"WE NEED the labor and they need the work," says a contractor interviewed in "Farmingville," a documentary about Mexican immigration on Long Island that opens the latest season of the PBS series "POV." (Check local listings.)
The explanation sounds simple enough. But the images tell a different story: The contractor who offers this comment to filmmakers Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini is anonymous, his face silhouetted to hide his identity.
Anyone who has followed the controversy in Long Island, which started in the late 1990s and has continued through the present, knows why. The influx of undocumented workers into Farmingville and neighboring communities splintered the suburbs and prompted legislation, protests and national headlines.
The trouble started in the summer of 1997, when Mexican immigrants came looking for work in the Northeast after job markets in the West and Southwest became too crowded. The workers lined up on certain Farmingville streets at daybreak, waiting for bosses to drive by and offer them hourly work.
At first, Farmingville's mostly white citizens were merely confused, thinking, "Why us, and why now?" The answer was simple: Farmingville is in the middle of Long Island and is a center for masonry, gardening and landscaping companies.
Residents complained about the noise and constant activity. They were also worried about crime. Some of their worries were misplaced -- an overreaction to the sight of so many immigrants who did not speak the language and behaved furtively.
But other complaints could not be dismissed. The men catcalled local women. Some of the men unthinkingly hopped into cars that happened to stop at intersections, startling residents who were just running errands, not looking to hire workers.
Soon the populace divided into two groups, those who wanted the immigrants gone, and those who thought it was wiser to seek a compromise, such as building a hiring hall. The latter solution was viewed skeptically by the first group, who thought accommodating illegal immigrants was wrong.
Over the next several years, attempts to build a hiring hall were proposed and shot down. Immigrants ran afoul of the law (including a drunk driving accident in which a laborer struck and killed a young mother) and were harassed, beaten and shot at by white locals.
Farmingville became a flashpoint for national discussions of immigration. Everyone from pro-immigrant activists to immigration reformers to white supremacists seized on Farmingville to raise funds, push or oppose legislation, and recruit new members.
The documentary features interviews with opponents of the laborers whose last names suggest they are descended from immigrants themselves. The irony is lost on neither the filmmakers nor the people themselves. As more than one interviewee points out, in America, nearly everyone is an immigrant.
Margaret Bianculli-Dyber , a resident who opposes accommodating the day laborers, says the accusations of bigotry only strengthened her convictions.
The word "racist," she says, "is a tool being used to silence you, to silence your legitimate concerns."
"Farmingville" suffers from not spending enough time pondering the long, strange history of immigration in America, which might have defined the film's ironies more cleanly. And it sometimes gets so wrapped up in the heated emotions of its local subjects that it neglects a deeper issue: the failure of the U.S. government to create a clear immigration policy and enforce it.
But for the most part, Sandoval and Tambini handle this explosive subject matter with intelligence and care, taking the immigrants, their supporters and their detractors seriously.