Thread: Portland: Where to put day laborers

Where to put day laborers
Sunday, July 29, 2007

ANNA GRIFFIN
The Oregonian

Bob Wentworth could stand at the corner of Southeast Sixth Avenue and Ankeny Street for days using his car salesman's charm to debate the merits of Portland Mayor Tom Potter's plan to build a hiring center for Latino day laborers:

Should the city really be in the business of helping undocumented workers earn the money they need to stay in the United States illegally? Shouldn't men and women who came to this country seeking a better life have access to toilets, drinking water and maybe a chance to learn English while they wait for the jobs most of their U.S.-born counterparts don't want to do?

But Wentworth, one of three brothers who operate Wentworth Chevrolet and Subaru, has no time for such philosophical or political arguments.

He and other business owners in this fast-changing stretch of central Portland want to find someplace else for the day laborers to go, before the crowds grow even larger and the impact on their neighborhood becomes even greater.

"The problem is, the problem exists. We're not going to solve the overarching issue. We've just got to get something done so that everybody can go on with their lives," Wentworth says, gesturing at the small clumps of people spread down half a block in all four directions.

Several call out to Wentworth as he talks: "Senor! Senor! You have any work for me?"

For more than a decade, Latino day laborers -- also known as jornaleros -- have gathered on corners near East Burnside looking for work. With Portland's recent immigration surge and construction boom, the number of jornaleros hanging out each day has grown from a few dozen to several hundred on some summer mornings. The problems have grown, too.

Police say drug dealers use the steady traffic of trucks and SUVs as cover for their trade. Property owners say men and women urinate out in the open and leave their garbage for someone else to pick up, scaring off potential customers for neighborhood businesses.

Advocates for new immigrants say the current setup encourages abuse -- employers, for example, are more likely to refuse to pay a worker or cover medical bills for on-the-job injuries if they know all they have to do to find another employee is drive up to the same spot and wait.

Potter has long been an outspoken advocate for the rights of immigrant workers. When he was police chief in the early 1990s, he barred Portland officers from helping federal agents make deportation arrests. Earlier this year, he spoke out against the federal roundup of illegal workers at the Fresh Del Monte Produce plant in St. Johns.

The mayor began talking about creating a hiring center for jornaleros in his 2004 campaign, and a committee formed by his staff hopes to have at least a temporary center open by the end of the year.

"This is one of our most vulnerable populations," Potter said. "These are people who are trying to do an honest day's work."

The idea isn't new: More than 65 other U.S. cities have day laborer centers, ranging in style and size from simple open-air shelters with a toilet and a sink to huge social service centers that include places for volunteers to teach English and immigration lawyers to meet with clients.

The number of centers has almost doubled since 2000 as cities seek solutions that are easier to enforce than banning large groups of people from congregating on certain streets or making it illegal to pick up workers by the side of the road.

"Local government's view has been, 'We've got a problem here, and we can't wait for the federal government to handle it,' " said Nik Theodore, director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Worker centers aren't the perfect solution, but they're the most immediate, proactive response."

Potter's committee, however, has several big questions to answer. First, it must find a location that would satisfy property owners yet attract would-be workers and potential employers.

Researchers who have studied day centers say they should be close to the gathering spots they're replacing or workers will ignore them.

Property owners in the central east side take pride in the gritty feel of their neighborhood, but they also say it's changing as bars, condos and brunch spots start to pop up amid the auto shops and home furnishing wholesalers. Commissioner Sam Adams' plan to extend the streetcar along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Grand Avenue will spur more gentrification if it succeeds.

Committee members also aren't certain how much a day center would cost or who would foot the bill. Although Potter and other advocates have talked about a $200,000 price tag, ensuring a day center's success means ongoing costs that can run at least that much a year, according to people who have tried it in other cities.

Potter and other city commissioners have talked about putting at least some city money in. They're pursuing a similar strategy in the fight against homelessness, with serious talk of using public money to start a day access center to give street people a place to go during daylight hours when overnight shelters close.

In Seattle, the nonprofit CASA Latina is building a $3.5 million complex including a high-tech day laborer dispatch center that will keep workers indoors until they're matched up with a job. The Washington Legislature is giving $1 million for the project, and the Seattle City Council is chipping in $250,000.

The key to success for any center, activists say, is giving workers a voice in what kinds of activities and services are available and making it an attractive alternative for employers by helping them find laborers with specific skills such as carpentry and painting.

"This is a chance to help everybody win," said Ignacio Paramo, an organizer with the immigrant rights group VOZ. "It could be good for all of us."

On several busy mornings last week, workers gathered along Southeast Sixth said they would use the center, particularly in the winter when waiting outside can be a soggy proposition.

Employers -- who, like the workers they were seeking, declined to give their names -- sounded more skeptical. One contractor, seeking three men to help with a drywall project, worried that if the city becomes more involved in helping workers, he might have to pay more than the $11 an hour he now offers.

Another man who pulled up in a large pickup seeking landscaping crews said he feared that anti-immigration groups or federal investigators might target a job center and anyone seen pulling up there.

Federal agents tend to leave hiring centers alone, Theodore said. And police usually applaud the centers because they typically attract people who are serious about working and not merely looking for a place to hang out. Several Portland police officers are on Potter's committee.

Anti-illegal-immigration groups are another story.

In most cities that have hiring centers, would-be workers aren't subject to any kind of background check and don't have to prove that they're in the United States legally.

There are at least 117,000 day laborers across the country, more than 90 percent of them from Mexico or Central or South America, according to a 2006 study by researchers at UCLA, the New School for Social Research and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Three-quarters are here illegally, researchers say.

"It's amazing that we have somebody elected, in office, who forms a committee to talk about how to evade the law," said Jim Ludwick, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform. "Even if this thing were privately funded, you're basically aiding and abetting illegal activity. Of course we would point that fact out as often and as loudly as possible."

Wentworth and his neighbors say there's no time for such debates. That's partly because they're eager to make the problem go away, and partly because this is, after all, progressive Portland.

Brian Faherty, a real-estate developer and founder of Schoolhouse Electric Co., says he would chip in for a day center if he believed it meant better working conditions for workers.

He worries that the presence of so many jornaleros will scare off potential tenants of the new seven-story retail and office building he's putting up on Southeast Sixth Avenue, just behind the Plaid Pantry on Grand Avenue.

At the same time, he says people renting in this stretch of the city know what they're getting, a hybrid neighborhood where hipster couples heading to bed and mechanics heading to work take turns pouring the Stumptown Coffee at J&M Cafe.

"I don't want to see this center as a start toward gentrification," said Faherty, who doesn't use day laborers. "These guys are as much a part of the neighborhood as the rest of us."

Charlie Becker, the owner of CZ Becker Hardwoods, says he rarely has a problem with the jornaleros. Meth dealers and prostitutes working nearby on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Grand Avenue bother him more, he said.

"There are some unseemly things going on, sure, but there are also a lot of hard-working people looking for jobs," Becker said. "Frankly, I'd hire some of them if I thought it was legal to do it."

Anna Griffin: 503-294-5988; annagriffin@news.oregonian.com

©2007 The Oregonian

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Shouldn't men and women who came to this country seeking a better life have access to toilets, drinking water and maybe a chance to learn English while they wait for the jobs most of their U.S.-born counterparts don't want to do?

Sure! As long as they came here legally.

For more than a decade, Latino day laborers -- also known as jornaleros -- have gathered on corners near East Burnside looking for work.

Looks like a good place for ICE to drum up some business!

Put them on a bus to Mexico or plane to Central America.