Herndon Confronts Immigrant Tensions

Proposal to Fund Day Laborer Center A Test in Integration

The throng of Latino immigrants gathering outside the 7-Eleven in downtown Herndon looking for a day's work has been the most noticeable part of this commercial district of shopping plazas and fast-food restaurants for almost a decade.

For as long as they've been there, the newcomers, many of them in the country illegally, have been at the center of ethnic and racial tensions simmering among Herndon's rapidly dwindling white majority and even among legal immigrants living in town.

But now, as town officials consider a plan to spend about $170,000 in taxpayer money to move the workers to a designated site in a residential neighborhood and staff it with social workers and English tutors, those emotions are exploding into the open.

"We are being really crushed by these Central American people," said Ruth Tatlock, 77, who has lived in Herndon for 31 years and supports the project. "It's a big influx in a small town. . . . But we have to be able to coexist somehow and do it on a decent level."

The town appears evenly split between those who are galled by the idea that their taxes would go to services for people in the country illegally and those relieved that the town is finally dealing with the issue.

Hundreds of residents flooded Town Hall for a public hearing on the proposal last week. Those in opposition wore white paper stars bearing anti-day laborer slogans on their shirts and picketed outside. Even more residents are expected to be in attendance when the Planning Commission votes on the issue Aug. 1.

As the Washington region absorbs thousands of new immigrants each week, Herndon has become a focal point in the suburbs' struggle to integrate those both legal and illegal. Arguments over federal immigration policy are played out every day there and are beginning to spill into the larger counties nearby.

Once a farming hamlet, Herndon is home to the highest proportion of foreign-born residents of any jurisdiction in the Washington region: 38 percent of its 22,000 people. In the 1990s, the number of Latino immigrants nearly quadrupled; they now constitute 26 percent of the population. By contrast, the proportion of whites fell from 78 percent to 58 percent.

Every facet of life, from schools to neighborhoods to the town's downtown, has been affected by the influx, which was spurred by an abundance of affordable housing and good construction jobs (many of the immigrants helped raise the glass towers of the Dulles technology corridor nearby).

Mayor Michael L. O'Reilly is trying to steer the community toward some accommodation. Slightly less than half of voters cast ballots for him in last year's municipal elections; his opponents had expressed dismay at the presence of the day laborers.

"There's probably no other issue facing local governments that is more complicated than day laborer" sites, O'Reilly said. "There are constitutional issues, the right of assembly. There are national issues. There are local issues. It is very complex, and it brings out a lot of emotion in people."

Other jurisdictions are watching the developments in Herndon closely. Many say creating worker sites with public funds represents the best hope to resolve the touchy issue. But it also has become a flashpoint for the residents who look askance at the wholesale changes immigration has brought to their neighborhoods and downtowns.