Thread: Nonprofit Hiring Halls For Illegals Mushrooming

2-15-06
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/02 ... _14_06.txt

Nonprofit hiring halls for illegal immigrants mushroom
By: WILLIAM FINN BENNETT - Staff Writer

Since 1992, the number of hiring halls that help illegal immigrants get jobs and protect their rights has mushroomed, growing from just five in that year to 140 across the nation today, according to a just-published book.

In a Tuesday telephone news conference from the Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, the author of "Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream" and three other panelists discussed the benefits the worker centers, such as those in Escondido and Carlsbad, provide to workers and the community.

"A lot of what these centers are doing is upholding minimum wage laws and protecting the health and safety of workers," said the book's author Janice Fine, who is a Rutgers University professor of management and labor relations and senior fellow with the Economic Policy Institute.

Panel members also spoke of their concerns over proposed legislation that could impose fines on those centers and result in criminal prosecution of the people who run them.

The institute is a left-leaning, nonprofit think tank that conducts original research on economic issues affecting low-and-middle income workers.

Not everyone thinks the hiring centers are a good idea. Some local activists pushing for a crackdown on illegal immigration say that such centers encourage the problem and should not be allowed to continue to help illegal immigrants.

In a Tuesday phone interview, Ray Carney, a Fallbrook activist who is strongly against illegal immigration, said that despite the fact that hiring centers are defending the human rights of those immigrants, what those hiring halls are doing is still wrong.

"I don't agree with the hiring centers ---- they are sponsoring crime; it's against the law," Carney said. "I feel sympathy for (illegal immigrants), I really do; they are coming here to make a better life for themselves, but it's not the American taxpayers' job to bail out a foreign nation."

One of the main services offered by many of the labor centers involves putting low-wage immigrant workers in contact with employers. However, many of the centers say they also protect those workers by making sure that they are paid decent wages and are not cheated or mistreated by employers.

Often, however, it's not even necessary to pursue legal action against such unscrupulous employers, Fine said. Many employers pay up after organizations call them, she said.

The majority of the workers who seek out the work centers are illegal immigrants, and an estimated 3 million workers or their family members benefit each year from the services the centers provide, Fine said.

In December, the U.S. House of Representatives approved House Resolution 4437, an immigration reform bill that is now set to go before the Senate for possible revisions. The bill focuses primarily on beefing up the nation's borders and cracking down on those who hire illegal immigrants, while failing to create a guest-worker program that would allow foreign laborers to stay in the United States for a limited amount of time.

Critics have blasted the bill for not including a guest-worker program, which they say is essential for addressing the country's huge demand for cheap labor. Supporters of the bill, however, say that before even considering a guest worker program, the federal government must get serious about stopping illegal immigration and deal with the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already living in the United States.

Other provisions in the bill threaten to significantly reduce, if not eliminate, the ability of work centers such as Escondido's Interfaith Community Services to help illegal immigrants find work and protect them from the exploitation of dishonest employers, a spokeswoman for that organization said in a recent interview.

Interfaith's hiring hall helps arrange work for about 50 people a day ---- most of them illegal immigrants, said spokeswoman Deborah Andreasen.

A recent survey of 117,000 day laborers conducted by three universities, including the University of California Los Angeles, reported that more than three-fourths of those workers were illegal immigrants. The report, released in late January, also stated that in the two months prior to the survey, nearly half of all those workers had been denied payment for their work.

If the proposed legislation becomes law in its present form, nonprofit organizations that help day laborers find work, without making sure each client has a legal right to work in this country, could be subject to criminal prosecution, jail sentences and fines of up to $50,000 per violation.

Interfaith's Andreasen said recently that such a law would scare away employers and illegal immigrant workers, driving them even further underground.

Author Fine agreed that such a law would have a devastating effect not only on immigrant workers, but also on hiring centers that help them find jobs.

"Volunteers and staff workers would be turned into criminals and the property of centers and individuals could be seized," she said.

"Beefing up our borders is not a straw-man issue," said state Sen. Bill Morrow, R-Oceanside. "(Illegal immigration) is a threat to national security in that a terrorist can cross our porous borders with a dirty bomb or a weapon and an intent to strike our citizens."

As far as unscrupulous employers who abuse illegal-immigrant workers, Morrow said that no one condones their actions. However, "If those illegal immigrants weren't here, it wouldn't be a problem."

"Volunteers and staff workers would be turned into criminals and the property of centers and individuals could be seized," she said.

fine with me