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Where Did Los Angeles’ Day Laborers Come From?

Paresh Dave | December 21, order 2011 | Editor-In-Chief | Source: NeonTommy.com

Where Did Los Angeles’ Day Laborers Come From?

Reuniting With Friend, Losing All Income

Fifty-year-old Michael Kembe, a professional cook and dishwasher, knows he’s in the middle of a simple problem.

“Everybody wants to work,” he says in his accent, like a father imparting life to his son. “In today’s economy, there’s no jobs.”

After a decade of saving some his some earnings from working at Baguettes and Bagels Deli just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, Kembe arrived in Los Angeles in mid-2010 to reconnect with his only friend in America.

Finding a steady job in L.A. has turned out to be much more impossible than the optimistic Kembe had expected. At most, he thought it would take three months to find a job. It’s been 15 months.

“Everywhere you go they say the business is slow,” he said. “I mean everybody, business slow, business slow. Even the warehouse, business slow. It’s not just the restaurants. Warehouse. Security guards.”

Now, he’s stuck. He alternates stays between a shelter and his friend’s house. When he gets the occasional job through a day-labor center, he can splurge on food. Otherwise, he collects food when he can from the shelter and the jobs center.

“You got to appreciate what you are receiving,” he said.

No doubt, he said, that he regrets leaving Atlanta.

“I don’t comment on that too much,” Kembe said. “It is what it is.”

As much as he wants to escape the economic deathtrap of California, the chances of him saving enough money to even travel as far as Texas is impossible.

“If I get the opportunity to go back to Atlanta, if somebody offers me something, I go,” he said. “How long am I going to stay like this?”

Where Did Los Angeles’ Day Laborers Come From?

Sacrificing Self-Pride A High Cost To Return To Mexico
After nearly three decades in America, Oscar Chavez isn’t ready to swallow his pride and return to his parent’s home in Chihuahua, Mexico despite having to live in a shelter the past two years.

After all, the shelter’s an improvement over the year he spent on the streets, he said. And he’s certain the economy is improving.

“There’s more work this year than last year,” he said in Spanish at the Downtown Community Jobs Center, where he comes each day in hopes of earning a temporary assignment. “It’s getting a little better.”

Chavez has gone from working for several years at a factory that made paper towels to eating a full meal once a day off a paper plate.

The thought of hitching a ride back into Mexico regularly pops into his mind. He hasn’t earned enough money to regularly call back home. Most of what he earns on day jobs – unloading and loading cargo trucks, usually –  goes to pay the negotiable $45 weekly rent at his shelter.

When he does call home, the message from his mother, father, brother and sisters is always the same.

“They tell me to come back every time,” he said. “’No, no, I can’t,’ I tell them. I got to think about it though if I don’t have anything next year.”

Chavez first immigrated to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Then it was onto Las Vegas. But he was scared about staying there during the anti-immigrant wave just after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Los Angeles became his home – and a wonderful one at that – until 2006.

“Now too many people applying. Too many people right here in Los Angeles,” Chavez said.

For now, the day-job market is bringing him enough money to some new clothes and socks for the first time in a while.

“It’s very difficult, but I think it’s going to better sooner than (government) officials think,” he said.

Like reporter Paresh Dave on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, circle him on Google+ or send him an e-mail.

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Illusions Of The American Dream Remain For Day Laborers

Dan Watson | December 21, order 2011 | Editor-In-Chief | Source: NeonTommy.com

“A day laborer’s life is a very sad one. A very hard one. They have this idea that when they come to the U.S. their problems are solved. They don’t realize, their nightmare is about to begin.” – Art Zepeda, CARECEN Day Labor Program Organizer

Carlos Vareli wakes up most mornings knowing he won’t find work.

Regardless, he still gets out of bed while most of Los Angeles sleeps. He might drive if he has gas money. A car allows him to pack his priceless tools, but it’s been awhile. Instead, these days he usually bikes or walks the three miles, leaving behind those tools, and his wife in their one-room apartment at Washington and Western.

At the downtown Home Depot parking lot, a last-gasp wilderness awaits.

At 7:30 a.m., the parking lot is brimming with hundreds of desperate men like Vareli; each hoping his spot will be the lucky one today. Scores of them are scattered throughout the lot, some along the driving lanes, others behind truck beds, more bursting out of the landscaped islands; every nook and cranny.

Vareli once was a professor in Central America. Today, in the U.S., he is a day laborer.

Among the jobless in Los Angeles, day laborers have been hit especially hard — “it’s never been worse,” Vareli says. While more than 26,000 L.A. County day laborers hope for a few hours of work every day, the housing crisis and recession have abandoned most to a fruitless search, made even tougher by anti-immigration sentiments, ineffective city-funded day laborer centers and an influx of Latin American immigrants, all competing against a much larger demographic than previously existed.

