Privacy is paramount, even in Vista

By: RICHARD J. RIEHL - Commentary

Vista's day labor employer law , which pretends to protect the interests of workers while aiming to put them out of business, raises fundamental questions about the proper balance between the public's right to know and an individual's privacy rights.

Consider this scenario. Fictional Vista resident Joe Doaks needs someone to mow his lawn. A law-abiding citizen, Joe obtains an employer registration certificate from City Hall. He affixes the document, as required, to a side window of his car and heads for the local shopping center in search of a willing worker. Entering the parking lot, he spots Biff, the strapping 17-year-old son of a neighbor. Joe asks Biff if he'd like a job for the day. Biff accepts the offer, and Joe gives him a ride to his house, where Biff does a nice job on the lawn.

A week later an angry group of demonstrators assembles on the sidewalk in front of Joe's house. It's the self-appointed Vista Citizen's Brigade , waving signs reading, "Joe Doaks Hires Illegal Aliens" and "Illegals Work Here." Later that evening the anonymous phone calls begin, warning him, "Your house won't look so pretty if you don't stop hiring those people." The harassers got Joe's name, address and telephone number from City Hall.

Joe could have avoided all the nastiness, of course. He could have ignored the requirement to register with the city to hire workers at "uncontrolled" locations. It's unlikely he'd be ticketed for hiring a neighbor kid to mow his lawn. But it might have been a different story if Joe had offered the job to Biff's high school buddy, Jorge, in that shopping center parking lot.

In this newspaper's July 10 editorial and Mark Thornhill's cartoon of the same day, the ACLU was accused of hypocrisy for seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the city from releasing the names of day laborer employers. With the ACLU's history of fighting for open access to government documents, why would it want to keep them closed this time?

The answer to that question lies in the delicate balance between someone's personal privacy rights and the public's right to know. If the employer had been Joe Doaks Dirtbusters, a business licensed by the city, I'd have no problem with the release of the company's name, address and telephone number. The information about its hiring practices could help me decide whether to do business with it.

In its complaint , the ACLU points out that federal requirements to obtain proof of citizenship or immigration status do not apply to casual employment that is "sporadic, irregular or intermittent." Vista's ordinance implies they do.

Contrary to Thornhill's cartoon depiction, ACLU lawyers are not just pony-tailed, knee-jerk liberals. Among those whose constitutional rights they have defended are conservative talk-show host and Iran-Contra felon Oliver North, the pro-gun Second Amendment Foundation and conservative religious groups.

At a time when threats to our personal privacy are on the rise, I'm glad somebody's looking out for the rights of folks like Joe Doaks.

Carlsbad resident Richard J. Riehl is a freelance columnist for the North County Times. Contact him at RiehlWorld2@yahoo.com.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/07 ... _19_07.txt