Bill Turque writes in the Washington Post:
The Town of Herndon announced yesterday that it would close its 21-month-old day-laborer center next week instead of complying with a judge’s ruling that the site must be open to all residents, including those who might be illegal immigrants.
By my reckoning, this would appear to take Herndon back to Square One: They don’t have an enforceable anti-solicitation ordinance, in large part because of their unwillingness to make the day laborer center “permanent” and keep it open to illegals (and yes, the Court’s opinion that these things are important). And now they won’t have a day laborer center at all, so the only option that appears to be left to the day laborers — illegal and, to the extent such exist, legal alike — is hanging out on street corners and 7-Eleven parking lots. Mayor DeBenedittis claims that they still have other ways to deal with the problem, e.g. “zoning and traffic ordinances”.
Perhaps one thing Herndon could do would be to take the approach of Vista, California, which recently decided to require those who hire laborers off the streets to get a permit to do so. In this case, the fight is not over the permit requirement, but rather over the question of whether the names of the those who obtain permits should be released to the public. This might not put an end to the day laborer solicitation, but it could possibly help reduce the demand for those services, and if the privacy issues can be resolved, it does open up the possibility that adherence to hiring laws on the part of those who obtain permits could be subject to verification.
Herndon also does have the option of fixing their anti-solicitation ordinance by making it be dependent on the existence of a hiring site (thus resolving the permanent/temporary issue) and biting the bullet and simply allowing the existing day laborer center to quietly operate just as it has for the last couple of years. This wouldn’t calm the complaints of those who oppose the center on principal, but it would help serve the public interest in avoiding the the very real problems associated with ad hoc hiring sites.