In the heart of the 99th Assembly District in the state of New York, is the quaint Village of Brewster, a central location where hundreds of laborers gather to be picked up for a day of tax-free income on most mornings. A once thriving hub, Brewster has been overrun by a growing illegal immigrant population. A few miles away, in the Town of Patterson, landlords are gutting single family homes and partitioning the structures into “flop-houses” for shifts of cash-carrying day laborers. Further north, in the Village of Pawling, a growing number of day laborers wait to be picked up by contractors and residents fear that the proposed Village Green will become “a central location for contractor pick-up” in the future.

Republican Assemblyman Greg Ball is has been hitting the streets and taking a hard line position against illegal hiring, a position he suggests his constituents are clamoring for. Ball stated:

“The State of New York is losing up to $1 billion dollars in income taxes per year to a black market economy that forces day laborers into indefinite servitude. While hard working New Yorkers are being forced to pay an increasing burden of taxes, close to 1 million illegal immigrants are living in the land of plenty, tax-free.”

Greg Ball sent a “community survey” to more than 2,000 households in the Town of Southeast and in the Village of Brewster asking residents for their input on the issue of illegal immigration. According to the survey, residents say they are fed up with the plague of illegal immigration that is affecting the downtowns of communities throughout the Assembly district.

Greg Ball released the survey results Thursday indicating that 95% of respondents support his plan to adopt, “state legislation to tax the day laborer economy, thereby forcing illegal immigrants to pay a state income tax.”

Another 86% of residents would support “local efforts to track and monitor the hiring of day laborers.” Echoing efforts by many municipalities throughout the state, Brewster and Southeast residents also support “more aggressive efforts to enforce housing codes and end the over-crowding of living conditions in single-family and other residential rental properties” by a margin of 92%.

Mr. Ball stated, “The free ride is over. As we wait at the state and local level for the federal government to get their act together, we are losing billions of dollars in lost tax revenue to a black market economy that is both abusive and unfair. The legal precedent has been set nationally, and I support legislation to begin collecting New York State Income Tax from illegal immigrants.”

New York currently has over 1,000,000 illegal immigrants within its borders; second only to California. A vast majority of the illegal immigrants within New York have been living and working in this state for years. Many have been generating a tax-free income for over a decade. Yet, according to Greg Ball, “illegal immigrants have been forced into a black market, day laborer economy that continues to exist below the surface and is operating largely tax free. This is a failed system that forces illegal immigrants to rely upon many of the social services funded by New York State government at taxpayer expense, while not contributing their fair share.”