Nassau leaders team up on immigration task force

BY DAVE MARCUS.dave.marcus@newsday.com
October 23, 2007
http://www.newsday.com

In the wake of failed immigration reform by the White House and Congress, Long Island needs to find a new approach to deal with a surge of Hispanic workers, leading Nassau County politicians, police and religious figures said yesterday.

Led by County Executive Thomas Suozzi, the group agreed that Long Island needs to rethink ways to deal with the wave of Central and South American immigration that is redefining the look and language of schools, churches and neighborhoods.

Suozzi said immigrants create businesses and pump money into the economies of Nassau and Suffolk counties. But he added that a small minority of them crowd into illegal housing or drink and litter in public, depressing the value of neighbors' property. "As human beings, as Americans, as New Yorkers, as Long Islanders," he said, "we cannot allow this issue to be used as an excuse for racism."




Suozzi announced that he is forming a task force to help Nassau reconsider a wide range of issues about immigration. The task force will come up with recommendations for changes in federal immigration policy while educating Long Islanders about "common-sense solutions" to problems such as complaints of noise from houses where illegal immigrants cluster.

The discussion drew an overflow crowd of more than 300 to a conference center at Adelphi University. Most of the dozen speakers lashed out at Washington for abandoning the first ambitious immigration reform effort since 1986.

"Our immigration system must be fixed - it is a federal failure with community consequences," said Adelphi's president, Robert Scott.

Suozzi's legal counsel, William Cunningham III, added that the failed reform "has left state and local governments, faith-based and other community organizations and employers with a hornet's nest of public safety, health, education and business issues."

Added Bishop William Murphy, of the Rockville Centre Diocese, "We must have enforceable immigration laws. We should not expect local communities to fill in the void" left by the lack of federal legislation to stem the flow of immigrants.

Rather than rounding up scores of dangerous gang members from Central America, recent raids by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stirred up confusion, Suozzi said. "They weren't sharing the information with us."

Scott, unveiling a report on immigrants, announced that Long Island's Hispanic population has tripled since 1980, to 330,000. Of those, 50,000 are illegal, Cunningham said.

"No one can credibly claim that the vast majority of these folks are anything but law-abiding, hard-working, productive, family-oriented contributors to our society and economy," Cunningham said.

Speaking after the meeting, Cunningham said a new president and Congress will be more likely to attempt serious immigration reform after next year's elections.

Yesterday's meeting followed a packed two-day Suffolk immigration conference earlier this month organized by Assemb. Philip Ramos.

The Nassau immigration task force will be chaired by Marianela Jordan, executive director of the Coordinated Agency for Spanish-Americans, a county agency that helps immigrants. Jordan said her staff emphasizes that immigrants must learn English and civics as well as "public responsibility" to be model neighbors.

Within 30 days, the task force must come up with a list of issues to discuss. Then the members will have six months to make recommendations.

Another speaker, New York Secretary of State Lorraine Cortés-Vásquez, defended Gov. Eliot Spitzer's plan to issue driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants. By getting rid of illegal, uninsured drivers, she said, the plan "lowers insurance rates to all drivers," with a savings she estimated at $120 million.