Monday, January 22, 2007
A suitable Spot...and it's not near the Post
The Post today is all agog over a new building approved and to be built by Montgomery County:
A Suitable Spot Day laborers in Gaithersburg will finally get an employment center
…and damn it, they deserve it.
“Day-laborer centers provide shelter, bathrooms and other basic needs to local workers looking for gainful employment. Though many of the workers are illegal immigrants, their services are clearly in demand -- and essential to the area's economy.”
Why are the illegal immigrants in demand? Is their a wage differential that makes their employment so attractive? Doesn't building a welcoming spot for them – to make their illegal presence here more comfortable - possibly run counter to the supposed need for a minimum wage hike? And what does “clearly in demand” have to do with anything? So are prostitutes, cocaine and bars that allow smoking. Not sure what the Post thinks about the first two but its position on the smoking ban is predictable.
And I will challenge just how essential illegal immigrants are to the area’s economy. Such workers may be a windfall for the companies that hire them (now there’s a windfall profit tax I’ll back) but I don’t see how they pay their fair share of the infrastructure costs. They use the local schools and local health care – how are they paying for those? Income taxes? Property Taxes? As a criminal defense attorney, my anecdotal experience suggests illegal immigrants are also over-represented on the daily dockets, with the attendant extra costs of public defenders and interpreters. Hell, they’re not even going to pay for this wondrous “day-labor center”.
But the classic part of the editorial is this:
“But that did not prevent a rash of NIMBY outrage and anti-immigrant rhetoric when Gaithersburg proposed to base an employment center on a parcel that housed a disused water treatment plant. …
“It's a nice fix to a fight that has pitted immigrant-rights activists against neighbors and anti-immigrant groups for more than a year.”
The pro-illegal immigrant apologists constantly put up this strawman of anti-immigrationists…and it’s crap. The vast majority of us have no problem with those who come here lawfully with the intention of either becoming Americans or at least assimilating into the culture. What we don’t like are ILLEGAL immigrants being here…and we resent the hell out of liberal guilt-ridden places like Montgomery County openly doing what it can to make such people feel welcome.
For the faceless editorialists over at the Post, no doubt such postures play well as they make their way through the Georgetown social scene. They can even point to their support for minimum wage hikes as further proof of their liberal street cred as they toast the new Democratic power structure. But, at the end of the evening, the one thing they are probably NOT doing is driving back to their home in Gaithersburg.
A Suitable Spot Day laborers in Gaithersburg will finally get an employment center
…and damn it, they deserve it.
“Day-laborer centers provide shelter, bathrooms and other basic needs to local workers looking for gainful employment. Though many of the workers are illegal immigrants, their services are clearly in demand -- and essential to the area's economy.”
Why are the illegal immigrants in demand? Is their a wage differential that makes their employment so attractive? Doesn't building a welcoming spot for them – to make their illegal presence here more comfortable - possibly run counter to the supposed need for a minimum wage hike? And what does “clearly in demand” have to do with anything? So are prostitutes, cocaine and bars that allow smoking. Not sure what the Post thinks about the first two but its position on the smoking ban is predictable.
And I will challenge just how essential illegal immigrants are to the area’s economy. Such workers may be a windfall for the companies that hire them (now there’s a windfall profit tax I’ll back) but I don’t see how they pay their fair share of the infrastructure costs. They use the local schools and local health care – how are they paying for those? Income taxes? Property Taxes? As a criminal defense attorney, my anecdotal experience suggests illegal immigrants are also over-represented on the daily dockets, with the attendant extra costs of public defenders and interpreters. Hell, they’re not even going to pay for this wondrous “day-labor center”.
But the classic part of the editorial is this:
“But that did not prevent a rash of NIMBY outrage and anti-immigrant rhetoric when Gaithersburg proposed to base an employment center on a parcel that housed a disused water treatment plant. …
“It's a nice fix to a fight that has pitted immigrant-rights activists against neighbors and anti-immigrant groups for more than a year.”
The pro-illegal immigrant apologists constantly put up this strawman of anti-immigrationists…and it’s crap. The vast majority of us have no problem with those who come here lawfully with the intention of either becoming Americans or at least assimilating into the culture. What we don’t like are ILLEGAL immigrants being here…and we resent the hell out of liberal guilt-ridden places like Montgomery County openly doing what it can to make such people feel welcome.
For the faceless editorialists over at the Post, no doubt such postures play well as they make their way through the Georgetown social scene. They can even point to their support for minimum wage hikes as further proof of their liberal street cred as they toast the new Democratic power structure. But, at the end of the evening, the one thing they are probably NOT doing is driving back to their home in Gaithersburg.
