Queens native cleaning up Suffolk County

Imagine if we had leadership like this here?

He has lent his police officers to town building inspectors for raids that have shuttered several dozen overcrowded rooming houses. His Consumer Affairs Department has increased arrests of unlicensed contractors — many of whom employ illegal immigrants — to about 300 a year from 70.

Last year, officers at the Suffolk County Jail ran immigration checks on 2,287 inmates, compared with 40 in 2004 (deportation proceedings were started against 376).

Suffolk’s Leader Wins a Following on Immigration

Mr. Levy, a 47-year-old career politician finishing his first term running [Suffolk] county — which has 176,000 foreign-born residents, 50,000 of whom officials estimate are here illegally — sometimes professes frustration that the issue has largely come to define him. But it has also given him a national profile, an 80 percent local approval rating and the closest thing to a guaranteed re-election: endorsements from both the Democratic and the Republican Parties.

Quotes:

“If they are committing a crime, they have something to worry about. Otherwise, they have nothing to worry about.”

“People who play by the rules work hard to achieve the suburban dream of the white picket fence. Whether you are black or white or Hispanic, if you live in the suburbs, you do not want to live across the street from a house where 60 men live. You do not want trucks riding up and down the block at 5 a.m., picking up workers.”

Photo from NY Times