Thread: {Sob} Home Away From Home

Home Away From Home
By Elan Ronen
Posted: 11/5/2008 - 9:42:23 PM


Twelve men gather in Freeport every weekday at noon for what could be the strangest card game on Long Island. They are day laborers, mostly illegal, from Central and South America. They meet at a Freeport hiring site on Bennington Avenue, a trailer nestled between the Long Island Rail Road and Sunrise Highway. The stakes are always high: The winners move to the top of the site’s hiring list. If only three contractors walk in the next day, only the three workers at the top of the list will get work.

- Credit: Ethan Stokes



These days, workers are lucky to be hired twice a week. The call for the work they do—installing siding, laying brick walkways, residential construction, landscaping and re-shingling roofs—has decreased every month since January. And at an average hourly wage of $10, or $100 per day, most are struggling. So, the game is much more important: Win today, work tomorrow, and at the end of the month, maybe they won’t have to choose between a meal and a roof.

José, nicknamed “Colombia,â€

Can't muster any sympathy for any of them. If you cannot afford to support yourself in your own country, why keep having kids? It's irresponsible and their own fault,, I don't owe them a thing!

To pay for his trip, he sold his ’86 Toyota pickup and his father took out a bank loan. Miguel left behind his then-3-year-old daughter and his wife, pregnant with his second daughter.

Poor as can be and a father at 15?!?!?! NOT my problem!

[quote]Substance abuse is a huge problem in the day laborer population. Miguel is convinced that workers sleeping outside have been “takenâ€