Dans Hamptons

Last Friday, after listening to the arguments on all sides, Mayor Mark Epley of Southampton Village made the decision to create a formal hiring center for day laborers in that village. Southampton Village, with funding provided by public spirited residents, church groups and other non-profits, will create a place where building contractors can drive up and hire day laborers every day. It will be located in the vacant lot that the Village owns next to the Southampton 7–Eleven on North Sea Road, a spot, along with several other places in town, where the unemployed already congregate looking for work for the day.

This is surely one of the most difficult decisions made by any public official in our community in years. Passions run very high on this issue, on both sides. Nevertheless, it was felt that something had to be done, and the Mayor has decided to do it.

The situation is that much of the difficult and low paying work done in this town, indeed across the country, is now being done by immigrants from Central and South America, both legal and illegal. An estimated twenty million of them have come to this country. And to allow them in was a decision made over the last twenty years by our government, during both Republican and Democratic administrations. The labor these people provide at the price they ask has allowed America to successfully compete on the business stage around the world. It has apparently been the judgement of our leaders that turning the other way at our southern border so these people could come in was in our economic interest.

In any case, they are here.

No building will be constructed on this hiring site. Instead, there will be benches and a temporary bathroom, a U shaped driveway up which employers can drive to hire the men and women, and, surrounding it all, a thick row of evergreen trees. The site will be monitored by the Village and employees hired by religious and humanitarian organizations. Very little expense will be borne by the Village.

“I‘m not the INS or the IRS,” the Mayor said, referring to the immigration service and the income tax service. “My responsibility is to my residents.”

Epley believes that having this site will put an end to the day laborers standing around elsewhere in town.

Apparently, Mayor Epley made his decision about the hiring site after returning from Jupiter, Florida, a town he flew to at his own expense, to see a hiring site they have there and determine if such a thing could work here. Other hiring sites have been started in many other places around the country, including here on Long Island in Glen Cove, Huntington Station and Freeport.

Hopefully, this burst of immigration will now come to an end. It appears that the present administration is moving to do so by tightening up our borders and making a serious effort to deport anyone here illegally who has a criminal record.