SUFFOLK CLOSEUP
By Karl Grossman
The Suffolk County Legislature at a special meeting last week passed a measure authorizing the county to hire an attorney to explore what can be done to block migrants bussed to New York City, mainly from Texas and predominantly Latino, from being placed in Suffolk.
The vote Thursday was 11 to 6.
“Every day we receive hundreds of additional asylum seekers and we are out of space,” the city said in a statement last month. “New York City has done and will continue to do its part, but we need counties, cities, and towns across the state to do their part as well, especially when New York City is willing to pay for shelter, food, and more,” it said. “In most cases, we’re not even asking localities to help manage a quarter of one percent of the asylum seekers that have arrived in New York City.”
There are communities in the state accepting migrants from New York City. More, however, are not.
“Which counties are closing their doors to asylum seekers?” was the headline last month on the website City & State NY. The subhead: “More than 30 counties around the state have taken steps to block New York City from sending migrants to local hotels and shelters.”
In Suffolk last month, the Town of Riverhead declared a state of emergency ordering that “all hotels, motels, bed and breakfast facilities, inns, cottages, campgrounds or any other transient lodging units and/or facilities allowing short term rentals do not accept said migrants and/or asylum seekers for housing.” As Newsday reported, “Riverhead Supervisor Yvette Agular contends an ‘influx’ of asylum-seekers would overwhelm schools and stretch town resources.”
The difference between Suffolk and other areas in the state that are not accepting migrants from the city is that Suffolk has a very long anti-immigrant history—and in recent decades antagonism toward Latinos.
Professor Christopher Verga who teaches Long Island history at Suffolk County Community College comments the situation today “is reminiscent of a not too-distance past” also involving “thousands of people escaping government instability, crippling poverty and pleading for asylum.” He speaks of “one historical group of migrants” blamed for, among other things, “taking jobs from U.S.-born locals,” and of “conspiracy theories that this migration influx was a plot to overthrow, to colonize the U.S.”
In the 1920s, “Hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan enrolled membership of one out of seven Long Islanders,” said Verga. In addition to the KKK’s virulent racism, “the biggest issue on Long Island was immigration.” A major foe of the KKK here was the Catholic Church, and he notes an anti-KKK demonstration a century ago, in 1923 in Bay Shore, organized by the Holy Name Society of the Catholic Church bringing together 40,000 people.
“Who,” asks Verga, “was this despised group of migrants? Answer: the Italians, and one of those many feared migrants was my great-grandfather Frank Verga.”
“Italian heritage takes pride in family history, but these humbling experiences always seem omitted or left out of day-to-day discourse,” says Verga. “The same biases and anti-immigration sentiment of a century ago are playing out again for this next generation of migrants. Knowing your history is having a sense of awareness and empathy for others with similar historical and contemporary struggles. Building on this forgotten past should develop solidarity among Italians with the busloads of new asylum seekers.”
Indeed, except for its original Native American inhabitants, this is a country based on immigrants. All should feel empathy.
When Latinos came in any numbers to Suffolk in the 1980s, there was controversy over the demands by members of the Suffolk Legislature that all county publications be in “English language only.” In the 1990s, migrants from Mexico came to Farmingville for work in the landscaping, construction and restaurant industries and faced great hostility. A nationally-aired documentary, titled “Farmingville,” was made about the conflict. A Suffolk legislator, the late Michael D’Andre, said at a legislative hearing that if his town of Smithtown was similarly “attacked” by Latino laborers “we’d be out with baseball bats.”
In 2008 Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero was attacked in Patchogue by seven teens led by a 19-year-old sporting a Swastika tattoo who stabbed him to death. The group, it was revealed, had for some time, as The New York Times reported, prowled the streets of Suffolk “engaged in a regular and violent pastime hunting for Hispanics to attack.”
In 2015 a lawsuit was brought by the organization LatinoJustice accusing the Suffolk County Police Department of widespread discrimination against Latinos. It included shakedowns of Latino motorists by a Suffolk Police sergeant, later jailed for it. The suit was settled and a variety of reforms instituted.
Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.