Court: Job-Hustling By Day Laborers Is Free Speech

Illegal immigrants can continue to crowd sidewalks in the LA town of Baldwin Park without fear that "loitering while illegal" could land them in jail.

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie issued a preliminary injunction telling Baldwin Park it could not enforce a local ordinance banning day laborers from hustling work on sidewalks, even if doing so crowds out pedestrians, leaving them less than three feet of walking space.

Here's MALDEF's take on the ruling, as reported by the LA Times:

"It's a great ruling for our clients," said Kristina Campbell, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents some of the day laborer groups that filed suit against the city.

"They can continue to look for work without fear of being arrested or ticketed for standing on a sidewalk based on some kind of arbitrary standard."

Arbitrary standard? Being illegal, loitering, looking for work that violates the law, evading taxes -- how arbitrary is that?

To call milling around waiting for some contractor to pick you up so you can apply your unskilled talents to do a lousy job on someone's project "free speech" is akin to allowing pandering to be lawful again. What's the difference between these illegal day laborers hanging out on a sidewalk and some near-naked night laborers doing the same?

Yet we still can bust prostitutes for pandering, and these guys are off limits.

We will never solve our illegal immigrant problem if MALDEF , the ACLU and their liberal-socialist supporters keep making it comfortable for illegals to stay here. Inhospitality is the solution, but instead, they're getting to be a protected class of law-breakers.