Mayor Hires Illegal Immigrants For Public Jobs

The mayor of a New York town regularly pays illegal immigrants cash to do public work and the city subsequently reimburses him with taxpayer dollars.

Spring Valley Mayor George Darden actually solicits day laborers on roadside hiring sites for projects in the Rockland County municipality of about 26,000 residents. Then he has a city employee pick up the workers in a Department of Public Works truck and transport them to the job site.

Apparently aware that the men are illegal aliens and therefore not eligible to work in the U.S., Mayor Darden pays them in cash and then gets reimbursed by the city. In fact, just this week Spring Valley’s Board of Trustees voted to reimburse the mayor for his latest illegal immigrant hiring spree.

He paid nine men from Mexico and Central America $10 an hour to work on an urban revitalization project – that has received federal and state funds–by cleaning out a building slated for demolition. On another occasion, undocumented immigrants were hired to move furniture from a public works projects for at least four days.

As if using taxpayer money to violate the law wasn’t bad enough, Spring Valley lawmakers also voted this week to pay the illegal aliens unspecified back wages because the workers were supposedly underpaid.

One outraged resident suggested the mayor should pay for breaking the law in hiring illegal immigrants. Another called the mayor an “arrogant disappointment” and urged him to resign for violating the public’s trust.

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