“I have not heard of positive signs for day laborers yet,” said Lynn Svensson of the Day Labor Research Institute. “I believe that day laborers may be the last to get the benefits of the ‘recovery’ because their wages are determined on the spot by employers.”

Illusions Of The American Dream Remain For Day Laborers

Still, they meet, and in record numbers. Most meet at strategic corners; maybe a busy intersection, or outside a that corresponds with their skillset. Others meet at day-laborer centers, where depending on whether the center is privately or city-run can differ drastically in service. No matter where they meet, the problems are escalating from all angles.

For a long time, day laborers have had to fight to simply solicit work from public corners. This year, in Redondo Beach, a federal appellate court struck down an anti-solicitation ordinance as being unnecessarily and overly broad.

Vareli hasn’t had a single job for four months now.

“Eight years ago, the people came here, the constructors, and when I asked them how much they could pay, they’d say ‘Oh, I can pay 10 dollars per hour,’” Vareli said. “Now, It’s impossible. They say, ‘I can pay 7 or 8 dollars an hour,’ and many people say, ‘I can go.’”

Exploitation runs rampant

In one corner of the downtown Home Depot is a non-profit day laborer center run by the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN). Despite requiring a $10 minimum wage, organizers, like Art Zepeda, witness hundreds of day laborers in the parking lot getting exploited every day by people looking for cheap help. Many are paid well below that minimum wage, if not below the state minimum wage ($8).

The parking lot is a wilderness they can’t control.

“Carlos is trying to educate them, because he went to a university, he understands more,” Zepeda said. “He’s more developed in his critical thinking. ‘Don’t do this, they’re taking advantage of you!’ he says. But they can’t see it.”

There is nothing CARECEN can do except educate.

The numbers are lopsided, with the ever-increasing ranks of the unemployed laborers vying for the attention of fewer employers seeking their help. An estimated 136 day-laborer corners dot L.A. County, but only 16 centers offer a range of employment and social services, according to experts.

Despite the recession, workers continue to come from Mexico and Central America; a pattern Zepeda has seen escalate in the last two years.

“In Latin America, a lot of these employers are used to cheap labor and exploitation,” he said. “They feel if it’s happening over there, it’ll happen here.”

Walking around at CARECEN, Zepeda detects language dialects he never used to hear before, many Mayan. It’s a demographic they’re not really prepared for, he says.

“The poverty here would be equivalent to the middle class over there,” Zepeda said of Latin America, where one in every five children lives in extreme poverty. “That’s why they continue to come.”

Vareli won’t accept the lower wages. He feels his skills and tools make him worth at least minimum wage, if not more. But he’s seen the few available jobs go to those willing to accept the lowest amount.

Many centers try to prevent exactly this scenario.

“But they (employers) don’t come here,” Vareli says, pointing to CARECEN. “They go over there to Home Depot.”

Centers struggle to find workers jobs

It’s a problem many centers are facing.

CARECEN organizers try to pull in as many corner day laborers as they can, but Vareli readily admits that most people go to the center for the free food, English classes, and family environment; not to actually look for jobs.

Antonio Bernabe, a day laborer organizer for the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, is openly critical of the city’s system, which is different than the one run at CARECEN.

“They don’t know what to do with day labor centers,” he said. “They don’t realize it’s for the people to work. They open day labor centers because the community complains because they don’t want to see people at the corners.”

For 12 years, Bernabe worked at the city-run center in North Hollywood.

“The centers help the people to survive,” he said. “Some of them have some kind of food, and churches go to help the people. Many bring food during the morning. So, some people go to survive. But then they have to go to the corners, because they’re looking for work.”

The emphasis, many complain, is that the focus is on services, not getting the day laborers work.

Not all centers, however, are ineffective, according to Svensson, who authored the study “Comparing Solutions: An Overview of Day Labor Programs.”

In her paper, she differentiates between two main models of service: the social service agency model (like the one run by the city of LA) and the union-model (as run by CARECEN). The union-model keeps work the top priority.

“The characteristics of a union-model day labor center include self-funding through worker dues, focus on work (rather than social services), a fair and strictly enforced minimum wage, and rules and policy decisions decided by workers through consensus reaching member meetings,” she said.

Despite her endorsement, CARECEN continues to struggle. As did the former day labor center at the Home Depot in Glendale, which closed in July. According to city officials, the center failed to attract skeptical workers, who preferred to seek work at nearby curbsides.

But even at those curbsides and corners, there is no escape from the economy.

Meet L.A.’s Day Laborers

Illusions Of The American Dream Remain For Day Laborers

Fifty-year-old Michael Kembe, a professional cook and dishwasher, knows he's in the middle of a simple problem.

