Thread: Please help us out by writing Sac Bee

Someone I know last time they protested here had rocks thrown at them.

People, email the SacBee tell them what you think!!
Email SacBee at http://www.sacbee.com/326/story/19629.html
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http://www.sacbee.com/302/story/457778.html

Day labor site touted for county

Sheriff's Department is helping effort for south area job center.

By Susan Ferriss - sferriss@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, October 28, 2007

Lt. Rosie Enriquez sat in a parking lot in her unmarked cruiser, looking out at a small sea of about 50 men waiting for the promise of work to arrive.
Within minutes, a pickup loaded with six large fence posts turned into the gas station at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and 47th Avenue. The men rushed the truck, and two with the sharpest elbows hopped in and drove off, past strip malls in south Sacramento.
Enriquez stepped from her own car, and the men crowded around her. "Buenos dÃ*as, muchachos. Hay mucho trabajo?" the uniformed Sacramento County Sheriff's Department lieutenant said. "Good morning, boys. Much work?"
The Latino day laborers, most of them undocumented immigrants, greeted her in unison like a chorus of schoolkids.
Enriquez believes the men are mostly harmless. But their presence, she said, intimidates and frustrates residents and merchants, who call the department to complain about littering, loitering, traffic hazards and general blight.
The low-income area already has a serious crime problem, Enriquez said, the worst of any division in the department. She and other ranking officers in the department's Central Division realized they needed a solution for what's both a nuisance and a magnet for crime.
The conclusion: The department pushed to get the immigrant workers off the street – and into a privately run day labor center where they can be dispatched in an orderly, safe fashion so deputies can devote more time to fight crime.
It's a decision that bucks a national current of hostility toward undocumented workers, Enriquez acknowledged. But it makes sense to deputies who would rather concentrate on preventing burglaries, drug trafficking, gang shootings and assaults, and armed robberies of the cash-carrying immigrant workers.
In the past year, of 71 felonies reported in one five-square-mile area where laborers tend to gather, all the victims were Latinos, a revealing detail, according to Enriquez.
"I usually see them as victims – victims of criminals and employers. It's like a double whammy," she said.
Enriquez began nearly two years ago to research how day labor centers function. She visited several of them. The most promising model, she said, is in the Bay Area city of Concord.
Enriquez serves at the center of a nonprofit coalition that's combining the privately run – and privately funded – day labor center with a more broad-based community center that will be built at 41st Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. In addition to offering workers a place to pair up with employers, the center will offer services ranging from parenting classes to English lessons.
Day labor centers have divided communities where some residents complain they encourage illegal immigration. About 65 exist nationally now. A handful have closed because of poor management, objections to them receiving public funding or simply because of protests that illegal immigrants were involved.
But some communities are still choosing to open them, and local law enforcement across the country almost always serves a key supportive role, according to Abel Valenzuela, a UCLA urban planner and day labor expert.
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department has gone further than many agencies by putting Enriquez, who is bilingual, in charge of instigating the creation of a center.
Merchants in the Central Division support the idea and are helping raise money for it. Objections have been loud but minimal, said Enriquez and Chief Deputy R.C. Smith, who initially assigned her to the project.
"We concluded that immigration status aside, the overwhelming majority of these workers were decent, law-abiding people who just want to put food on the table," said Smith, who is now one of the department's highest ranking officials. "A small percentage drink, do drugs or commit violence," he said, "but unquestionably, in our assessment, that's a minority."
Enriquez said deputies have felt some pressure to round up laborers who can't prove they are here legally.
When the department has called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they've been told ICE's priority is to arrest illegal immigrants with felony records and investigate document fraud.
Local police have limited power to quiz people about immigration status, and little inclination, Enriquez said, because of concerns that it would discourage community cooperation with police.
The Sheriff's Department doesn't think it would be a wise use of deputies' time when, in the Central Division alone, they have 47 square miles to patrol, she added.
"What if someone's out burglarizing your house, which happens mostly during broad daylight, and I'm out here checking someone's documents?" Enriquez said.
Smith agreed. "In no place in the U.S. has local law enforcement been the solution to the immigration issue," he said.
Citing day laborers for loitering, Smith added, isn't a sound strategy to get them to leave either. "What would we do? Cite them for impeding traffic? Jaywalking?" he said. "Then they'll just go somewhere else."
Enriquez noted that employers who drive up to hire the workers are a big part of the equation. They're as likely to be homeowners as contractors looking for cheap labor for a construction job.
"There are small jobs you can't get a contractor to do," she said. "You can't find anybody who will fix two fence posts. And if you're in your 80s, it's hard to put in fence posts or get rid of a huge pile of branches."
Enriquez's father immigrated from Mexico when it was easier for an employer to sponsor a foreign worker.
As she struck up an early morning conversation with the men in the gas station parking lot off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Florentino Gomez, 50, stepped forward to show her an ID and say he's a legal resident.
"I know some people don't want us here," he said. "But others do. It would be for the good of all to have a place inside."
During one of her visits to observe the Monument Futures day labor center in Concord, Enriquez warmly greeted George Vallejo, the half-Peruvian director, whom she credits with running a tight ship. Enriquez pointed at men sitting on chairs inside a large room, some at computers checking e-mail.
A phone call came in from an Italian restaurant looking for cooks and bus boys, possibly for permanent jobs. "You got 'em, Tony," Vallejo said.
Workers whose names have risen to the top of the daily roster have first crack at a job, but employers can request specific workers or someone with certain skills. Women, too, obtain work, mostly doing housekeeping.
The workers pay $22 a month to join the center, are issued ID cards and must donate time cleaning the building. They pledge not to look for work on the street and must show up kempt and sober.
"Did you hear that?" Enriquez observed. "George told a couple of men to go shave."
Employers must pay a minimum hourly wage of $12, or $15 for more sophisticated work. The center asks that a job last at least four or five hours.
Sometimes requests to book workers arrive via e-mail: "I would like to hire 2 movers for this Saturday," said one, "and then a cleaning lady for Sunday."
Vallejo said staff are not required to check workers' documents because the center is not their employer. "To be honest, I thought employers would ask to see documents more," he said. "But most of them don't."
While federal law doesn't require employers to demand to see the documents of someone they hire for quick, casual labor in the home, knowingly hiring an undocumented worker is an offense. That's hard to prove, Valenzuela said. "Why do you think Immigration doesn't ever seem to go after them?"
Concord Police Lt. David Chilimidos said day laborers stick to the center once they begin using it. "They really like it," he said, but it remains difficult to persuade some who gather in other parts of the city to go there. "We can't force them," he said, but "we do outreach to them."
Day labor centers may not eliminate nuisance calls about workers hanging out on street corners, but Enriquez said she hopes the Sheriff's Department is on its way to a solution.
"Local law enforcement does not have the resources to deal with immigration," she said. "It's a matter of priorities." __________________

$12-15 an hour hmmm? I find it really hard to believe Americans don't want jobs paying $12-15 an hour.

Just checking, so if an American citizen, or green card holders show up at the day labor center, they can get a job too?

Then this should be stated, anyone who wants a job head on over! This would be a great place for unemployed Americans to get temp jobs!

Not only have these people thrown rocks at a friend. They have tried to intimidate us with their cars. They would speeed then slam on the brakes causing car to skid, which sent the rear end of the car in our direction.