Gain better control of employers. That's a job now being abdicated by the INS, which fails to monitor small employers to ensure they hire legal workers. But the state also has laws to protect workers, regardless of their immigration status, and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is right in working to enforce them. Make sensible use of local housing, fire, safety, sanitation and traffic laws. Jobs attract workers, and workers have to live somewhere.
Neighbors complain that the presence of such houses lowers their property values.
But it's more than that-cramped quarters are dangerous. Just look at what happened in Huntington, where a fire in an overcrowded house killed immigrants, including a small child. Municipalities should enforce their public safety laws-not to roust immigrants, as some immigration foes suggest, but to ensure safety. With that, however, municipalities will have to confront another nagging concern on Long Island-the lack of affordable housing. As long as such housing remains scarce, immigrants will join college students, the elderly and others in doubling, trebling, quadrupling or quintupling up to cover the mortgage or the rent.