October 12, 2005

Montgomery County Maryland encounters resistance to day laborer center

From this:

Neighborhood opposition has derailed plans for a day-labor center in Gaithersburg that city and Montgomery County officials agreed this year to create...

Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney A. Katz said yesterday that the city will consider alternatives but declined to say that he remains committed to such a facility in the municipality of about 52,000 at the center of Montgomery County. He would say only that he remains "committed to solving the concerns" raised by a daily gathering of immigrant laborers on the grounds of a Gaithersburg church.

Until now, Montgomery officials have not encountered serious resistance to day-labor centers. The county has operated one such facility in Silver Spring for years and opened one in Wheaton last month...

Previously: .

Posted to Immigration2005b at October 12, 2005 05:25 AM

Comments

"municipality of about 52,000"

I guess Maryland is not exactly sparsely populated, and it's not clear how many people live in the vicinity of this "municipality", but it tells you something when a community of only 52k has enough 'day laborers', aka illegal immigrants (most of them, anyway), to be having this sort of dicussion/controversy about accommodating them.

Posted by: eh at October 12, 2005 06:56 AM

Using public money to help pay for job sites that will be heavily used by illegal immigrants is criminal conspiracy. Both the illegal immigrants and the employers who hire them are committing crimes; and the job sites are facilitating illegal activities, just the same as if they were sponsoring prostitution or the sale of illegal drugs, both of which are in demand in the US, along with cheap illegal labor.

Also, eh, I can assure you that these job sites are not in the areas where the demand for this labor exists. Gaithersburg, MD and Herndon, VA are not the same as Potomac, MD and Great Falls, VA. Believe me, if somebody even thought about locating job sites in the last 2 towns, they would be shut down in a NY minute! But if you can situate a day laborer site in an area where you don't live, drive by and pick up whatever type of laborer you want, not have any of the down side of living near such a site, and call anybody living in those neighborhoods near the sites who object to your doing so xenophobes and racists, you have a pretty good deal......

Posted by: D Flinchum at October 13, 2005 01:57 PM