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Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 6:42 PM
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Subject: The New Faces of Day Labor
The New Faces of Day Labor
U.S. citizens are joining
immigrants in store parking lots
By Timothy Pratt
Las Vegas Sun
November 2, 2009
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/nov/02/new-faces-day-labor/
It sounds like a George Lopez joke.
"Times are so bad that I saw an Anglo day laborer
standing outside Home Depot the other day."
Except it's true.
In the latest sign of the Las Vegas Valley's economic
free fall, U.S. citizens are starting to show up in the
early mornings outside home improvement stores and
plant nurseries across the Las Vegas Valley, jostling
with illegal immigrants for a shot at a few hours of
work.
Experts say the slow-starting but seemingly inexorable
trend is occurring nationwide.
"It's the equivalent of selling apples in the Great Depression," said Harley
Shaiken, chairman of the Center for Latin American studies at the University
of California, Berkeley.
But it is not only a sign of the times, they add. If
the numbers of citizens among the day laborers in
cities across the country continue to grow, it's likely
to increase the ire of followers of TV host Lou Dobbs
and others who will see illegal immigrants as stealing
food off the tables of the nation's native-born or
naturalized poor.
Or, it may flip certain canards upside down in the
immigration debate, easing tensions in some
communities.
In the Las Vegas Valley, where the most recent
unemployment rate was 13.9 percent, one face of this
phenomenon is Ken Buchanan. The 50-year-old describes
himself as a "food and beverage" guy, most recently
working for four years at Renata's Sunset Lanes casino
and, before that, 30 years in a string of restaurants,
hotels and casinos here and in his birthplace, Chicago.
But in 2006 Renata's closed for remodeling. When the
casino reopened as Wildfire, the management did not
rehire Buchanan, he said.
In the months that followed, Buchanan discovered the
difficulty of seeking work in his fifth decade,
eventually winding up at Green Valley Car Wash, where
he stayed for about two years, he said.
The banks foreclosed on the house he was renting. In
the attempt to grab his things two steps ahead of the constable, he wound up
missing work. He lost his job. He became homeless. The Home Depot Map data
c2009 Google - Terms of Use
A Hispanic man Buchanan met in Renata's sports book
told him he had picked up work standing outside the
Home Depot on Pecos Road at Patrick Lane. One July day, Buchanan gave it a
try. At first, he got nothing but sunburn. But then he started to get work.
Now he's at the Home Depot six days most weeks.
Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the Los Angeles-
based National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said he
has been seeing the same thing elsewhere. "It's
happening, though still not in massive numbers,"
Alvarado said. In the past six months or so, he has
heard of "americanos" on the street corners and parking
lots of Silver Spring, Md., Long Island, N.Y., and
Southern California locations.
"It's just beginning," he said. "But I think it's only
going to increase."
A recent morning's swing through the valley produced
reports of the same phenomenon. At Star Nursery on
Cheyenne Road west of Tenaya Way, Nicolas stood
shivering under a hooded sweatshirt, hoping a car or
pickup would stop. The Mexican immigrant said he had
seen a couple of "white guys" showing up recently,
though not on the blustery cold days last week.
At Home Depot on Decatur Boulevard north of Tropicana
Avenue, Jose said the same thing, adding that "it's
never more than three or four, but they're coming out."
Farther south, in front of Moon Valley Nursery on
Eastern Avenue, Israel said a couple of "americanos" -
white and black, he added - have come out for work in
recent months. "But they tend to stay only a few days."
As a salesman at Moon Valley, Mike Fugitt's job
includes making sure the laborers don't come into the
nursery's parking lot, because their presence draws
complaints from some customers. In the past three
months or so, he said, more of those laborers have been
telling him, "But I'm an American." That includes some Hispanics, he added.
"But I treat them all the same; they can't be trespassing," he said.
Workers at all the sites said the presence of the
americanos hasn't made work scarcer or produced any
conflict. Some suggested that people hiring day
laborers prefer Hispanics anyway, because of their
reputation as hard workers.
