WPp1:Herndon,VA,Approves Day Labor Center:Immigration "Out of Our Control"

Herndon Approves Day Labor Center
Immigration Called 'Out of Our Control'
By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 18, 2005; Page A01

The Herndon Town Council last night approved the creation of a formal, taxpayer-funded gathering spot for day laborers, saying the chaos in a 7-Eleven parking lot where the workers now gather would only worsen if it did nothing.

The council members, in a 5 to 2 vote that several called the hardest decision in their public service, said they did not want to sanction illegal immigration, the chief concern of opponents of the center. Many of the workers the facility would serve are in the United States illegally from Mexico and Central America.

But council members said they were helpless in the face of what they called a federal failure to police U.S. borders. They said it was their responsibility to bring order to a neighborhood nuisance that had become the town's most divisive issue in recent history....

***

The vote, which came after the fifth hearing on the issue since last month, culminated a tense summer in the small town in northwest Fairfax County, which has been drawn into a national debate on immigration policy, human rights and the role of local governments in international issues.

Project Hope and Harmony, a social services agency, was seeking a permit to build and operate a worker center near the Loudoun County line. The approval means the town will help fund the center with $175,000 in public money....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081800050.html

The workers are there to stay. But I'd like to see them in one safe place as they wait for day labor jobs. And it isn't the responsibility of the local businesses to host them.