Thread: San Antonio, Texas The Next Sanctuary City For Undocumented

San Antonio, Texas The Next Sanctuary City For Undocumented Immigrants?

City backs away from plan for day laborers' center
Hernan Rozemberg
Express-News

Realizing they were about to thrust the city smack into the middle of the national immigration debate, San Antonio leaders are now balking at the idea of opening a center for day laborers.
Resurrected in the fall as a full-fledged project after more than two decades of inaction, the City Council was poised this month to consider a staff proposal to create a facility where workers, mostly undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America, could gather and be hired.

After twice tabling the issue, a presentation scheduled for Tuesday was scrapped indefinitely by council members who said the proposal needed more work and that other large-scale projects such as the River Walk expansion or Main Plaza renovation were more pressing priorities.

"Immigration may not be the issue now, but it's not that much of leap to see it taking over," Mayor Phil Hardberger said. "We wouldn't be able to get anything done if we continued down that road."

Not surprisingly, opponents of the idea - who argued the city was poised to break the law by giving undocumented immigrants a helping hand - rejoiced at the news but vowed to keep up the pressure, including organizing a protest Saturday at Cattleman Square, the downtown area where day laborers now gather.

The city staffer responsible for drafting the proposal said the matter wasn't dead, though he acknowledged it could easily take months before the council is ready to look at it.

The best time would be after Congress passes a law overhauling the current immigration system, clarifying whether the city would be on shaky legal ground by opening a day labor center, said Dennis Campa, San Antonio's director of community initiatives.

In the meantime, Campa added, his staff will do further research to answer questions on funding sources and to identify potential locations.

After thinking the issue was finally moving forward, the reversal was an upsetting development to Councilwoman Lourdes Galván, who had initially pressed Campa to come up with a proposal by November with hope the new center would open this spring.

"I'm not at all happy with this. I'm not going to let the city continue dragging its feet," said Galván, who came up with the idea as a piggy-back project to Haven for Hope, the social service campus for homeless people set to be built near the current day laborer gathering spot.

The new complex will include a zoning provision outlawing loitering within 1,000 feet, which will literally push day laborers out of the area.

Galván, worried about where they would go next, pledged to keep the center idea alive, noting she had the backing of a majority of the council. But other leaders didn't seem as bothered by the delay, arguing that though they like the idea, they needed more details and to hear public input.

"I want to be careful that we make sure this issue is handled well," Councilwoman Mary Alice Cisneros said. "We need to be completely set and we're not quite there yet."

Hardberger noted that a day labor center idea simply doesn't come near the top of the current list of project priorities for anybody on the council.

The threat of the city becoming bantered about in national immigration politics - such as Hazleton, Penn., or Farmers Branch and Irving in Texas - is real. A cadre of anti-illegal-immigration activists in the city plan to emulate the day labor monitoring efforts of a group in Houston that will send volunteers to Saturday's protest.

U.S. Border Watch participants in Houston go to popular day labor gathering areas to protest but also to identify employers by their license plate numbers and report them to immigration authorities.

A similar effort is planned for San Antonio, said Curtis Collier, leader of the group, which claims 2,000 members. That's even after learning that the center proposal was shelved.

"We're going forward so the city council clearly understands the consequences," he said.

Another national organization known for taking the illegal immigration battle to court said the city was putting itself on a legal limb if it opened such a center.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch in Washington said a Zogby poll he ordered up last year showed 79 percent of the U.S. public opposes taxpayer funding for day labor centers. Talk of matching workers with jobs is a poor euphemism for breaking the law by helping undocumented immigrants, Fitton said.

Even in less hostile times, previous attempts to fix the day laborer dilemma in San Antonio also fizzled. The first try came in the 1980s, when leaders settled on designating the Cattleman Square area. Then a full study was ordered in 2004, overseen by a task force of city and community leaders.

But then, as now, the idea was eventually dropped.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/ ... c70dc.html

Go ask people exiting the Alamo what they think about the day labor center. It wont be pretty.

Dixie

They already have signs downtown for a day labor gathering area. And the illegals don't even stand there - they stand in front of a mcdonalds. They ride trains from Mexico and hop off in the same spots and the locals and police know it. It will take a strong effort to thwart illegals here. They usually head to a bigger city.

well get the address of mc donalds and call ICE and demand they check it out, and let them know about the train area and maybe ICE and BP can meet them when they jump off

The train area was just on the news because an illegal got decapitated when he jumped off the train. Believe me, they know. And theres one day laborer sign in front of the McDonalds. It's no secret, it's right out in the open.

Selena made this city popular with her marriage & all. That could be one of the attractions because she was an idol in Mexico.