www.bergen.com

False promises
Monday, November 14, 2005

By SAMANTHA HENRY
HERALD NEWS


Elias Ascencio turned up his collar against the first blast of winter as he stood with other day laborers in the parking lot of The Home Depot in Passaic, hoping to get picked up for a job. The approaching cold had him considering a pitch he'd heard that morning: to head for the Gulf Coast.

"If the right opportunity comes up, I think I'll go," Ascencio, 35, who is Mexican born, said in Spanish. "To flee this cold, any offer will do."

In the months since Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the southern coast of Mississippi and Louisiana, immigrant laborers from North Jersey and across the United States have been heading to the South in droves, drawn by the promise of cleanup and reconstruction jobs.

Several factors have contributed to the influx of immigrant workers. Chief among them was the suspension of a key federal wage guarantee law - the Davis-Bacon Act - by the Bush administration in the days immediately following the storm. Nullifying the law meant that workers under federal contracts did not have to be paid prevailing wages, and subcontractors were free to hire undocumented workers for low-paying, labor intensive clean-up work.

It triggered an instant migration of workers to the region that some labor market experts predict could change the ethnic and cultural flavor of the Gulf Coast region.

Although the administration, under pressure from unions, reinstated Davis-Bacon last week, it does not retroactively apply to the thousands of contracts negotiated since the hurricane. As a result, the demand for temporary workers to do the high-risk, low-paying manual labor cleanup and reconstruction work continues unabated.

The call for workers has reached as far north as Passaic County, where, in recent weeks, local subcontractors and middlemen - hoping for a portion of the enormous federal and private cleanup and reconstruction contracts - are heading south with their own temporary work forces in tow.

The mostly small- to medium-sized nonunion outfits have been soliciting workers along the Dayton Avenue corridor in Passaic, according to several day laborers who congregate there on a regular basis.

They've been promising two- and three-week stints in Louisiana or Mississippi, transportation to the South, and wages averaging $10 an hour, including motel lodging and meals, the laborers said.

But workers who've signed on and headed south are finding very different conditions than what they were promised, according to those who've kept in touch with them in Passaic.

"Those who have gone so far have not come back yet, but I listened in on a phone conversation with them on speaker phone," said Jorge Zegarra, an immigrant from Peru, who solicits day jobs along Dayton Avenue in Passaic.

"They said that the conditions were bad, that they had promised them meals but were only giving them lunch, and that there was nowhere else to buy food or anything," he said.

Zegarra said groups of workers congregate around the contractors in the mornings as they make their pitches for the ride down south. When they get a group of 15 to 20 workers willing to go, they depart from Passaic in caravans. Zegarra said it was mostly younger, single men who'd taken up the offers - the group that immigration experts say always forms the first wave in the long-term transformation of an area.

Zegarra, 53, said that as an older worker supporting a family, he himself was hesitant to go for such small wages to do dangerous, physically demanding work in rough living conditions.

"One thinks to oneself: Where would I live if all the buildings down there are destroyed?" Zegarra said in Spanish. "Where would I shop, if the stores are all damaged and still closed, and the food that they give you there isn't enough to sustain you? Who wants to travel all the way to another place, just to be in an equally bad situation?"

But plenty are going, according to Bill Chandler, the president of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, a consortium of immigrant groups, unions, churches and community organizations headquartered in Jackson, Miss.

Chandler said Latino immigrant workers are pouring into the Gulf Coast from Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and even directly from Mexico.

"The problem is they've been recruited with false promises," Chandler said. He cited several instances in which workers who were promised motel rooms were living in tents. In one case, he'd found 30 workers living in three trailers who'd gone days without food or promised wages. Many were suffering the effects of exposure to molds and dangerous working conditions with no medical care or job site safeguards.

"There's no protection for these workers," Chandler said. "Most of these contracts were done under the Davis-Bacon suspension, and that's the foundation for exploitation of Latino workers down here."

Chandler's organization is working to help such workers, both those who were living in the area before Katrina hit and the waves of new immigrants heading into the region to work. But he said he was concerned about the lack of regulation of job health and safety. "I think it's going to continue to escalate," Chandler said of the exploitation of workers. "It's just like the Wild West here."

Workers heading to the region for temporary jobs may wind up staying long-term, eventually bringing their families to join them, and playing a central role in the revitalization of the local economy.

Although the 2000 Census estimated 40,000 Hispanics in Mississippi, those, like Chandler, who work with immigrant communities estimate the population to be closer to 100,000, including undocumented immigrants. Even at the higher estimates, Latinos still made up a minor percentage of the overall population of the state before Katrina - a balance that could rapidly change as more immigrants swarm to the region to find work.

"It's certainly going to change the stereotype of Mississippi," Chandler said. "It will change it to a majority 'people-of-color' state, and that will lead to significant political changes here."

Mahonrry Hidalgo, chairman of the New Jersey Latino Leadership Alliance Immigration Committee, said the same kind of labor-led transformation has happened all over the United States. "It's the rule of supply and demand, the law of economies everywhere," Hidalgo said in Spanish. "I think it will be a process of many years on the Gulf Coast, the immigrant community will have a huge impact."

Hidalgo said the shift of Latino labor to the Gulf Coast, could likewise affect the work force in states like New Jersey. "The anti-immigrant sentiments here, the absence of channels for getting driver's licenses in the state, and the high cost of living and lack of affordable housing, all these factors combined make it so people will seek out better places to live," he said.

Hidalgo said if the trend continues, many sectors in New Jersey, from agricultural businesses in the southern part of the state to construction, hospitality and elder care in the north could feel the loss. "When the work force goes elsewhere looking for jobs, the economy they sustain here will probably be affected," he said.

Workers like Elias Ascencio plan to be among that the first wave that may transform the Gulf Coast region.

Despite the ominous stories from friends who have already gone to the Gulf Coast - such as one who was promised $10 and hour and only $8 when he got there - Ascencio said he's had it with New Jersey winters and is determined to search for something better.

"Perhaps, if I like it down there, and if all goes well, I'll stay there a good, long while," he said.