Meanwhile, in the Anti-Reston....

After years of impassioned debate ordinarily only found on small-market AM radio talk shows, Herndon has finally shut down its center for day laborers, a place so insidiously evil that only Restonians could operate it for the town -- and if the name "Project Hope and Harmony" isn't an only-in-Reston name for a group, I don't know what is. Ironically, it was a Reston resident who, upon attempting to hire a day laborer elsewhere in town, sparked a lengthy (and frankly, somewhat complicated and boring) court process that ultimately led the town council to deep-six the center.

Since the center first opened in 2005 in an attempt to keep undocumented workers from befouling the parking lot of the Elden Street 7-11 and denying hard-working Herndonites access to the Big Gulps and Big Bite Hot Dogs they so clearly enjoy, the center has led to an electoral bloodbath on the town council, heated confrontations between neighbors, and, perhaps worst of all, live on-site broadcasts from Fox News. I'm sure Bill O'Reilly enjoyed Five Guys.

So, let's look on the bright side here. Maybe we won't have to live next to the only town with a local Minuteman chapter located more than three miles from the Mexican border. But don't listen to me. Listen to one of the town's elders:

Ann Null, a council member who opposed opening the center before she retired in 2005, said she hoped its closing would induce illegal residents in the town to leave the country.

"There's a construction boom in Panama," she said. "They can find jobs in a country where they don't have to learn the language."

And as everyone knows, Panama is just a quick bus ride from the Elden-Monroe Park and Ride lot.