July 27, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
I didn’t think I’d run into the immigration debate out here on the eastern reaches of Long Island. (I didn’t think I’d pick up an Internet signal here either. It’s weak, but enough to blog by.)
The Hamptons, summerplace of wealthy New Yorkers (This season there’s a rock concert series – Dave Matthews, Prince, et. al. Tickets will run you $15,000.) But the presence of Hispanics is obvious. The people who landscape the property of the wealthy, clean their swimming pools, wait on them in restaurants – many of them speak Spanish. So do the people who are building the new 7-figure houses.
That’s fine for the vacationers, the people who own these houses and come out here for weekends in the summer. But the immigrants are not seasonal; they have settled here, and that demographic change has created some tension with the other full-time residents. There have been a few nasty incidents. The public schools of East Hampton are now at least one-third Hispanic. The big issue, of course, is jobs.
“They really have to do something about this immigration thing,” says Joe, who now delivers heating oil. “I had a job in construction. I was making $35 an hour, which out here is pretty good. Plus benefits and a 401k. And one day my boss calls me in and tells me straight out: ‘Look, I can hire three illegals for $10 an hour. I get three workers, don’t have to pay benefits, and I still save $5.’ I mean these immigrants are really a problem.”
Joe called his US senators to complain. He called Sen. Clinton’s office so many times that eventually Hillary herself called him back. Joe’s animosity seemed to be directed mostly at the immigrants, especially illegals – some estimates put their number in the county at 180,000. But I asked him if the moral of his story wasn’t so much about the immigrants as about employers. Wouldn’t it be easier to enforce laws on a relatively smaller number of employers than on a relatively huge number of immigrants?
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