The Observer Newspapers |Reston Interfaith Creates Problems with Laborers

April 17, 2008

Reston Interfaith Creates Problems with Laborers

To the editor:

As a taxpayer in the Town of Herndon, I supported the current Town Council's efforts to close the day laborer center. Unfortunately, there are those who would rather try to convince the people of Herndon that things are not getting better. Not surprisingly, some of those people have a vested interest in causing problems for the Town of Herndon. Why? Perhaps because those people want to get rewarded for solving problems they themselves cause.

Kerri Wilson, the well-paid executive of Reston Interfaith, wants to help the townspeople of Herndon with our "illegal alien problem." According to Ms. Wilson, Reston Interfaith will continue to organize the day workers on the streets of Herndon. My question is: Since the citizens of Herndon have made it very plain that they do not want day workers soliciting on the streets of the town, why is Ms. Wilson so eager to keep these workers here? Neither Ms. Wilson nor the former day laborer center director Bill Threlkeld lives in the Town of Herndon.

If Ms. Wilson and the churches that formed Reston Interfaith are really interested in the welfare of these people who loiter on the streets of Herndon, shouldn't they provide space for them on the church properties or at the Embry Rucker homeless shelter in Reston? These illegal aliens have traveled thousands of miles to Herndon from their home countries. They should not really have a problem with another two-mile trek to Reston.

Maybe money is really the motivator here. Ms. Wilson cannot persuade the member churches of Reston Interfaith to support a day laborer center on any of their own properties with their own funds, nor do they seem interested enough to try when there is not a $175,000 annual grant coming in from Fairfax County. Apparently, compassion has a price tag. So now they are again organizing illegal day workers on the streets of Herndon claiming that our town has a problem with those day workers, perhaps hoping another contract will be squeezed out of the unwilling taxpayers.

The current council has done a great job of alleviating the problems associated with the presence of illegal aliens in Herndon, and as a result, most of them have moved on. The townspeople here do not want a return to the bad old days of dozens of illegal aliens on the streets of Herndon.

George Taplin

Herndon