Day labor dilemma

Friday, April 8, 2005 | 4:38 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

April 9 - 10, 2005

Wade J. Bohn, managing partner of Jay's Markets on Eastern Avenue, is tired of seeing the parking lot of his gas station and other neighboring businesses "inundated with Hispanics running toward vehicles."

Just about every day for the last year, dozens of men have waited alongside Eastern just north of Interstate 215, seeking work from people shopping at area plant nurseries. And those day laborers are responsible for "the deterioration of my landscaping, theft of my merchandise (and a negative) effect on the consumer," Bohn said.

Bohn is on one side of an emerging debate in Las Vegas about day laborers, many of whom are illegal immigrants.

The Clark County Commission has recently considered an ordinance to curb their numbers, and Las Vegas Councilman Lawrence Weekly is also looking for a way to deal with another site where day laborers gather on Bonanza Road and Rancho Drive, after continued complaints from neighborhood businesses and residents.

The problem, which is gaining new attention in the Las Vegas Valley, has been plaguing other cities with longstanding immigrant populations for years. Experts differ about how to deal with the issue but seem to agree on one thing: The day laborers standing on street corners across the nation are the result of a broken immigration system and the problems it brings to urban areas.

For that reason, several experts who have observed scenarios elsewhere similar to the one unfolding locally suggested that targeting the laborers is not enough.

"Picking up and arresting an illegal alien who is standing on a street corner without addressing the infrastructure that allows them to come here is not going to solve the overarching problem," said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department.

Kice said her agency's focus since the terrorist attacks of September 2001 is "finding a way to dismantle the infrastructure" by targeting crimes such as immigrant smuggling and document peddling.

Others, such as Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation of American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based organization that favors tighter enforcement of immigration laws, say the economics of day labor is the underlying problem -- along with the immigration system that allows the problem to go unchecked.

"It appears to save money (for employers) in the short run, but the costs of illegal immigration -- when they have children, who then go to our schools, and they get sick and have to use county hospitals -- are more in the long run," he said.

"The way to address illegal immigration is to go after the employers ... all these local communities are dealing with the federal government's failure to control the problem in the first place."

In any case, the issue is bound to affect more communities in the valley over time, as Las Vegas continues to be a magnet for people seeking work -- including immigrants.

New problem

The valley's immigrant population is relatively new compared with other urban areas nationwide, with the percentage of Hispanics -- the majority of foreign-born residents in Las Vegas -- shooting from 11.2 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2000, according to the Census Bureau.

This may explain why there are only two day laborer sites causing headaches locally. Los Angeles, with its decades-old immigration population, has an estimated 110 corners where day laborers gather.

But Antonio Bernabe, day laborer coordinator for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said laborers on many of those corners speak of plans to move to Las Vegas.

The issue concerns elected officials and their constituents.

Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury -- in whose jurisdiction the west side of Eastern lies -- has proposed an ordinance that would make it illegal for employers to stop their cars in traffic to pick up day laborers.

Weekly, whose Ward 5 includes the corner of Bonanza Road and Rancho Drive, the other site in the valley where day laborers gather, is also frustrated by the issue, which he described as "damned if you do, damned if you don't."

He said that Las Vegas has an ordinance that is similar to the one the county is considering, but that it "has no teeth in it ... you don't want to violate their constitutional rights."

Like his counterpart on the county commission, Weekly said neighborhood residents call his office "upset and concerned. They want to know why are they so inundated and what can we do about it."

Businesses have also complained that the workers drive customers away, Weekly said.

He noted that there is a flip side to the issue: "If no one was picking them up, they wouldn't be there."

Weekly said he asked Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, whose district covers the same area, for help. Weekly has also met with area businesses and Mexican Consul Mariano Lemus Gas, and will seek out Woodbury, he said.

"I'm grasping at straws here and not afraid to say I don't have the answers."

Right to work

Some valley residents say the laborers who are illegal immigrants should not be allowed to work at all, while others, including the laborers themselves, say that trying to feed your family is not a crime, and that workers are often cheated and put in danger.

For now the proposal before the county has been tabled. Nevada's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, together with labor and Hispanic groups, will be discussing alternatives to the ordinance in the coming weeks.

Don Burnette, the county's chief administrative officer, said Metro Police are also looking at accident records in the area, while the traffic management division of the public works department looks at any other concerns. Both efforts are aimed at determining if pedestrians or motorists are endangered by people pulling over to pick up laborers.

Metro Lt. Michael Dalley of the South Central Area Command said the accident study is not finished, and local residents and businesses continue to complain. He said Metro has to walk "a fine line" on the issue, balancing community concerns against First Amendment issues.

Miguel Barrientos, president of Mexican American Political Association, a nonprofit group interested in being at the table, said he would like to find a way to "face the problems the community has with them (the laborers)" without taking away their "right to eat, just like you or me."

Nevada's ACLU Executive Director Gary Peck said he hopes to reach a solution that doesn't violate people's rights and that allows the laborers to seek work without causing so much controversy, perhaps in an officially sanctioned place. Such sites have been created in other communities nationwide, he said.

Woodbury said he is "not going to relent until we find a solution," whether it's an ordinance or a site that is "far away from residents and businesses, but close enough to the nursery."

He said an ordinance would have to be able to "resist any legal challenges," referring to the ACLU.

At the same time, he said, "I wish the ACLU was as concerned about people living in the area as they are about migrant workers."

Day laborer views

Judging from the Sun's interviews with groups of them, most of the day laborers are undocumented immigrants. That's why they have to resort to lining up on sidewalks as a way of finding odd jobs, preferably that pay in cash, several of them said. That's also why none of them wanted to provide their last names for publication.

