Day Laborers, Cities Seek a Way That Will Work
They've been part of the Southern California landscape for close to four decades: immigrant laborers waiting for work on sidewalks and street corners, swarming drivers as they pull up, ready to move furniture, paint walls, pull weeds, do whatever needs doing.
But now, as the housing boom increases the demand for cheap labor and workers become more organized, the sites where they gather have become a battleground in the widening debate over illegal immigration.
Cities throughout California and around the nation are struggling to cope with the sheer numbers of day laborers, or jornaleros. Critics say the sites not only encourage people to come to the U.S. illegally, but also create traffic jams and are eyesores. Supporters say the workers are simply trying to make an honest living and are crucial to local economies.
But, as cities are discovering, the issue is far more complicated than that. In the same cities where there are protests against the laborers, there is a high demand for their work. And in the same cities where workers are being arrested, their colleagues are volunteering to help businesses remove graffiti and pick up trash.
"Every major city, even smaller cities, are struggling with this," said Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Downtown Labor Center. "It's become a national issue."
In their search for solutions, municipal leaders must balance the competing demands of residents, businesses, anti-immigration activists and the workers themselves. Adding to the confusion, some have had to heed the courts as well.
Cities have made bold moves, then sometimes suspended or reversed them. Redondo Beach barred day laborers from seeking work on its streets; a judge then blocked the move. Costa Mesa opened a center to match workers with employers, then decided to close it. Burbank required Home Depot to build its own hiring hall, then put the opening on hold.
Recently, in Herndon, Va., the town council approved a publicly funded day laborer center after a contentious hearing that had to be extended from one night to the next. And in Farmingville, N.Y., authorities evicted dozens of immigrants from overcrowded apartments in what advocates say was an attempt to run jornaleros out of town.
City leaders and police officers complain that they have had to make decisions on immigration policy because the federal government has not.
