Keeler: Beyond rhetoric on immigration

Bob Keeler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.

There's no doubt the year's end will usher out the man who has most heated up the rhetoric on immigration in Suffolk County. But will the departure of County Executive Steve Levy usher in any real change in the discourse?

The answer starts with the two major-party candidates for Levy's job: Democrat Steve Bellone and Republican Angie Carpenter. And it's a question the Hagedorn Foundation, a major player in immigrant advocacy, addressed at a recent symposium. As a chronicler of Levy and Suffolk, I was invited to analyze the post-Levy future.

Neither Bellone (who came to the event) nor Carpenter (who didn't) seems personally disposed to demagogue on immigration. But the forces of nativism are still strong in Suffolk, and there's no telling what the heat of a campaign might stir up.

Just last week, Levy and the county legislature got into a dust-up over two new Levy bills designed to curb illegal immigration. So it's clear he has no plan to soften his rhetoric.

Happily, though, the Hagedorn event offered another way to deal with immigration. It came in the form of the day's keynote speaker, a big, friendly bear of a man: Doug Duncan, former executive of Montgomery County, Md., a well-to-do county that, like Suffolk, grew up after World War II and has had a large immigrant influx.

Duncan, born into a large Maryland Irish-American family, got his interest in Democratic politics from his mother, Ellie. For her, religious life was the highest calling, but politics came in a close second.

His attitude toward immigration was shaped in part by his 13 years at AT&T. "AT&T was always stressing teamwork, team-building, getting different ideas," Duncan says. "I firmly believe that's the best way to solve problems."

While at AT&T, he won a seat on the city council in Rockville, then became mayor. In 1994, he was elected to run an increasingly diverse county. By 2010, Asians were at 13.9 percent, Latinos at 17 percent, and non-Hispanic whites down to 49.3 percent -- compared to Suffolk's 71.6 percent.

To deal with that change, he emulated AT&T, which wanted the best people of all types, and had set up a diversity council to that end. "It was designed to make sure that we had a welcoming work environment," Duncan says. He started a diversity council in county government and extended that outreach to the county's ethnic groups. Levy can lay claim to having advisory groups, too, but the difference is that Duncan took real action to bring about constructive change.

Confronted with complaints about immigrant day laborers, Duncan's response was not heated rhetoric. "We said, 'Let's create a day laborer center and help people get documentation,' " Duncan says. The county set up three, hiring Latino groups to run them. Neighbors embraced two. One ran into opposition, but that didn't end the outreach.

The county offered extra pay to employees who spoke a second language, funded training for ethnic group leaders, and worked with clergy and with embassies of nations newly represented in the county. That included El Salvador, which Duncan visited. "I got a strong understanding of why people left there to come here," he says. "In some parts of El Salvador, there was very little hope of any kind of economic opportunity."

His approach is one Bellone and Carpenter should study. "We're presented with an interesting opportunity and a moment in time," said Hagedorn's executive director, Darren Sandow, "which is, How can we really move the conversation forward in such a way that we can do what Doug was suggesting: building and strengthening our community?" That means all of us, born here or not. Community means in it together.