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Study examines day labor around region
By Kali Schumitz
06/28/2005



Times Staff Photo/Brian Price
SEEKING WORK: As reflected in a car's side mirror, day laborers congregate along Little River Turnpike in Annandale.
Most day laborers in the Washington, D.C., area are family-oriented and want to be contributing members in their communities, according to a recently published study.

Although they are studying the day labor phenomenon nationwide, researchers from the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) put a special focus on the newer day labor sites in the D.C. area, said Abel Valenzuela, who led the study.


"Day labor has a rich and storied history," Valenzuela said, starting in the United States during the Depression. "Day labor is not an immigrant problem; it is a labor growth industry driven by supply and demand."


The researchers interviewed 475 laborers trying to find work at 16 sites in the D.C. area, including eight in Northern Virginia: two in Arlington and one each in Springfield, Herndon, Annandale, Culmore, Dumfries and Woodbridge. Six sites were in Maryland, and two were in D.C.

The results were presented at a forum last week that included panelists from Fairfax and Montgomery counties.

Almost all the day laborers interviewed were Latino, with Central Americans comprising 67 percent of that group.

Although discussions of day labor often become intertwined with the issue of illegal immigration, Col. David Rohrer, chief of police for Fairfax County, said this is not an issue of great concern to local police.

While he does not support illegal immigration, Rohrer said that, if local police are made to enforce federal immigration laws, it would impinge upon their main mission of keeping the public safe, making some crime victims and witnesses afraid to contact police.

"I believe personal safety is a human right, regardless of immigration status," he said, drawing applause from the audience.

Crime at the day labor sites in Fairfax County is low, Rohrer said, but they generate a lot of complaints about laborers drinking, urinating, littering and blocking traffic.

From a police perspective, Rohrer said, he would prefer if Fairfax County sites were organized, formal sites rather than the informal gathering places they now are. An organized site exists at CASA de Maryland in Montgomery County and is being considered in Herndon.

The workers are most often hired by construction contractors and subcontractors, the study said.

"Day laborers undertake labor-intensive, dangerous and difficult jobs," Valenzuela said.

The researchers argue that most of the workers are family-oriented because they are a source of financial support to their families, whether those families are in the United States or in their home countries.

"For that family, we are willing to make any sacrifice; that is why we work so hard," said Ramon Garcia Aquilar, a day laborer from the Culmore area, a neighborhood near Annandale.

The study also said laborers want to be involved in the community because most live within walking distance of the sites where they go to look for work, more than half attend church and 19 percent play an organized sport, particularly soccer.

About 58 percent of the laborers said that, at least one time, they had done work for which they received no payment or a bad check. About 43 percent had been made to work without food or breaks, more than 20 percent had been assaulted on the job and about a third had been abandoned at a work site.

"With very few exceptions, we have suffered a lot of abuses of our most fundamental rights," Aquilar said. Day laborers, he said, simply want "to be considered as what we areâ€â€