Opponents of Montgomery County day labor centers say they will photograph people who employ day laborers and ask the Internal Revenue Service to investigate their businesses, as part of a Saturday morning protest at the day labor facility just outside Gaithersburg.
Labor center foes say they are angry that tax dollars are being spent on day labor centers while the state considers cuts to other community facilities.
“[Governor] O’Malley has put out a list of pending budget cuts for libraries, schools, care for the elderly and hospitals, but we have money for illegal aliens?,” said Brad Botwin, director of HelpSaveMaryland.com, an anti-illegal immigration group. “How is there money for this but not other things?”
County officials say they are not concerned about the protest plans.
“It’s a free country,” county spokesman Patrick Lacefield said. “I think one of the things our recent report showed is that since the newest center opened there have been no incidents of any kind, which is quite in contrast with the inflammatory rhetoric that some folks, including these groups, throw out to try and scare people.”
The county released a progress report in early July that said center staff tallied 596 daily job placements and 208 new employers using the Gaithersburg center in May.
Botwin said the figures are unreliable because they were compiled by CASA of Maryland, an immigrant advocacy group that operates the center.
“There’s nothing that an illegal can do that CASA thinks is wrong,” Botwin said. “There was no independent audit of these statistics.”
Lacefield said the county relies on information from contractors to monitor the progress of projects, unless there are reports that things are not being handled properly.
“If there’s evidence that something is amiss, give us the evidence, otherwise you’re just talking,” Lacefield said. “We have to have reason to do (an independent audit), and the reason is not that some people who are anti-immigrant are opposed to this.”
