http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_4141498

Article Launched: 8/06/2006 12:00 AM

Activists debate at Rancho day-labor site

By Jason Newell, Staff Writer
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

RANCHO CUCAMONGA - On a street where day laborers congregate to get jobs, the only things put to work Saturday were strained vocal cords.
Shouting and loud chanting -- sometimes innocuous and sometimes downright ugly -- filled the intersection of Grove Avenue and Arrow Highway as protesters and counter-protesters on opposite ends of the immigration debate faced off throughout the morning.

Photo Gallery: Day Laborer Protest in R.C.

On one corner, members of the Minuteman Project and other anti-illegal-immigration groups held signs, waved flags and sang songs -- all in protest of businesses and individuals who hire illegal immigrants off the street.

Robin Hvidston, an Upland woman who planned the demonstration, said illegal hiring keeps willing American workers from finding jobs and deprives the government of tax dollars because of under-the-table pay.

"What we want to do is make it politically incorrect for employers to do street hiring," she said. "We feel if the employers stop hiring these people, (then) the workers and the people who are here illegally would self-deport."

On the opposing corner, counter-protesters held signs and chanted in unison as day laborers seeking work waited for potential employers to come along.

Up until June 30, the nearby Rancho Cucamonga Day Labor Center had provided a spot for workers to congregate. Since it closed, workers have continued to line Grove Avenue, though work has been more difficult to find.

"They want to chase us away from here," Jose Fernando Pedraza, a Mexican-born, legal resident of Rancho Cucamonga, said in Spanish. "Most of them think that most of us are illegal. A lot of people who come here are legal."

Rancho Cucamonga police monitored the event throughout the morning, intervening every so often to order people to stay off the street and to separate a handful of heated arguments.

Under the "Minuteman Code," Hvidston said protesters agree to remain courteous to all and to respond to harassment with a simple, "God Bless You."

To a large extent, they did -- though an occasional "Go back to Mexico" could be heard between renditions of "God Bless America" and recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance.

The other side remained mostly civil as well, though several demonstrators shouted expletives and bigotry charges at the anti-illegal-immigration group. One woman yelled: "Get out of here. Go back to Europe. This is not your country."

Bernardino Gutierrez Jr., a day laborer from Rancho Cucamonga, said day laborers -- whether legal or illegal -- aren't doing anybody any harm. The Minuteman supporters were overreacting, he said.

"These people are so crazy," said Gutierrez, a legal resident. "We need to work. The only reason we come here is to get a job, and they come and harass us."

But Wiley Drake, a pastor from Buena Park and chaplain for the Minuteman Project, said street hiring drives down wages and eliminates job opportunities for legal workers.

"Whether you're a one-man company or a large company, you need to obey the law," he said.


Jason Newell can be reached by e-mail at jason.newell@dailybulletin.com or by phone at (909) 483-9338.