VA town shuts “day labor” center and KKK leaflets muddy debate

The controversial “Day Labor” Center in Herndon, Virginia will be closed by the Town Council finally, according to the Washington Post’s Bill Turque;

The Town of Herndon announced yesterday that it would close its 21-month-old day-laborer center next week instead of complying with a judge’s ruling that the site must be open to all residents, including those who might be illegal immigrants.

The decision to close the site, which became a flash point in the national debate over immigration, was reached late Tuesday by Mayor Stephen J. DeBenedittis and the six-member Town Council after a 2 1/2 -hour closed-door session. It brings the western Fairfax community virtually full circle in its attempts to regulate — critics say drive out — its large population of Latino day laborers. The center was established in late 2005 as an alternative to the streets for laborers and prospective employers to come to terms.

Judges are idiots. Period. This country was a much better place before judges started making idiot decisions based on emotion instead of law;

At issue was an ordinance the council approved in 2005 as a legal companion to the day-laborer center, barring workers and motorists from striking deals for employment on the streets. The courts have generally required that communities barring public solicitation for work — a form of speech — must provide an alternative venue for that speech, such as a hiring site.

As the town enforced the anti-solicitation ordinance, many residents grew resentful of the center. Reston Interfaith, a group of religious institutions operating under a grant from Fairfax County, did not require workers to document their immigration status. Opponents of the center said the town was essentially abetting illegal immigration.

Of course, no rational discussion of immigration can’t exclude the completely irrational KKK;

Dozens of Ku Klux Klan leaflets calling for a ban on “all non-white immigration” were distributed last weekend in Manassas, where a dispute over illegal immigration has raised tensions in recent weeks.

The leaflets, dropped at night into mailboxes and on driveways along one street, urged “white Christian America” to stand up for its rights. Smatterings of racist literature are distributed in communities throughout the region every few weeks, but this incident struck a raw nerve in Manassas.
 
Klan officials, who are based in Arkansas, said yesterday that Virginia residents had asked them for Klan literature to deliver in Manassas.

It sounds like a set-up actually. I’m pretty sure that the pro-illegal-immigration-at-any-cost crowd planted these leaflets in oder to make the debate about racism than about rule of law. I’m fairly sure that no half-way rational person who truly wants to end illegal immigration into Northern Virginia would think that KKK literature would strengthen support there. If I had to pick out the organization most likely to use racist literature, I’d pick an organization with a racist name – like “Mexicans Without Borders” or “La Raza”. In fact it didn’t take long for them to start marginalizing the opposition;

“Any time lawmakers pass initiatives that . . . single out a segment of the population and try to drive them out of the community, they are laying the foundation for increased bigotry and hatred,” Mexicans Without Borders said in a statement issued yesterday in response to the reports of Klan leafleting. They said a recent wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric had “opened the door to racist organizations.”

The only racism here from the groups who support lawbreakers merely because they happen to have a certain skin color  – against people who want the law enforced who happen to have lower levels of melanin pigment.

Category: Illegal Immigrants, Media, Politics, Society