August 8, 2001
A DAY OF TRUTH IN FARMINGVILLE, NEW YORK
By Hal Netkin
As an invited participant in the August 4 conference in Farmingville, New York, sponsored by SQL (Sachem County Quality of Life Organization), I related easily to the frustrations of other invited activists from all over the U.S. regarding illegal immigration issues.
Farmingville is a small township on Long Island. In fact, Long Island is made up almost entirely of small townships. What I observed about Farmingville and its people was common concern for their community. When other townships on Long Island approved day labor centers for illegal aliens, the people of Farmingville didn't say "they did it, now we have to do it." The people of Farmingville objected to having 80,000 of their tax dollars used to support an illegal hiring center. What they did to prevent their tax dollars from being used for an illegal day labor center was simple -- they united and told their local politicians that if they went through with the day labor center, they wouldn't see another term in office again.
I thought to myself, why can't we do the same in Los Angeles? That answer is simple too. Los Angeles is too big!
Living in the San Fernando Valley district of Van Nuys which is part of Los Angeles, I have never been more convinced that the proposed Valley secession, if it were to succeed, would be a vast improvement to control our local politics. I am also convinced that MayorNo.com's approach of activism on a local grass roots level, is the most effective and fastest way to make political change locally. If enough U.S. towns controled their politics like Farmingville does, then the American people as a whole would better control their politics.
Sunday morning, August 5, I decided to see for myself the day laborers of Farmingville. I went to the Seven Eleven store where they hang out. It was about 9:00 am and there were approximately 40 day laborers standing around -- I suppose that there were many more laborers earlier that morning before the landscapers and contractors arrived to offer jobs. A sudden deja vu struck me: "have I been here before?, can this quaint township be Van Nuys?" I could not grasp how illegal alien day laborers found their way to this unlikely Long Island middle class suburb thousands of miles away from "Aztlan."
Not having breakfast yet, I walked casually among the laborers while eating the bagel with cream cheese and drinking the bottle of orange juice, both which I had just purchased from the Seven Eleven. I used the few Mexican pesos that I just happened to have in my change purse from a trip last year to Mexico city to visit my mother-in-law and family, to strike up a conversation (in Spanish) with Juan, one of the laborers standing alone away from the rest of the bunch. I gave him the few Mexican pesos, explaining that I had no immediate use for them. Juan had been soliciting his labor in Farmingville for the last three years. I asked him how, when in Mexico, he could have known about Farmingville which is thousands of miles from the Mexican border. He told me that he, like all the other day laborers, got information by word-of-mouth (I call it the "virtual hotline"), that Farmingville has lots of jobs. When I asked him why he didn't go to a city like Los Angeles or Phoenix, he told me that in those cities, there were too many laborers and not enough jobs -- but added that the same thing was now happening in Long Island. Unlike a few of the other laborers who had their families with them, Juan told me that he is mobile and open to moving to another city to find more frequent work.
Juan didn't know it, but he was confirming the scenario which many immigration reformers now refer to as the "illegal alien invasion." It goes like this: The illegal alien breadwinners come to the U.S. for a job. They allow themselves to be exploited by accepting lower pay, poor working conditions, and sometimes sexual and physical abuse -- while continuing to believe that Americans will not do the jobs they are doing (Americans will do those jobs if they are fairly compensated). While many say they are in the U.S. temporarily, most soon make it their home. As waves of more job seekers illegally enter the "thriving" cities in the U.S., the jobs become scarce and the pay becomes lower. This scenario occurs in city after city. Then the illegals must find new cities that are not yet inundated with like workers. Cities that heretofore enjoyed high living standards, become transformed to third world like cities -- affluent Americans enjoy the cheap labor while poor American citizens are displaced into the world of unemployment.
With the people of Farmingville standing their ground, I predict that the illegal alien day laborers, who, not surprisingly, do not now feel welcome in Farmingville, will find other more friendly townships from which to operate. When that happens, maybe the other townships will start to be more concerned about the long term consequences of the influx of hordes of illegal alien day laborers. Those consequences were shown at the conference by activists from all over the U.S. I told the people of Farmingville that had they not protested the day labor center, they would eventually see the growth of a new cast of people whose very existence would depend on non-enforcement of U.S., state, and local laws. I pointed to my pet peeve of uncontrolled illegal street and sidewalk vending in Los Angeles which results in a myriad of problems including health and sanitation problems. In general, I warned of the third worldizing of any of Long Island's townships that would be "illegal alien friendly." I told them that as recently as five years ago, the more affluent liberals living in nicer parts of the West San Fernando Valley like Canoga Park, Chatsworth, and Woodland Hills, who had not yet experienced illegal alien inundation and showed sympathy to "hard working, honest" illegal aliens day laboring in my Van Nuys neighborhood. Now that other day labor activity has moved westward city by city, those "nice" neighborhoods are having the same concerns that we here in Van Nuys have had all along about our deteriorating city.
Although the news media (especially Newsday, Long Island's main newspaper) scared many would-be participants away from the conference with their "racist" and "xenophobe" mantras against us, I feel that the conference was a complete success because SQL, seeing the big picture, has now not only concerned themselves with illegal immigration on a local level, but on a national level as well.
Upon my return to Van Nuys, I sent Newsday this letter:
I am the author of MayorNo.com, a California immigration reform organization, who attended the Sachem Meeting in Centereach, Saturday, August 4.
In your article which appeared the following day ('Threatening the Union', Aug 5, 2001), Newsday showed its mendacious and biased reporting. While Newsday did say that our coalition was opposed to "illegal" immigration, it unfairly referred to the opposition as "Pro-immigrant organizations" leaving out the word "ILLEGAL." Had Newsday reported accurately, you would have referred to the opposition groups as "Pro-illegal immigrant organizations."
This kind of reporting blurs the distinction between being anti-immigrant and being a critic of immigration policy. What our coalition was doing, was exercising our first amendment rights to question and criticize immigration policy -- that doesn't make us anti-immigrant any more than it makes a married couple who plans how many children they will have, anti-children.
Hal Netkin
MayorNo.com
Van Nuys, CA
