The problems of illegal immigration aren’t restricted to Arizona. Northern Virginia has being dealing with it for a while now, including the controversial, tax-payer-funded day laborer center in Herndon, and the contentious laws passed in Manassas. Now Centreville is getting into the act with an interesting twist (emphasis added):
A Northern Virginia developer is proceeding carefully with a controversial plan to create a day-laborer site behind his Centreville shopping center. But the proposal faces a long road ahead, its supporters say, after a heated meeting Tuesday night that included hundreds of residents and shopkeepers who oppose the idea.
Albert J. Dwoskin, owner of the McLean-based firm A.J. Dwoskin and Associates, needs to file applications for a building permit and minor site plan, said Brian Worthy, a Fairfax County spokesman. The proposal does not require approval by the county’s Planning Commission or Board of Supervisors and mirrors the requirements imposed on a similarly contentious plan for a town-funded day-laborer center in 2006 in Herndon. The site at Centreville Square Shopping Center would be funded by Dwoskin and be run as a nonprofit organization by the Centreville Immigration Forum, a group of churches.
“We’ll go ahead and continue to look at it because it is an option and I think it is a reasonable solution,” Dwoskin said after the meeting.
In my mind, there is simply no question that state and local governments should not be assisting illegal aliens in further law-breaking. The suggestion itself as ridiculous as it is hypocritical. Even though many day laborers are likely here legally, the vast majority are certainly not, which is likely why virtually none attended the Centreville town meeting regarding Dwoskin’s project. So it makes no sense to have the people who are supposed to be enforcing the laws actively participate in helping people break them.
But what about the fact that this Dwoskin project is privately funded? Does it bear the same scrutiny? My general inclination is to let people do what they want with their own property, provided that it doesn’t harm anyone else. Moreover, at least some of the local businesses would be happy with moving the congregation of day laborers away from their storefronts. It also stands to reason that if immigration enforcement officials ever decide to actually do their jobs, this day laborer center would make quite the easy target.
Despite all of that, however, the Dwoskin project is still a bad idea. Not only would the center be a haven for this form of law-breaking, it would encourage further encroachments. It continues to send a message that our laws aren’t taken very seriously, and that it is perfectly okay for anyone who so desires to forgo the formalities of entering this country and working here legally. Although a private entity does not carry the same burden of hypocrisy as the government in creating such a day laborer center is it not in some ways a bit culpable for assisting transgressions of the law? To me, it would be little different than establishing a farm for the growing of marijuana which, whatever the merits of the argument for decriminalization, is still currently against the law.
Really, in the end, this Dwoskin project speaks to the larger issues of our federal government’s failure when it comes to the enforcement of our borders, as well as the untenability of our current immigration laws. As a nation that was built by immigrants, the current state of our law in this area is both unwieldy and nonsensical. There are some decent reasons to believe that we could easily absorb many times the number of legal immigrants to this country as we do now, in addition to allowing more temporary workers.
In the meantime, the borders must be enforced with regularity, and those here illegally now, jumping in front of those legally in line, should be sent home. It is the failures in both these areas that forces localities and priviate citizens from Centreville to Phoenix to fashion their own, sometimes imperfect, remedies to the problems and day to day realities created by illegal migration.
As admirable as Mr. Dwoskin’s attempt to help Centreville’s illegal immigrants may be, it is definitely another one of those “imperfect remedies.”
