$250 fine for waving one's hands

FIRST came the anti-loitering decrees, then legislation to punish employers and landlords who hire or house immigrants. Now, this Nassau County town of 300,000 people has passed perhaps the most stringent of ordinances attempting to control immigrant day laborers: a law that makes even waving one's hand punishable by a $250 fine.

"The term 'solicitation of employment' includes, but is not limited to, shouting at cars, waving arms or signs, making hand signals, approaching motor vehicles or standing in public roads facing in the direction of oncoming traffic," reads Ordinance 205-32, which the Town Board passed unanimously Sept. 29.

The town's outside counsel, Jonathan Sinnreich, described the ordinance as narrow, lawful and unambiguous. But it has spurred a sorry rift between the officials who approved it -- after residents complained about congestion and worse at an unsanctioned hiring spot in Locust Valley, a hamlet in Oyster Bay -- and the immigrant advocates who deplore it as a law against "waving while Latino."