Of course it was easily predicted. The Washington Post could not but find some way to trash Gaithersburg in the wake of Ike Leggett’s day laborer center decision. And just as predictably, they got it wrong.
In an editorial they oddly title A Suitable Spot, they say:
ASK COUNTY Executive Isiah “Ike” Leggett’s colleagues and friends — he has no enemies to speak of — and they will tell you that Montgomery’s new leader is a master at making consensus materialize. Take, for example, the compromise-out-of-a-hat trick he revealed Thursday, when he announced that he had found a location for a controversial day-laborer center just outside Gaithersburg.
Yes, this is what we have all been waiting for — someone in the County government with some common sense.
All but extreme anti-immigrant activists should be satisfied with Mr. Leggett’s plan, and it looks as though the county will, at long last, build the center.
There they go again. While I myself am in fact satisfied [1] with the parts of Mr. Leggett’s plan which have so far been disclosed, it is entirely obvious to me that one does not have to be anti-immigrant to be angry with this development. One could be a strong advocate of immigrants and still have serious problems with what the County is doing. Further:
- This day laborer center will do very little to help those who are immigrants, in the legal sense of the word “immigrant”. The vast majority of day laborers are here illegally. Although they are sometimes called “illegal immigrants”, this phrase probably should be considered an oxymoron. [2]. Honestly, I am quite sick to death of the routine application of the “anti-immigrant” label to opponents of illegal “immigration”. Immigration and illegal immigration are two completely separate issues, and the Post cannot but know this.
- While I am not in universal agreement with Brad Botwin on some of these issues, I respect the work that he has done to move the Shady Grove Sector Plan forward, and I believe he has every right to be concerned about what this might mean for the future of plans on which the ink is just now getting dry.
- I think that County residents have every right to be appalled at the County’s ability to forge ahead with something like this with no public process whatsoever. The fact that Mr. Leggett has offered to have a pro forma “public process” only adds to the insult. Does anyone reasonably expect that his promised hearing on February 8 will have any impact on the County’s plans for a center? Why is he inviting people to waste their time?
- The County will almost certainly hire CASA de Maryland to run the center, and the continued funding of this activist organization is reason enough to be concerned.
The county executive’s accomplishment stands in sharp relief to the spineless dithering of Gaithersburg officials, who should not have had to rely on Mr. Leggett (D) to solve what was supposed to be their problem.
No, they have this completely wrong. Mr. Leggett’s “accomplishment” stands in sharp relief to his predecessor’s entirely unhinged insistence that the center be placed on the Gaithersburg side of an imaginary line that is completely invisible to any day laborer in the County. Moreover, the Post seems here to have gotten it into its malfunctioning mind that all the day laborers live inside the Gaithersburg city limits. While many do, they also come from surrounding areas in the County, including Montgomery Village and Germantown, and it is expected that the establishment of an official center will draw laborers from a far wider area — laborers are known to come from as far away as the Eastern Shore to take advantage of Montgomery County laborer centers. There never was any compelling reason why it had to be inside Gaithersburg.
Day-laborer centers provide shelter, bathrooms and other basic needs to local workers looking for gainful employment. Though many of the workers are illegal immigrants, their services are clearly in demand — and essential to the area’s economy.
The Post’s editorial board still isn’t reading their own paper; this “demand” has been slowing considerably. And even if they were right about this — do I read correctly that the Post is insisting that lawbreaking is essential to the area’s economy? Have they even begun to think through what they are saying?
But that did not prevent a rash of NIMBY outrage and anti-immigrant rhetoric when Gaithersburg proposed to base an employment center on a parcel that housed a disused water treatment plant.
This is clearly the world as seen from a bubble. Yes, there was a NIMBY flavor to what happened, but really, it was more of a NIMFY thing — Not In My Front Yard. When the Post Editors invite illegal migrants to pee and leave trash in the Editors’ own front yards perhaps I might start to feel bad about this, but then again probably not. Also note:
- It was not a “disused water treatment plant”. It had been a retail store that sold filtered water and water filtration equipment and supplies. It was a tiny, little, old building that was in unsafe condition, could not have gotten an occupancy permit for public assembly without a huge amount of work, and was sitting — and continues to sit — on land not zoned for this use.
- The City did participate along with the County in identifying the location, but it was not entirely the City’s doing and the City did later come to understand that it was a mistake, for practical and legal reasons that went far beyond the local opposition. The County never did seem to understand the whole “legal process” thing, and continues to this day to allow the laborers to loiter in the parking lot of that building.
The city went on to survey dozens of other sites, all of which someone in the community found unsuitable,
The Post would not, of course, explain that in all but a small number of cases, it was the property owners who found the use unsuitable. The Post still has not explained how City might have gotten past this little property-rights stumbling block. Some other sites, e.g. the City Hall parking lot and the King of Nations church, were rejected by the worker advocates themselves, for reasons still not disclosed. Then there is the little omission of the final site in the City (Festival at Muddy Branch), that the City did find for the County to lease, even obtaining a letter of intent from the property owner. The County, however, was not able to follow through with a lease. Why does the Post keep forgetting this part?
until the mayor and the City Council gave up and tossed the question to departing County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D). Mr. Duncan tried but failed to find a location.
This is fascinating news. Mr. Duncan tried to find a location? When did he do this, and where did he look? Why did his candidate sites not work out? I’ve never seen this reported anywhere else. I’m only aware of the County trying to bully the City into doing the County’s bidding.
Mr. Leggett’s solution is to place the employment center on county property south of Gaithersburg. It’s far enough away from the city’s neighborhoods to placate residents
It is far enough away from all neighborhoods. This is the best thing about this site, is that there are no neighborhoods or sensitive businesses to be impacted here. The only neighbors are County facilities. It is where they should have been looking to put it all along. It is the sort of place that the Day Laborer Task Force said would be most appropriate. It is also a place that had — in specific — been recommended to the County in the past, but Mr. Duncan was too pigheaded to consider it.
but accessible enough for local day laborers to reach it — five Metrobus lines serve the area. County funds are already available to build and run the facility. It’s a nice fix to a fight that has pitted immigrant-rights activists against neighbors and anti-immigrant groups for more than a year.
And this is the part I just don’t get, and why I said the editorial was “oddly” titled A Suitable Spot. The bulk of this editorial consisted of criticism of Gaithersburg and its public and thoughtful process. But even the Post realizes that this is a good spot — possibly the best available spot — for the center; they even make this point in the headline. And if they weren’t so damned spiteful, I expect that even they would see that this is the solution that Mr. Duncan’s administration had kept from consideration. But criticism of Mr. Duncan, I guess, is not something in which the Post is inclined to engage.
[1] As I’ve explained previously, my reason for supporting a center is that the existence of a center strengthens an anti-solicitation ordinance’s chances in court, and I believe that such an ordinance is our best chance, short of wholesale political change, at dealing with the unsupervised assembly of day laborers at unauthorized locations throughout the City. In fact, there appears to be no mood on the Gaithersburg City Council for passing an anti-solicitation ordinance that is not contingent on the existence of a day laborer center.
[2] Personally I’m growing fond of the phrase “unauthorized migrant”, which is often considered more politically correct because of the lack of the word “illegal”. I, on the other hand, like the term because it more clearly separates the issue from that of legal immigration. “Illegal migrant” may be even better — perhaps I’ll be use that in the future.