Illusions Of The American Dream Remain For Day Laborers

Oscar Chavez has gone from working for several years at a factory that made paper towels to eating a full meal once a day off a paper plate.

Demographics now tied to poverty, not ethnicity

Most devastating to day-laborers has been the real-estate crisis, followed by the recession, say center directors. Construction has long been their bread-and-butter. However, the real estate crisis killed construction of new homes, with many day laborers scurrying to pick up new skills, or getting left behind.

The latest nation-wide study on day-laborers, done in 2006, just before the real-estate crisis, found 49 percent employed by homeowners and renters, and another 43 percent by construction contractors.

And while the necessary skills are changing for the professional day laborer, many new unskilled day-laborers are being forced into centers in a last-ditch effort to find work.

Before the recession, most day-laborers identified themselves as such; it truly was an identity, a profession.

“Most of the participants we had were day laborers, like 95 percent. It’s a living, a way of life,” said Mario Lopez, supervisor for the city-run Downtown Community Job Center. “The caricature that defines a day-laborer is someone that comes to this country looking for jobs and becomes a day-laborer and they don’t change because they like it.”

The demographics no longer lend themselves to that caricature.

They’re in and out. They’re white, black, Asian, or Latino. They’re often unprepared.

They’re all desperate for work.

“The wages are decreasing,” said Lopez. “It’s really tough right now. They’re getting less and less jobs and there’s more competition, especially from people that weren’t day laborers before.”

In 2005, the Downtown center would see 30-to-35 day-laborers every day. In 2011, that number has climbed to about 60, Lopez said.

“Right now, we know people that are losing everything; jobs, transportation, they sold their tools,” Lopez said. “It’s horrible. They are acclimating to that, but it’s horrible. It’s really sad.”

Lopez has to turn away a fair amount of people whose skills don’t match what the center offers, or who find the work too harsh because of their former job.

“Imagine someone that was an accountant or a professional working in an office and then they go to work in a warehouse loading and unloading boxes,” Lopez said. “Sometimes, people can’t see themselves doing that.”

For many, the physical strain experienced at the jobs, and desperate daily search for work is brand new. Whereas, before the recession, 83 percent relied on day-labor work as their sole source of income.

“We have a job lined up in a few minutes, where I’m going to send out four workers,” Lopez said. “I believe this crew is going to have a couple Latinos, one African American and another white guy. The African American and white guy have never done this job. So, they go with those who know so they can see how the job is done.”

Poorly done jobs hurt the professionals.

“I’ll say ‘Hey, we need a painter, Does anyone know how to paint?’” said Zepeda. “And everyone raises their hand. But out of those 20 people, only two know how to paint.”

Getting to America, and staying

For day laborers from Mexico, Central or South America, the sacrifice to reach America — and the “American Dream” — can be huge.

Trying to cross the border, undocumented immigrants can be held ransom and killed if their families do not wire money. If they do get across, they often owe “coyotes” between $5,000 to $7,000. When they do get established in Los Angeles, and find work, “they are often seen as criminals,” Svensson said. Theft of wages is common, as employers threaten to turn them in to immigration.

“The recession has, in fact, forced the wages down, as has the anti-immigrant movement,” said Svensson. “Bosses wrongly feel that workers are undocumented and wrongly think that this means workers have no rights.”

Day laborers are helpless, said Vareli.

“Contractor say ‘Hey, if you put a warning for me on Labor Commission, I’ll tell immigration.’

“People live in fear,” he said.

Holiday Season in America

Many people from Latin America also live wanting to return home, if only to see family members they left behind to chase the American Dream.

At CARECEN, no matter the dire circumstances, day laborers from all countries have, to a certain extent, a home.

“Everyone identifies with everyone else,” said Zepeda. “Everyone’s undocumented. They identify with that. Everyone speaks Spanish. They identify with that. Everyone struggles. Everyone’s poor. You create this brotherhood.

“We’re all in this. We’re all suffering, and I’m not the only one.”

With the arrival of the holiday season, the harsh realities of life in America, away from family members left in Latin America, amplify.

“We tell them, we understand you’d rather be home with your family, but unfortunately, the economic situation in your country forced you to come here,” said Zepeda. “We’re as close a thing to your family as you’re going to get. A lot of them will start talking about how ‘I want to be with my son. I haven’t seen my family in years.’

“There are a lot of emotions for a day laborer. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, there are a lot of tears.”

Zepeda calls himself a “trans-national parent” to the day laborers.

“They came here because they don’t want their kids to day labor,” he said. “We replace that. I do. I become a family member to them. A son.”

