Herndon Roiled by Site for Laborers

In the orderly world of suburbia, the intersection of Alabama Drive and Elden Street in Herndon smacks of chaos.

Every morning, 150 or so men cluster on sidewalks and in parking lots, offering their strong backs and calloused hands for hire.

This picturesque little town near Dulles International Airport is in a quandary over how to manage those men at this site, which has grown unruly and overcrowded. Many who live on nearby streets in small, trim ranch and two-story houses want the day laborers gone. And a proposal to create a designated site for the workers in another neighborhood has caused an uproar among some people who are trying to block the move.

Residents agree that something must be done, for the sake of the town and the day laborers themselves. The informal site in a 7-Eleven parking lot is a source of simmering anger and frustration for many neighbors, and even those who sympathize with the laborers recognize the problems associated with the site.

Bob Rudine goes to a park to pick up empty beer bottles, which he believes are left by day laborers who do not find jobs. Lidia Gonzalez's daughter rarely ventures outside because she says some laborers have whistled at her.

But another neighbor, Sara Gonzalez, says that she never has been harassed and that she feels badly when she see laborers walking home after a fruitless day. And Lucio Escobar frets that many Anglos broadly blame all Latinos for the actions of a few day laborers.

Tomorrow, Herndon's planning commission will hold a public hearing on a proposal to create a designated day-laborer site and make it a misdemeanor to solicit jobs anywhere else in town. The issue has roiled Herndon, and national groups that opposed some immigration policies have threatened to sue the town.

The choices do not appear ideal, and any decision is bound to leave many residents unhappy.

"The current situation is unacceptable," said Mayor Michael L. O'Reilly, who campaigned on a promise to improve the day-laborer situation. "Our choice is between having a regulated site and an unregulated site. Given those options, I'm in favor of a regulated site."

The debate is being played out in miniature among neighbors of the current site and in the residential neighborhood surrounding the proposed site.

The often emotional discourse reflects a small town undergoing a big transition.

Herndon has the highest proportion of foreign-born residents of any jurisdiction in the region -- 38 percent, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. More than one-fourth are Latino, and the proportion of whites dropped in the 1990s from 78 percent to 58 percent. Many residents have lived in Herndon for decades and remember when it was a sleepy burg amid dairy farms.