Lisa Votino-Tarrant

Don’t Make Our Mistakes: Lessons from Riverside, NJ

Long Island (Suffolk County in particular), like many other communities around the United States, has been facing different legislation aimed at solving the national immigration issue locally.

Long Island WINS researched how anti-immigration legislation affected communities after they were passed and went into effect. We found an intriguing example in a small community in New Jersey that had such an ordinance passed in 2006. The ordinance said that employers who hired an illegal immigrant and landlords who rented to them would be fined $1,000 - $2,000 per incident and could possibly lose their business license.

Knowing that they were not wanted in Riverside, undocumented immigrants left and moved to other communities, and with them the contributions and money they made and spent in Riverside. After the community suffered the negative economic impacts of such an ordinance for a year, the ordinance was repealed.

Instead of writing history, Long Island WINS wants people to learn from it. On April 15th at Touro College Law Center in Central Islip, we will be having a panel discussion entitled - Long Island WINS Presents - Don't Make Our Mistakes: Lessons from Riverside, NJ in the costs of attacking immigrants.

The panel will feature David Verduin, Business owner and president of the Riverside, NJ Coalition of Business Owners and Landlords; Matthew T. Crosson, Esq., President of the Long Island Association; David Nyce, Mayor of Greenport Village; & Professor Mariano Torras, Ph.D, Author of The Economic Impact of the Hispanic Population on Long Island, New York. The discussion will be moderated by Andrea Batista Schlesinger, Drum Major Institute for Public Policy.

We are very appreciative that our panelists and moderator have agreed to share their experiences with us. We hope that as many members of the Long Island community, especially elected officials and business owners, will join us for an educational opportunity to avoid a preventable disaster.

For more information and to RSVP, click here

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Posted at 7:25 AM, Apr 10, 2008 in Immigration
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