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First step toward solution

Joye Brown

March 9, 2006

Mr. Levy went to Washington this week. And he took a collection of officials who merit serious consideration from President George W. Bush.

Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, is co-founder of Mayors and Executives for Immigration Reform, which held its first meeting Monday.

The group could propel Suffolk's top elected official to the national stage on the contentious issue of immigration reform. If that makes Washington pay attention - and then move - on the subject, the region should benefit.

But first, a complaint:

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The group could - and should - have had more speakers for its inaugural meeting. The agenda was weighted toward groups who appear more anti-immigrant than immigration-reform-minded. When a roster of speakers diverts attention from the gathering itself, it's a problem.

Monday's gathering was significant, and it included more than 60 elected officials, or their representatives, from communities in 30 states.

The group included officials from California, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Florida, Connecticut, Georgia, Minnesota, Michigan, Montana, Oregon, Tennessee, New Jersey, Illinois, Idaho, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Alabama and Maryland. Every municipality is grappling with the consequences of the nation's failed immigration policy.

It's one thing to see what's happening in Glen Cove or Farmingville or East Hampton. But the makeup of the gathering also offered a peek into what's happening in Montgomery County, Md., where groups want to shutter long-standing county facilities that help day laborers, and Salt Lake City, where a mayor who blasts U.S. immigration policies as inhumane and hypocritical is under attack from critics.

In an interview Tuesday, Levy acknowledged that even the organization's members do not agree on how to handle undocumented immigrants in their communities. Some municipalities want to help them; some don't. "There were some who wanted to go farther than others," he said.

But, officials agree, their communities are struggling under the political, financial and economic strain of providing for people who live and work out of sight and out of mind.

The group is demanding that the U.S. government help - by either fixing the problem or paying communities that have no choice but to cope with it.

Levy said the organization is working to get more members. It plans a lobbying effort. And it's studying the legion of immigration-reform measures pending in Congress. The group could decide to back a measure or take the best of more than one and come up with a proposal of its own.

They are all good steps. But while it's important that local officials share what works and what doesn't in the community, the issue isn't really about officials or their communities at all.

It's about the U.S. government, which has abandoned struggling communities. Isn't it time the U.S. did its job?

E-mail Joye Brown at Joye.Brown@Newsday.com.