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July 29, 2005
Illegal Immigrants Map Plans on Long Island
By NINA BERNSTEIN and BRUCE LAMBERT
Scores of day laborers and organizers from around the country converged yesterday at a national conference on Long Island, an area that has been a flashpoint of anger over illegal immigrants. The choice was no accident, their leaders said.

Their plan was to contrast the conflicts that have erupted in places like Farmingville with the peaceful resolutions they say are possible, especially through the creation of permanent hiring centers for day laborers to replace contentious shape-ups on street corners.

"The issues here have affected everybody throughout the country," said Pablo Alvarado, the national coordinator of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which sponsored the three-day conference. "The beatings, the evictions. Everybody knows Long Island."

Mr. Alvarado was referring to clashes in the Suffolk County hamlet of Farmingville. Most recently, the county executive drew both outrage and praise for shutting down one of many illegal rooming houses there, displacing about 60 immigrant men, mostly illegal immigrants who work in day-labor jobs.

But the group's march and vigil in Farmingville yesterday evening was peaceful. And delegates to the conference, which continues through tomorrow at Hofstra University in Hempstead, included some from day-labor centers in other parts of Long Island that have been more accommodating to this growing temporary work force.

As delegates from 29 worker organizations in 12 states shared successful tactics and tales of persecution in small groups, some having driven all night to make the meeting, Mr. Alvarado stressed that many towns had tried and failed to disperse day laborers through aggressive law enforcement.

"They send police on horses, police on bikes, and they give tickets for jaywalking, trespassing, littering, loitering," he said. Even helicopters have been used to chase laborers, he added, citing practices in Algura Hills, Calif., where he said undercover cops posing as contractors have been known to transport workers to out-of-the-way places and leave them to walk back.

Critics say hiring halls only encourage illegal migration and spill over into street-corner gatherings anyway.

But Chris Newman, the legal programs coordinator for the day-laborer network, contended that such centers, though not a perfect solution, had proved to ease local conflicts by bringing workers off the streets, providing toilets and helping to prevent exploitation.

"The key is to stay ahead of the curve, to prevent these breakdowns in community relations before they happen," Mr. Newman said. "Once the day-labor relationship becomes politicized, it becomes hard to repair."

Though New York is second only to California in the number of day laborers, according to national studies, he said the New York metropolitan area had lagged in creating day-labor centers.

The area has at least 57 street-corner day-labor markets but only 8 hiring halls, 2 in the city, Mr. Newman said.