Town Meeting

Ironically on the same day that President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor as the first Puerto Rican Supreme Court justice, the Town of Oyster Bay held hearings on whether to enact an ordinance that would make it a violation for anyone, meaning Latino day laborers, to solicit work on a public street.

Residents of nearby Locust Valley had been complaining that twenty, thirty, forty Latino men stood on the sidewalks, stopping traffic, loitering, and scaring the neighbors while they waited for landscapers, builders, and other contractors to pick them up for the day. These residents were afraid, because these men are unfamiliar to them. Just having large groups of anyone hanging around is an annoyance, they said. Everyone was trying to be polite at the meeting. It wasn't anti-Latino, it was anti-loitering, but those ordinances have all been declared unconstitutional.

The men who sat in the town meeting were young, quiet, respectful, and certainly didn't look dangerous.

The residents wondered why these men didn't use the shape up site located in the next town over. I left the meeting at 10:30 before I heard the reason why they didn't. Perhaps it is because they lived in Locust Valley?

We can't make Latinos go away by making it illegal to secure employment. Certainly the residents of the homes where the men congregate have legitimate concerns about the impact of these men standing around all morning. However, why not just move the men to a shape up site in Locust Valley?

I must admit that the Town Supervisor tried to articulate both sides of the controversy in a crude and patronizing way. He wanted the Latinos in Locust Valley to have an organization so that he had someone to negotiate with. He claimed to be willing to open a shape up site. Everyone acknowledged that local governments were being forced into solutions to a failed federal immigration policy.

These kinds of local ordinances merely escalate hostilities, criminalize Latinos, and push underground further their isolation. Communities that work out solutions based on understanding, well, isn't that the way to go?