Freshman Legis. Brian Beedenbender, a close ally and protege of Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, will announce a proposal Thursday to require all 15,000 licensed contractors in the county to prove their employees' legal working status.Proposal: Contractors must prove workers' status
The measure, if successful, would be the first of its kind in the state, officials said. Contractors would risk losing their licenses if found in violation.
The resolution, to be co-sponsored by Legis. Jack Eddington (WF-Medford), would apply to new and renewal licenses for electricians, plumbers and home contractors, according to Beedenbender (D-Selden).
Levy supports the proposal, which follows a highly controversial 2006 Levy-backed law that requires contractors doing business with the county to confirm the legal status of their employees.
"I can do nothing about who does or does not come across the border," Beedenbender said. "But I think it is my responsibility to make sure that people who do business in Suffolk County have a fair and equal shot."
8 comments:
proposal Thursday to require all 15,000 licensed contractors in the county to prove their employees' legal working status.
This is someone who is in a position to propose and bring to the foreground to uphold the law. It takes guts especially on the east end of LI to do this and hope this tactic spreads to NYC. There are many legal individuals shut out of the building industry as a result of hiring undocumented laborers at slave rates. The cost to a homeowner in remodeling or building is extremely prohibitive - the saving enjoyed by the contractor/developer is never passed to the consumer.
The fact is undocumented workers are exploited by fear of being reported by corupt developers.They generally work on sites that do not meet local saftey requirements and perform work that is slipshod and endanger the community as a whole.
In the end the product produced is shoddy at best. Hiring illegal immigrants is against Federal law, and takes away opportunities from a legal citizen, to their right to work.
The proposal is admirable and just common sense, something that we have lost sight of.
Count on this: the illegal aliens will be called "immigrants" and hard working and necessary. Just people who love their family and want to raise them the "American way".
Count on this, too: The two legislators (Levy and Eddington) will be called bigots.
Here's another bet: These contractors will band together to finance the defeat of the proposal and then the politics of personal destruction of the authors and supporters of this bill.
Then, Spitzer will propose a tax on opponents of hiring illegal aliens.
There's big, big money at stake here.
Lots of luck
pushing for this kind of measure in NYC.
Even more trying to enforce it in Queens
where the crooked clubhouse rules the roost!
What do you think Mr. Crowley ?
They are the tweeded and thus in the wonderful world of Gary and the boys in a priv. position.
That is our future they say (well at least for the clubhouse)
Lets build a hiring hall and use taxpayers money!
The contractors will NOT band together to fight this. Who wants to admit to hiring illegals? But no fear, the ACLU will fight. There are laws of this sort all over the coutry as localities get sick of the federal government's failure to act. They are all eventually shot down in court - only the feds have authority to act in this area. If they abdicate their responsibility, that's their business, say the courts.
By the way, if either Democrat or McCain is the next president, learn to speak Spanish.
But no fear, the ACLU will fight. There are laws of this sort all over the coutry as localities get sick of the federal government's failure to act.
The ACLU are probably scared to death of not having illegals available especially in the East end of Suffolk County where 7 of 10 workers are illegal. After all the ACLU are lawyers whom most have big million $$ manses along with their part time rich liberal neighbors who would simply not be able to function without cheap labor watching their children, cooking, cleaning thier pools and raking leaves. These people don't pay full price for anything such as blue collar work and especially household labor.
At least four times I've been to Home Depot
last week (on both weekdays & weekends).
It looks like a ghost town.
There's only a trickle or the former hordes
of customers that you used to see there.
I guess that the sub-prime debacle
is showing its grim reaper's face !
I wish the same could be said for a halt
in over development.
At least four times I've been to Home Depot
last week (on both weekdays & weekends).
It looks like a ghost town.
It take a while for the sub-prime mess to hurt us all but especially true for developers and contractors. The empty HD store is an excellent indication that this is already occurring and I predict developers will or already have halted future projects. The existing projects coming on line in the marketing phase will feel extrodainary financial pain and most will be bankrupt. They are no different than national homebuilders except local developers in Queens are ill capitalized and most will lose their properties to their lenders. This in turn will speed up decelerating pricing for new units elsewhere competing for the same buyer. For an excellent example of what is to become here - look at the Miami RE market.
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