Some Prince George’s County contractors are livid over CASA de Maryland’s opening of the county’s first day labor center in Langley Park, which, CASA officials told The Examiner, is set to happen in September.
“Anything illegal in any business will hurt the business,” said Randall Washington, who owns Bowie-based contracting firm RJ Washington Company. “I don’t understand all the people trying to help the [illegal immigrants] … the people who get hit the hardest will be mom and pop contractors.”
After several years of discussion about the center’s location, CASA and Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson have agreed the center should be located in the basement of a strip mall at 7976-B New Hampshire Ave., John Erzen, Johnson’s spokesman, said.
The state, county and federal government have yet to determine their shares of the $700,000 price tag for the center that will serve as both a secure spot for immigrant workers to find employment and a job training center, said Jennifer Freedman, director of development for CASA. It will replace a temporary six-year-old center in Takoma Park in Montgomey County.
Studies and census data have found Prince George’s County neighborhoods bordering Montgomery County have become increasingly populated by immigrants. CASA officials said their plans to expand their day-labor centers, which are already well-established in Montgomery, coincide with the demographic shift.
CASA is also moving its headquarters from Silver Spring to a vacant mansion at the center of Langley Park’s dense immigrant population.
CASA’s opponents said they expect the fight to be fiercer in Prince George’s than it was in Montgomery.
“Prince George’s is not as wealthy, and sucking up money for things like this hurts more in the pocketbooks of citizens there,” said Brad Botwin, director of Help Save Maryland.
But not everyone wants to pull up the welcome mat. The county’s Black Chamber of Commerce sees a similarity between the crackdown on illegals in Prince William County and the plight of blacks throughout American history.
“If it wasn’t Hispanics, it’d be someone else, maybe us,” said Petey Green, the chamber’s president.
