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February 11, 2007
Long Island
Anger and Incompetence
There is something maddening about the refusal of elected officials in Suffolk County to resolve the Farmingville day-laborer problem after all these years. Men have been gathering on the streets of that community, looking for work and enduring the hostility and suspicion of their neighbors, since at least 1998.
The problem, then as now, is simply too many men and trucks meeting in too small or awkward a space, whether a 7-Eleven parking lot or the shoulders and sidewalks of local roads. The result, then as now, is periodic eruptions of local indignation, followed by outbreaks of political opportunism. Residents complain that illegal immigrants are spoiling the harmony of the suburbs. Their elected leaders then milk that resentment for political gain, while doing nothing to solve the problem.
The latest grandstanding proposal is a bill in the Suffolk Legislature from Jack Eddington, a Democrat, [Blogger’s note: Eddington is a Working Families member]Joseph T. Caracappa, a Republican. It would forbid people to obstruct or loiter along county roads, specifically County Roads 83 and 16, also known in Farmingville as North Ocean Avenue and Horseblock Road, popular spots for day laborers to solicit work.
It would be wonderful if this were a serious public-safety measure, and not a poke to rouse the public mood in a re-election year for County Executive Steve Levy, who has built a national reputation and soaring approval ratings as an immigration hard-liner. But it so clearly isn’t.
Filed under: cynthia mckinney, social & economic justice
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