The controversy over Houston's day labor center has been squelched, for now. The center will stay open completely on donated funds, not taxpayer money.

''The funding has been raised, and the center will stay open for at least this next year," said Marc Levinson, director of agency development for Neighborhood Centers Inc., the Houston nonprofit that has operated the facility since 2005. ''It's all private money. No tax dollars are being used."

Levinson credited the donations to a fundraising effort by Mayor Bill White, who last month pledged to find funding to operate the center after the contract expired. Levinson said the donors wish to remain anonymous.

In confirming the fundraising effort, White noted that Houston, and other cities, have long funded day labor centers. At one time, there were two such centers operating with city funds.

''It was only relatively recently it was cast as an issue that had to do with immigration," White said.

Supporters of day labor sites say they are safer and more sanitary than informal hiring centers on street corners, since workers don't wait in the streets or private property to find jobs and can use bathrooms facilities in the center.

White said the centers also help ensure that immigrant workers are not exploited. "On occasion people have refused to pay them after a day of hard work," he said.

However, groups that favor tighter immigration control say the centers should be banned.

''I hope they would close it," Louise Whiteford, president of Texans for Immigration Reform, has said. "Having a day work center aids, abets and encourages more illegal immigration."

The Chron was pretty heavy on quoting from supporters of the center, but I think that only indicates how most people feel. The fact of the matter is that if these people are in our city, the best thing we can do is help them find work. Immigration is a separate issue from the day labor center, and the people we've put into office, as Kuff pointed out when he wrote about this, believe the federal government should deal with immigration.