Latinos in Rockland County had a strong voice in Walter Zayas, a community activist from Haverstraw who died of cancer on Saturday at age 56. Suzan Clarke reports here on some of the work that became his legacy to the area.

He was the senior director in the marketing department at Hudson Health Plan, a Tarrytown-based nonprofit insurer. Here he is in August 2006 with then Sen. Hillary Clinton at a health fair in Haverstraw.

In the late 1990s he led the group Latinos Unidos in fighting for better conditions for tenants at a bungalow complex in Clarkstown. Here he speaks to the Clarkstown town board in 1999 on behalf of the tenants, who were mostly Central American immigrants.

“He related to young people, he related to old people, he was just a rich, rich, rich human being,” said Georganne Chapin, the chief executive officer and president of Hudson Health Plan. “People would feel like they had known him forever.”

(Photos: Peter Carr, Vincent DiSalvio/The Journal News)

Here is the video clip of the Journal News editorial board interview with Port Chester mayoral candidates Dennis Pilla and Bill Villanova. Port Chester is the most immigrant and most Latino municipality in Westchester (45 percent foreign-born, nearly half Latino). As I mentioned yesterday, the two candidates diverged in their comments about the voting rights case and how to better unite the community.

(To hear the audio, click on the + sign.)

Reporter Hema Easley reports today on some local responses to the deadly attack in Pakistan on a visiting Sri Lankan cricket team. Fans of the game had reactions like this one from Raman Kaul, who lives in Dobbs Ferry: “It’s holy ground when players from one country go to another to play. This is horrible.”

Sri Lankans did not see the attack as being against their country. Said Ragu Ratnathicam, a math teacher from Yonkers, “It’s got more to do with the internal politics of Pakistan that with Sri Lanka. … I think radical Muslims are behind it. They don’t care about cricket.” You can read the rest of the story here.

Another report is out today that tries to sum up the problems with America’s immigration system — this one from the perspective of local governments.

A position paper from the International City/County Management Association takes a pro-reform stance, saying local communities would benefit from long-debated measures like legalization of the undocumented and more visas for low-skilled workers.

It laments the patchwork of conflicting local laws relating to illegal immigrants, and makes no bones about the fact that local communities deal with the real-world impact of illegal immigration. More specifically, the report says that “two thirds of the taxes from immigrant labor going to the national government, whereas two-thirds of the costs of illegal immigration are borne at the state and local level.” (I don’t see a citation but will look into this stat.) To help compensate, it calls for the IRS to share the $6 billion or so in social security funds that are collected through the payroll tax by immigrants who will never be able to claim the benefits.

More federal funding is needed, according to the report, for public health programs and emergency care, ESL, jail costs from undocumented criminals, and refugee assistance.

The report is based in part on a survey of 500 government administrators across the country.

Getting back to local matters, the two candidates for Port Chester mayor spoke to the Journal News editorial board (live via Mogulus on LoHud.com, and available later on demand), and the first issue to come up was the voting rights lawsuit. A federal judge is still deciding what new voting structure would remedy the Section 2 violation he found: that the system of electing the village board denies Hispanic voters the means to participate fully.

Democratic incumbent Dennis Pilla said he will be satisfied if the judge approves the village’s plan for “cumulative voting,” which would tweak the current at-large system. The Department of Justice is proposing the traditional remedy of six single-member districts, at least one with a Hispanic voting majority. Pilla said that to continue fighting the liability aspect of the case is a “fool’s journey.”

Republican challenger Bill Villanova said he could see the legal fight continuing. “The Department of Justice, I would say, feels the Village of Port Chester is a group of racists. I disagree with that, fundamentally,” he said. He added, “We’ve spent $1 million and the amount that’s being spent is growing and growing, and I don’t see an end in sight.” He referred to the possibility of getting help from private sources, but declined to name those sources. (In any case we’ve reported in the past on an offer from the Washington-based Project on Fair Representation to help Port Chester appeal the violation.)

Both candidates hailed the village as a place of diversity and tolerance. They gave different responses when asked how to promote more unity. To Villanova, the answer is in personal contact, by teaching children about tolerance and increasing communication. Pilla said government can play a big role in building community, by bringing different groups together and spotlighting issues that need attention.

The House Committee on Homeland Security plans to hold a hearing tomorrow about 287(g), the program that gives certain jails and police agencies a direct role in immigration enforcement. This comes just as the GAO faults the program for failing to ensure that the new authority is being used properly. AP reports on the new report here. The hearing, it appears, can be viewed on the committee’s web site.

Update: the hearing is under way and live via web. The GAO’s report is posted online.

ICE is responding that it will improve the way the program is supervised and will come up with a new template agreement for agencies to follow. Jails, rather than police departments, will be the focus of the program. But the speakers are just getting started, saying there is widespread confusion over who may be detained under the program, and that immigration enforcement is a federal job.

There’s an interesting article that ran in Yahoo News today concerning skilled immigrants. It says that these immigrants, including doctors, engineers and scientists are leaving the U.S. and returning home for better opportunities and security.

An interesting note about this story showed that while immigrants make up 12 percent of the population, they make up far greater percentages in the marketplace. It says we should care because immigrants are “critical to the country’s long-term economic health.”

…immigrants have started 52% of Silicon Valley’s technology companies and contributed to more than 25% of our global patents. They make up 24% of the U.S. science and engineering workforce holding bachelor’s degrees and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs. Immigrants have co-founded firms such as Google, Intel, eBay, and Yahoo!.

The Census Bureau has received such a surge in job applications that it’s cutting off recruitment efforts early.

As of tomorrow, no more tests will be given for this round of hiring for Census 2010. The New York regional office had planned to keep giving the exams through March, said Patricia Valle, assistant regional census manager. The jobs start at $18 for people who will go out with hand-held computers this spring, checking lists of addresses.

The New York office has already doubled its goal, collecting 62,000 applicants when only 35,000 were needed. The nationwide phone line for job applicants was overwhelmed, and according to about 20 people who called me this week, the line wasn’t always functioning. (If you ran into that problem, let the bureau know, and they may accommodate you.) Workers will be chosen based on their available hours and the regional workload, and then according to test score.

A new round of hiring will take place in September and October for census takers who will follow up on the April 2010 count.