Standing early one morning on Ford Avenue, a small street that intersects with Eastern alongside a nursery, 25-year-old Jose Pablo from Colombia said if there was a designated place in the area for workers to meet employers, "we would feel more secure and they would too."

Like most of the men at the corner, Jose Pablo left family behind when he crossed the border, with the help of a "coyote," as immigrant smugglers are nicknamed, about a year ago.

He came to the United States to earn money for his family. His son turned 3 on Jan. 15, and Jose Pablo said he sends home $50 to $150 every week out of the $250 to $400 he earns. He pays $275 a month for his share of rent at an apartment near Washington Avenue and Rancho Drive.

He says his dream is to save enough money to buy two trucks so he can set up a business in his homeland.

Most of the men waiting on or around Eastern said they were paid between $70 and $100 for a day's work -- and, of course, no taxes were taken out.

Carlos, one of the 100 or so workers lining up near the Moon Valley and Star nurseries on a recent morning, said he and several others had been paid with bad checks on different occasions.

When he went back to the man who had given him the check, Carlos said, "The guy said to me 'Go away or I'll report you to the INS.' "

Carlos is 43. He came from Peru via Mexico after paying $7,000 to a coyote, he said.

Standing nearby, Sabino, 40, said he had shown up at the corner on Eastern and Ford to look for work every day for three months -- except for a two-week interruption caused by a torn tendon in his hand.

He was recently on his first day back at work, he said, "because the monthly payment is coming up" -- the $700 he splits with a cousin and sister for an apartment near Algonquin Drive and Flamingo Road.

Since Sabino doesn't have health insurance, when he injured his hand drilling a hole in cement, he went to a "sobador," or someone who is thought to have hands that heal. The sobador charged him $30.

"To go to the doctor, you need to have a lot of money," he said.

Sabino has been in the United States for two years. His family remains in Puebla, Mexico.

Like most of the workers on Eastern, he rides the bus to the area. He said it takes about an hour to arrive from his apartment.

All are right

About 140 communities nationwide have set up sites for people to hire day laborers such as Sabino, Bernabe said. Los Angeles was the first to do so, in 1989.

Bernabe said that city councils and other public bodies wind up backing such plans when they see that punitive measures -- including trying to get federal immigration authorities involved -- don't work, and the laborers keep coming back.

But even though Los Angeles has some designated day labor zones, it hasn't resolved the controversies.

On behalf of the nonprofit organization for which he works, Bernabe is spending the year visiting 110 corners in the Los Angeles area that are used for seeking work by an estimated 26,000 laborers. He is trying to get different groups to sit at the table and resolve issues similar to those being faced in the Las Vegas Valley.

Bernabe said what's needed to confront the issue is "a mature community ... (and) communication, understanding and education."

"Both sides are right" in the conflict, he said.

"The main problem is people keep hiring them," he said.

As long as people hire the laborers, the laborers will continue showing up, so there needs to be a place that both groups can meet and not bother residents or businesses, Bernabe said.

Lemus Gas, recently named consul of Mexico, said the issue could be resolved by finding a place for the workers, since an ordinance won't drive them away.

"The economic laws -- supply and demand -- can't be contradicted with local ordinances," he said.

He said he would be talking with local community groups about the possibility of identifying a safe and orderly place for day laborers to seek work.

Mehlman's group is against giving day laborers and their would-be employers a place to do business.

"We are opposed to sanctioning day labor sites," he said. "For the most part these people are in the country illegally and under federal law they are not even to allowed to work.

"Creating sites essentially moves the problem around ... and it becomes some other community's problem."

But Bernabe said the laborers are needed because native-born U.S. citizens are unwilling to do the sort of work the laborers do in communities across the nation: landscaping, construction, moving.

"Who's going to fill those jobs? The immigrants."

Mehlman disagrees.

"In many cases, we confuse not wanting jobs with not wanting bad wages or working conditions," he said.

"In the long run it would be best to pay an honest wage for an honest day's work."

Immigration sting

Bohn said he finds the situation "frustrating beyond belief," to the point where he said his continuing calls to Metro Police last year led them to shoot video of the workers and participate in a sting together with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department.

Bohn said 38 men were deported in the sting.

"Two weeks later, the same ones were back, like nothing ever happened," he said.

The sting was unusual because Metro has long stated that it will not get involved in immigration matters.

The department even created a Hispanic American Resource Team, or H.A.R.T, whose mission is to "protect and serve the large portion of our population who are so fearful of police that many crimes committed against them go unreported, which is what officers have found with a large number of the local undocumented Spanish-speaking persons," according to Metro's Web site.

The Web site says the Las Vegas Valley's undocumented population is estimated at between 75,000 and 125,000, which would bring the Hispanic population to about 30 percent of the total population.

Dalley said that Metro was citing laborers for trespassing last year "and we saw they were illegal." Many of the laborers told the officers they were in the country illegally, he said. After that, Metro called immigration authorities to the scene.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Kice said her agency "endeavor(s) to assist local law enforcement officials where appropriate."

"In this case, they reached out to us."

At the same time, she said, "like any law enforcement organization, we have limited resources ... (and since 9/11 we are) primarily focused ... on components of homeland security."

Meanwhile, Zohrab Topalian, who has owned Super A gasoline station across Eastern from Jay's Market for 1 1/2 years, says he doesn't understand why the laborers are causing so much controversy.

Topalian, who is 53, was born in Armenia but has lived nearly half his life in the United States.

"I don't know what everybody's complaining about," he said.

As he spoke on a recent late morning, several of the laborers bought coffee, sunflower seeds and other snacks.

"I have no problem with them at any time. They're not stealing. They're just looking for work."