Suffolk County versus New York State

Steve Levy (D) is Suffolk County Executive with an 80% approval rating amongst all voters and has been endorsed for re-election by both Democratic and Republican Parties in the county. He is an adamant opponent of tolerance for illegal immigration and refuses to create hiring halls for illegal hiring, which has put him in opposition to the Democratic lead (108 of 150) State Assembly in Albany which has tied up a 1% sales tax for Sufffolk County amounting to $320 million.

Hiring halls are intended to get the illegal immigrant day workers off the street and out of sight of the increasingly unhappy voters. Now it isn't apparent that Mr Levy is some closet racist, NYT points out:

' The chairman of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, Assemblyman Darryl C. Towns of Brooklyn, said in an interview that “it’s time for two former colleagues to have a cup of coffee,” noting that Mr. Levy had supported antidiscrimination bills during his years in the State Legislature. '

But, here is what the battle in Suffolk County seems to come down to:

'John Taylor, standing with a cup of coffee outside his Village Art and Frame shop nearby, echoed Mr. Levy’s feeling that illegal immigrants are taking jobs and undermining wages, saying of the caucus: “What is it about the word ‘illegal’ that people don’t understand?” '

Now I cannot speak for the underlying thinking of the proponents of illegal immigrants, but implicit in their stance is this, "all you have to do to get a job and services in the US is get here."
Evidently a segment of the Albany Legislature agrees with this. Too bad there's no way to tie their income to the wages of those affected, they'd squeal quick enough. It's real easy for folks to kick around ideas that do not harm them, it's real easy to hang out the 20% of the population who work with their hands, you save 5% on the price of your house, you save 5% on the price of your vegetables, you save that 5% at the cash register and pay multiples of it in State and Federal subsidies to those workers and the costs to the health care system. Legal American workers are pushed into poverty by this plutocratic agenda. George W Bush is fine with it, doesn't that give you a clue?