This Thanksgiving, Zepeda helped serve turkey to hundreds of day laborers at CARECEN, including Vareli.

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DOJ Reports Expose Discriminatory Policing, Flawed Logic of Immigration Enforcement Strategy

 

In response to the Department of Justice filing another report of discriminatory policing in East Haven, CT against Latinos in addition to the Maricopa County report last week, Pablo Alvarado, Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network issued the following statement.

 


“The damning report filed in Maricopa County last week had been called for and expected for years. But what the Department of Justice report in East Haven exposes is a national epidemic of civil rights violations that must call into question the federal immigration programs that rely on local police whose enforcement practices are increasingly discriminatory. What else will it take to rethink the strategy of enlisting police as force multipliers in immigration. The recent Department of Justice actions are a warning sign to reverse course on immigration and end programs like Se Communities immediately.”

 

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Congressman Grijalva Joins AZ and National Leaders to Commend DOJ Investigation on Arpaio

Link to recording of today’s call:  http://ndlon.org/docs/2011arpaio.mp3

Phoenix, AZ- Yesterday, the United States Department of Justice released a scathing report, confirming the “discriminatory policing practices” that Sheriff Joe Arpaio has used to terrorize the Latino community of Maricopa County for years and prompting the Department of Homeland Security to terminate the Sheriff’s 287(g) agreement and restrict his access to the controversial S-Comm program, 

 

On a press call today, national and local leaders reacted to the reports findings, commending the investigation as a step towards serving the Latino community with the justice they so long deserve.

 

According to U.S. Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), “Sheriff Arpaio believes physical appearance is probable cause to stop and question individuals about their immigration status. Even after a Department of Justice investigation has told him otherwise, he continues to believe there’s no issue here. There’s nothing fair, equal or constitutional about racial profiling. His obsessive, politically motivated assault on Hispanics has destroyed public trust in his office and put innocent lives in danger. Federal law enforcement officials are right to name his failed tenure for what it is, and I hope he takes the honorable route by resigning immediately.”

DOJ’s announcement is no surprise to the Latino community.  Arpaio has a long history of extreme enforcement tactics and discriminatory behavior.  Mary Rose Wilcox, Maricopa County Supervisor, saw firsthand the type of suffering in the Latino community inflicted by Arpaio’s abusive practices. “A line in the report that stands out above others is that for the past four years, the Sheriff’s department has treated all Latinos as if they were undocumented. It is a sobering statement that shows how the Sheriff used anti-immigrant sentiment as a pretext to violate the civil rights of our County’s residents. For three years our community has pounded the doors of elected officials to let them know this must stop. My dream is for Sheriff Arpaio to resign or be kicked out of office and for his office to be taken into receivership. Still, we feel relief today because the truth has been told about this Sheriff in a manner that cannot be denied.”

 

 

Speakers also lifted up Arpaio’s case as an example of the disastrous consequences of DHS policies that trample on the rights of entire communities.

Salvador Reza, Phoenix Civil Rights Leader whose wrongful arrest was cited in the DOJ report, explained, “We are happy to see Janet Napolitano’s actions yesterday but I’d like to caution that it’s not over. The longer Arpaio is not under receivership or indicted, the longer this will continue as a political football locally and nationally. This should be a wakeup call to DHS and for Sheriffs across the country who are using federal immigration programs to emulate Arpaio.”

 

Randy Parraz, Co-Founder, President of Citizens for a Better Arizona, added, “Yesterday’s report by the DOJ validates many of the abusive practices and policies that we have been experiencing as Latinos and critics of Sheriff Arpaio.   We, Citizens for a Better Arizona, will continue to organize across the county to create the pressure needed to force Sheriff Arpaio to resign.”

According to Arturo Venegas, Director of the Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative, “Every day that Arpaio focused on terrorizing immigrant and Latino communities while serious criminals roamed the streets of Maricopa County made other law enforcement officials’ jobs harder across the nation. The Department of Homeland Security should be commended for limiting its cooperation with Arpaio, but until the racial profiling and aggressive tactics he championed are no longer encouraged by state laws like Alabama’s or tacitly condoned by federal programs like Se Communities, we have not yet eradicated his legacy of fear. Unfortunately, Arpaio has flaunted his unconstitutional tactics with such vigor that, nothing short of a federal consent decree will get him to comply DOJ requests and change his behavior.”
According to Sarahi Uribe, National Campaign Coordinator, National Day Laborer’s Organizing Network, “The DOJ report is what compelled the Department of Homeland Security to do what it should have done on former Arizona Governor Napolitano’s first day on the job as head of DHS. It stripped him of his badge when it comes to immigration enforcement. Now we should learn the lessons from Arizona and deal not just with this Sheriff but with the implications of this report on a national level.”

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