February 11, 2008 11:33 AM
One thing that has really amazed me during the Levy years is the willingness of County government to shoot in the dark on issues involving immigration. One in seven Long Islanders is foreign born. Thousands of businesses rely on their labor and their purchases. And hundreds of thousands have family members who are immigrants. Yet whenever a new proposal attacking immigrants is delivered to the legislature, there is not a bit of research presented in its support. These bills are essentially put forward so that legislators can go on record as dissing the foreign born.
There is groundbreaking research on Long Island immigrants that has been done by Adelphi University. Nassau County has an extensive taskforce and hearing program underway to help inform poilicies towards immigrants. But the Suffolk approach is to get on an anti-immigrant web site and cut and paste together hate legislation.
In Suffolk, Levy did convene a task force on immigration policies. When it failed to toe his Know Nothing line he just stopped calling meetings. Pretended it did not exist. Stuck his fingers in his ears and hummed really loud.
He had a Hispanic advisory council. A group he strangely never turned to for advice on issues impacting the Latino community. When it dared to utter an expression of concern, he fired it.
Nadia Marin Molina from the Workplace Project tells me that changes in the licensing law are supposed to be considered by a panel made up of business, labor, and homeowners. You know, some of the people effected by licensing. Of course there has never been recourse to this body.
So this new bill follows a pattern, one we are likely to see repeated for four more years.
The Standing While Latino bill last year accused day laborers of causing accidents by standing on the sidewalk and waiting for work. A little investigation showed that the bill's sponsors were counting accidents that occurred at all hours of the day and night and attributing them all to *day* laborers. As with this bill, the idea is to blame immigrants, not to find any real solutions to the many real problems that exist for workers in Suffolk county.
By Nadia February 12, 2008 08:45 PM
Good point Nadia. As I recall you helped publicize that bit of statistical distortion.
By Pat Young February 13, 2008 09:20 AM