to some illegal aliens.

Bring in the ICE to the day laborer hiring site to check papers, and I'll be right there supporting you 1000%. But take actions, such as extremely aggressive police enforcement targeted at a certain ethnic or racial group, and I will oppose this as the discrimination it is. We can't target an entire group of people for retribution for the actions of part of the group. That's not justice and that's not the American way.

It sounds to me like these communities were enforcing existing laws concerning public solicitation for jobs.

Together these victories send an important message about basic rights and promise to help stem a tide of local vigilantism.

Standing outside a Home Depot mooching for jobs is a basic right?? Oh, and local governments enforcing their laws is now vigilantism?

bquasius, why are you throwing out the race card? The issue here is about illegal immigration, not race. It is nobody's fault but their own that the majority of the illegal aliens are hispanic.

Accuse me of playing the race card all you want, but read the decision. The facts because they don't support the town's assertion they were just enforcing the law against people who were ciminals and bothered others. Some of the problems the town cited didn't even happen at the day hiring site, or happened at night after the day laborers left.

The evidence of discrimination is there in the decision and the various exhibits and briefs. There was an aggressive campaign of selective enforcement against individuals who appeared to be from one particular ethnic or racial group. The judge concluded that the town's actions at least partly based upon racism.

The laws being "enforced" were mostly traffic and parking regulations. Soliciting for work in public is not illegal in Mamaroneck or most of the U.S. for that matter. If it were, surely all the Mamaroneck day laborers would have thousands of dollars in fines and quickly out of business because they were there every day trying to earn a living.

Laws were being aggressively enforced against Latinos, both day laborers and other Latinos who just happened to be there, and that weren't being enforced against whites. Contractors were aggressively ticketed if it appeared they wanted to hire a day worker, while other trucks that blocked traffic, other vehicles parked in no parking zones, and non-Latinos who stopped to pick up kids from school, etc. were ignored.

One Latino, who was not a day laborer, sat down on a public park bench to enjoy his breakfast before reporting to his regular job, and was promptly threatened with a $200 fine for loitering if he didn't leave immediately. Now tell me, what's wrong with a law abiding Latino enjoying his breakfast in a public park? Even if the Latino turned out to be an illegal immigrant he's entitled to the presumption of innocence unless there's probable cause he was breaking the law. I doubt there's a law against enjoying one's breakfast in a park.

The town has the right to enforce its laws, but not in an aggressive selective manner that targets a group of residents of a particular ethnicity or racial make-up.

And by the way, it came out at the trial that none of the day workers had been ticketed or arrested, just threatened many times. One was detained in a police car for two hours without being charged with anything, where he was allegedly told to go back to whatever country he came from. Plenty of contractors and Latino passers-by were ticketed for minor infractions that were overlooked in others who weren't latinos or were in trucks not trying to hire day workers. Now that's selective targeted enforcement.

It was the town officials played the race card, calling the day laborers "locusts" among other derogatory comments, politicians were pandering to anti-Latino sentiment. The judge correctly determined that racial discrimination was part in the town's actions.