Day laborers find sites beyond Vista.(CA) borders

North County Times ^ | 12 AUG.2006 | EDWARD SIFUENTES

[radar101]

Day laborers swarm around the pick-up truck of man who is there to hire workers near the intersection of North Santa Fe and Melrose Drive in Vista on Thursday morning

With the city of Vista's day-laborer law in full effect, some day laborers are making their way to other job sites just outside the city limits.

About two dozen Latino men stood on a dusty corner near Melrose Drive and North Santa Fe Avenue on an early morning this week. Several men there said that the area has been a traditional hiring site for more than 10 years. Their numbers may not be growing, but an increasing number of them are workers who once stood on Vista corners, they said.

Rogelio Rodriguez, a thin 24-year-old man, said that he has picked up odd jobs on this and other nearby streets for more than two years. But work is drying up, he said, partly due to anti-illegal immigration activist groups, including the San Diego Minutemen and the Vista Citizen's Brigade.

"There's been a lot of pressure (from the groups)," he said. "And soon this, too, is going to disappear."

Rodriguez said he had not worked in three days and worked only two days last week.

For months, activists from the Minutemen have staged protests at a popular hiring site on South Santa Fe and Escondido avenues, inside Vista's city limits. They aimed cameras at would-be employers and hand out flyers saying it is against the law to hire illegal immigrants. Vista recently passed a law that requires employers to register with the city before hiring day laborers.

The law, which took effect July 28, requires those who hire day laborers to get registration certificates from the city and display them in a car window. It also requires people written terms of employment to the laborers they hire.

Officials have said that the goal is to reduce the number of unscrupulous employers taking advantage of workers.

Immigrant rights activists say the law is a thinly veiled attempt to remove workers from the corner, which is also home to a busy shopping center with grocery stores, restaurants and office space.

The men, who are predominantly immigrants from Mexico, work for homeowners in the area and small landscaping and construction companies. Jobs usually range from a few hours to a few days. They earn about $8 to $10 an hour, the men said.

At the Melrose site, Oswaldo, a stocky 30-year-old man who did not want to give his last name, said he has worked in construction for about eight years. But construction work has decreased in recent months, and companies that once did not look closely at work documents now are more reluctant to hire illegal immigrant workers, he said.

"More than 50 percent of the workers were Mexicans," he said in Spanish. "Only the owners and the supervisors were white."

In the mornings, the men sit along a chain-link fence surrounding a large vacant lot along the east side of Melrose Drive south of Willowbrook Drive. Some sip coffee purchased from a lunch truck that caters to them each morning as they watch a small but steady stream of cars travel from Vista headed north to State Route 76.

Oceanside police Sgt. Leonard Mata said Thursday that he had not heard of complaints from area residents about the hiring site, which is on the Oceanside edge of the Oceanside-Vista border. But activists have taken notice of the site.

Jeff Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen, said members of his group watch the Melrose Drive area routinely and protest there occasionally. He said the group's observers have noticed a drop in the number of day laborers recently, from about 70 down to about 30.

"We're just monitoring it," Schwilk said. "If it grows, we'll hit it harder."

Schwilk said the Melrose site is just one of the many day-labor sites his group watches on a regular basis. There are several along East Vista Way north of the Vista city limits in an unincorporated part of the county near Bonsall. There are others in Encinitas, Fallbrook and San Diego, he said.

Schwilk and other advocates say the drop in workers looking for jobs in the Vista shopping center is welcome news, and that residents should feel safer shopping there.

Immigrant rights advocates have criticized the Minutemen's tactics and the city's day-labor law, saying neither addresses the problem and that the workers have only been further scattered throughout the region. Some are asking city officials to establish a formal hiring center, similar to centers in Carlsbad and Escondido.

"They are not going to go away," said Sal Martinez, president of SER Jobs for Progress in Oceanside, which runs a hiring center in Carlsbad. "The employers will go to other places to hire people. The workers won't be at that site, but it's like catching smoke."

Martinez said he spoke with city officials about the idea weeks ago but has not heard from them since. A hiring center would not completely solve the street hiring issue in Vista, Martinez said, but it would go a long way to address some of the city and its residents' concerns.

"I do believe that this is an effective way of helping to deal with this issue in Vista," Martinez said. "It's a touchy political football, but it's a problem that is not going to go away."

Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at (760) 740-3511 or esifuentes@nctimes.com.

[TheOracleAtLilac]

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, it's biz as usual for the illegals who line up on E Vista Way, S of Gopher Canyon

[Kimberly GG]

"I do believe that this is an effective way of helping to deal with this issue in Vista," Martinez said. "It's a touchy political football, but it's a problem that is not going to go away."

It's only a 'touchy political football' if you treat it as such. An officer should be assigned each morning to check the immigration status of every single person hanging around waiting to be picked up, same as they would do to prostiutes. Every illegal should be arrested and immediately deported. Of course, if we don't want them back the next day, we better get busy building a wall. I say 'we' because GWB and our D.C. leadership have no intentions of doing anything to secure the border. Never have and never will.