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Day labor task force proposed

Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005

Gaithersburg will create an advisory group to suggest solutions for the several dozen Latino men who gather every morning in a parking lot next to Grace United Methodist Church to wait for work.

The move comes after plans for a taxpayer-backed center for day laborers abruptly collapsed two weeks ago when the county government said the city’s support for a center was waning and city leaders admitted they had not allowed enough public input on the nearly year-old plan.

Neighbors have complained the workers are a threat.

At a Monday night meeting, the City Council and Mayor Sidney A. Katz debated the structure of a task force, its membership and whether the city is flaunting federal immigration laws, since some of the workers who would use the center are in the country illegally.

‘‘I want this committee process to be effective, I want it to address the issue and I honestly am concerned that I’m not getting real specific direction,” City Manager David B. Humpton said.

The council, which became ensnared in a largely procedural discussion, scheduled a special work session Oct. 26 to plot options and the scope of the task force.

‘‘Does the neighborhood and our constituents want the city to put money into a situation which knowingly going into, that there are immigration problems? We all know that. That becomes a legal issue,” Council vice president Henry F. Marraffa Jr. said Monday night. ‘‘Then it comes to other issues we’ve talked about: worker’s comp[ensation], insurance, who’s responsible...”

‘‘That’s why we need to develop a charge so that it’s very clear what this committee is being asked to do,” Council member Geri Edens said.

‘‘Let the committee focus on recommendations for solving the problem,” Edens continued, ‘‘then we will get the city attorney to advise us on the advantages and disadvantages of any of the proposed solutions.”

The task force is expected to be open to residents of Gaithersburg or people who have businesses or nonprofits in the city.

The mayor and council also considered limiting membership to 15 and providing access to expert advisers.

The council’s discussion follows a community forum a week earlier at the church during which the legal, social and political issues of a labor center were aired.

‘‘There is a solution to day labor centers: we do not need them. We have federal, state and local employment centers where people can go,” said Chuck Floyd of Kensington, who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Christopher Van Hollen for Congress in 2004 and who spent time in Arizona and California this year working with the Minuteman Project, a coalition of residents in border states that run patrols.

At last Tuesday night’s meeting, Floyd claimed illegal immigrants place a $100 million burden on the county. He said he arrived at that figure after research on illegal immigrants’ impact on hospitals, school systems and crime rates.

There are two day-labor centers operating in Montgomery County: a Silver Spring center established in 1994 and a smaller one that opened in Wheaton last month.

Both of those centers serve a vital social need, County Council member Phillip Andrews (D-Dist. 3) of Gaithersburg said at Tuesday’s forum.

Reiterating the County Council’s support for day labor centers, Andrews suggested a ‘‘practical argument” to counter concerns over the illegal laborers.

‘‘The issue is already here, the people are already here. We do have a broken immigration policy within the federal government. We’re not going to be able to change that here,” Andrews said. ‘‘What we can do is deal with the issue in a way that helps the entire community... It will be a benefit to the community to have a center that will provide sensibility, some order, a predictability, more supervision—and enforcement, if necessary.”

Marraffa, who is running for re-election, has been one of the most outspoken critics of a center in Gaithersburg.

‘‘We have a very emotional time in front of us,” he said last Tuesday night. ‘‘The problem... is that we don’t have the luxury of picking the laws that we like and only enforcing those... If contractors are coming up here and hiring people and taking away from the people who are legitimate, is that really fair? We have to be able to employ the people who got in line first.”

Some at last week’s church forum drew parallels between the effort to help the day laborers and the challenges posed by similarly contentious issues in years past, especially the Wells Robertson House, a transitional home for addicts, and the Lord’s Table, a soup kitchen in the basement of St. Martin’s Church.

Urging for ‘‘just, fair, civil solutions,” Chuck Short of the Archdiocese of Washington, was hopeful that those past experiences will serve as a model for dealing with the day laborers.

Short is a former director of the county’s Department of Health and Human Services.

‘‘A caring and just community will be able to find the right answer,” Short said. ‘‘We’re not talking here about day laborers, we’re not talking about government, we’re not talking about civic groups. We’re talking about people. This room is filled with humanity and the way we care for each other and treat each other far outweighs our government loyalty. It’s critical to the kind of city we want to have.”

As the debate continues, Grace Church has agreed to keep its doors open every morning, which Jim Akin, a trustee of the congregation, argued is a dire ‘‘responsibility” the church will continue to bear.

‘‘We will continue at Grace [Church] to provide some shelter during these coming cold months, which are just about upon us. We’re ready to do our share, but I think of a lot of people have to get off the dime, government people especially, to get this thing moving forward more rapidly.”