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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS HERALD |
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GIMME SHELTER (IN HERNDON, VA) An upscale little town in Northern Virginia, a few miles from my home, has become the center of a bitter, divisive battle over immigration in recent weeks. A 7-11 store’s parking lot in the center of Herndon, Virginia, has become overrun with scores of laborers gathering there daily to await businessmen who hire day-workers. The laborers are mostly immigrants – both legal and illegal. The situation has become disruptive. Customers of the store have difficulty parking. Female shoppers have complained of harassment from the crowd of rough-looking men. Residents decry the noise, unruliness, and public urination. Police have been either unable or unwilling to keep the area clear of loiterers. In response, after months of deliberation and five contentious hearings, the city council has decided to build a day-laborer shelter several blocks away to take pressure off the store and provide a place of safety and comfort for workers seeking employment. The planned facility will contain bathrooms, a lounge area and recreational facilities – i.e., pool tables, ping-pong, etc. Officials say the facility will cost Herndon taxpayers nothing because a private organization has promised $175,000 to build and staff it. Defending their votes to create the new center – the vote was 5-2 – council members criticized the federal government for creating this local crisis by failing to police the nation’s borders. Pronouncing immigration “out of control”, Council Member Harlan Reece said the council had no choice but to restore order in the community. Members called the immigrant worker situation “the town’s most divisive issue in recent history”. Indeed, the matter has divided Herndon’s citizens into pro and con camps. Opponents of the shelter say the cure is worse than the disease. While agreeing that the status quo is intolerable, they claim that assisting – or even appearing to assist – people who may be in the country illegally won’t “solve” anything. Many residents advocate rounding up illegals instead of putting out the welcome mat. On a local radio talk show a caller said Herndon’s “misplaced compassion” would simply attract more immigrants to the town. Others warned that property values would sink because prospective buyers would begin to avoid Herndon. Shelter-advocates argued that the controversy would simply have worsened unless something positive was done. The shelter was cited as a reasonable compromise to correct the situation. Some shelter-advocates leveled more extreme charges of racism against opponents. Herndon resident Cathy McNary, an immigrant from the Philippines, disagreed: “I am not a bigot. I cleaned bathrooms. I chose Herndon to raise my family because it was known for safety. Now it is known as a place where the day laborers may be.” The Washington Post claims the community is equally divided over the controversy, but I doubt that assessment. Callers to the radio talk shows airing the issue – at least, the ones I have heard – seem heavily aligned against the Herndon shelter. That’s not a scientific poll, of course. There certainly is a pro-shelter faction, but I do wonder how many of those in favor actually live near the proposed facility. It’s easy to be philosophical when a thing doesn’t affect you directly. Just across the Potomac, in Montgomery County, Maryland (our home for 33 years), County Executive Douglas Duncan – just back from a trip to El Salvador – has evidently had an epiphany about embracing illegal aliens and leaving immigration enforcement to federal authorities. “We have to find ways to show compassion, not to split up families [and]… send back half a million Salvadorans to a country that is just trying to create jobs for their current population,” said Mr. Duncan. He believes fostering economic development in Central and South America will motivate people to stay in their home countries, causing illegal immigration to dwindle. Mr. Duncan also relayed recommendations from Salvadoran President Elias Antonio Saca on how to deal with Montgomery County’s burgeoning gang problem. Mr. Saca said the county should find more money to rehabilitate former gang members. (Buying our way out of crime! Why didn’t we think of that?) Mr. Duncan, who hopes to be governor of Maryland, is accused by his political opponents of trying to win the Hispanic vote by encouraging illegal aliens to settle in Montgomery County. Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, comments: “Mr. Duncan has much stronger sympathy for people who are not even supposed to be in the country than for his fellow Americans who face tougher job competition from illegals, who have to send their kids to overcrowded schools, or [who] generally have to pay higher taxes because of illegal immigration.” On August 18 Washington Times columnist Tom Knott wrote a stinging critique of Mr. Duncan’s new affinity for immigrants. “In the decades ahead, if we have Mr. Duncan’s vision correct, Montgomery County is going to be a densely populated, resource-eating, crime-plagued enclave that eventually drove out many of the old-timers because of compassion fatigue.” With respect to the controversy, some writers and talk-show callers have asked what the big deal is and repeated the popular line that “illegals are just doing the jobs we don’t want to do”. “We should be glad for them,” one caller said. “Without them, who would clean our rain-gutters, build decks, do yard work, clean houses, etc.?” We have all heard this argument before. At a certain level it does sound plausible. After all, none of us probably wants to clean somebody else’s toilets or risk life and limb cleaning leaves out of rain-gutters. So, maybe it’s true. Even Mexican President Vincente Fox said so, claiming that American blacks didn’t want to do the jobs his countrymen were doing in the USA. This annoyed Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, but others admitted that El Presidente had a point. Problem is, the game-board is tilted by the illegals, making it only appear that no one else will do these jobs. I am not the first to point out that Americans merely decline these jobs at the wages being paid for them. Just because young people won’t clean rain-gutters for $2.00 an hour doesn’t mean they won’t do it for $8.00. The low wages prevail only because large numbers of illegal workers are in the country. Without them, legal wages commensurate with the difficulty of the job would have to be paid. (It’s the same all over. If zillions of young women had perfect figures and beautiful legs and could do the high-kick, the Rockettes would make peanuts, too.) Illegal workers constitute an underground economy – not just “out there somewhere”, but in our own towns and communities. When you’re making big bucks practicing law or doing a high-tech job or working for the government – as are many residents of Herndon and Montgomery County – it’s easy to think that illegals making $2.00 an hour have nothing to do with you. But you would be wrong about that. As wages for young people stagnate, and as taxes go up and up to fund the infrastructure needed to support all those illegals and their children, the generous (but clueless) citizens of many communities will realize, too late, that they have been had. Politicians who have moved on to higher office, or to that Great Caucus in the Sky, will have left the bill for their extravagant “compassion”, along with W. C. Fields’ timeless question: “Who’s paying for all this?”
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