Shaiken said shaking up the mix at day labor sites may eventually produce
conflict in the greater society. "It essentially shreds the argument that
Americans don't want certain jobs," he said.
In the current economy, he added, "we're almost sure to
see die-hard opponents of illegal immigrants seize on
the fact that we have legal workers in day labor
markets," heating an already-inflamed debate.
In the longer term, it may also lead to a more rigorous analysis of future
labor markets, including revised estimates of how many immigrants would be
needed under a guest worker program, as proposed in recent congressional
bills.
At the same time, Shaiken said, the issue won't become
central to the debate before Congress over what is
known as comprehensive reform, including a pathway for legalizing millions
of workers. "The point is, do we really want a labor market with day labor
work as a career path? It's more a commentary on the economy right now," he
said.
Although Alvarado allowed that the change in day labor
sites was an undeniable sign of the withering economy,
he also sees a "beautiful irony" in U.S. citizens
seeking work as day laborers.
That's because his organization has defended the free-
speech rights of day laborers in at least 10 court
cases over more than a decade. Up to now, courts have
ruled in favor of the laborers.
"We always knew (these cases) would be useful not only
for immigrants, but also for U.S. citizens," Alvarado
said. "We knew there would be a time when the economy
would reach this point, and they also would be looking
for work this way."
Buchanan likes to wear a Cubs or White Sox cap as a
sign of his Chicago heritage when he stands with one or
two Hispanic laborers about 20 yards south of a larger
crowd. He said he has gone through an education of
sorts in the past four months. He has always worked
around Hispanics in restaurants, hotels and casinos,
but now he understands the issue of immigration from up
close.
His sojourn got off to a rocky start. On one of his
first days on the street outside Home Depot, another
laborer told him he should move along because too many
people were at the spot.
"I told him, `I'm an American citizen and you're trying
to push me off American soil?'?" The man walked away,
and Buchanan says he hasn't had another problem with
his competitors since.
Instead, Buchanan has found himself defending the
rights of his fellow laborers on more than one
occasion. One day, a man tried to hire a bunch of them
for $5 an hour. Again, Buchanan pulled out the "citizen
card." But this time, he was telling the other person
that he, a U.S. citizen, knew about minimum wage laws,
and was going to make sure those laws were followed. "I
said, `You want me to write down your license plate
number?'?" Buchanan recalled. The guy drove away.
Now, he said, "I get along with everybody here."
He stands in a smaller group because he thinks that
helps to get work. He reads the daily tea leaves of the
trade, like the end of the month being a good time for
moving jobs, because many people are moving in or out.
His best week so far: $140. His longest stint without
work: the first two weeks, "until I learned to be more aggressive."
Antonio Bernabe, day labor organizer for the Coalition
for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said the
appearance of more and more U.S. citizens seeking day
labor work on corners and in parking lots poses new
challenges for organizations such as his. In recent
months, he said, he has found himself explaining to a
whole new group the legal rights of workers, as well as approaching local
authorities to discuss the entry of new people into what he called "the
world of day labor." That group includes blacks and Asians, he said.
Another difference is that now he's giving those
explanations to laborers in English.
Bernabe said organizers came across one case where a
local sheriff had been sending officers to answer
complaints about day laborers and then found one day
that the sheriff's neighbor, a citizen, was among them.
Police in that area have been less likely to harass
laborers since then, he said. These events will occur
more, changing people's attitudes in the process, he
said.
"For a long time, people have looked at day laborers
and said, `The problem is the immigrants.' Now the
economy is changing. Now people may see it's a problem
of the labor market, of the rights of workers," Bernabe
said.
Buchanan, meanwhile, looks forward to a future that
includes a steady job and an apartment. "I'm trying to
dig my way out of this," he said. When he does,
however, he sees himself as a changed man.
"Before, I was part of the majority. Now I'm part of
the minority ... I'm not going to forget this. I'm not
going to forget any of this."
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