Thread: Loitering day laborers draw police attention

Loitering day laborers draw police attention
by Richard A. Webster
03/26/2007



Day laborers gather at the Lowe’s Home Improvement store on Veterans Memorial Boulevard in Metairie hoping to find work. (Photo by Frank Aymami)

Javier Jallardo arrived in New Orleans Jan. 21 to help organize the Hispanic day laborers assisting in the reconstruction of New Orleans. One month later he found himself in the back of a police paddy wagon with 15 Hispanic workers and another organizer from Maryland.
The Gretna Police Department charged them with trespassing on private property, the parking lot of Home Depot where the day laborers congregate in hopes of being hired by contractors.

They released Jallardo once they realized he was an organizer, but the experience left an impression on him.

“I do the same work in New York so I’m used to it, but here it’s 20 times more intense,” he said. “The workers are part of the community, but they arrest them almost every day. They’re criminalizing these workers.”

Kenner Police Department Chief Steve Carraway said his office fields dozens of calls every day complaining about the migrant workers milling about the parking lots at Lowe’s and Home Depot.

Carraway said the majority of the workers are good, hard working people. But to local residents not used to seeing them gathered en masse, they can be intimidating. And then there are the bad seeds, he said, who drink, get rowdy, litter, relieve themselves in public and harass customers.

If the police department receives a call it has no choice but to respond, and the calls haven’t stopped since the workers first arrived in town after Hurricane Katrina, Carraway said.

“We’re trying to educate the Hispanic community that as (a) law enforcement agency we have to respond to citizen complaints,” Carraway said.

Each morning up to 60 day laborers gather in the parking lots of the Lowe’s and Home Depot stores in the New Orleans area. Typically, 50 percent are hired and the rest go home empty handed, said Jallardo, coordinator for the Day Labor Congress of New Orleans.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, laborer salaries ranged between $13 and $15 per hour but have since dropped to between $6 and $10.

Workers are drawn to Lowe’s and Home Depot because they know contractors purchasing materials can easily find them.

Jallardo said the Lowe’s in Metairie is not happy with the workers, but arrests have stopped since he arrived in January.

The Lowe’s on Elysian Fields Avenue pushed the workers to a nearby gas station. Jallardo worked out a deal with the gas station owner that the workers would stay no later than 4:30 p.m. and clean up after themselves.

Lowe’s spokesman Chris Ahearn said the company hired security guards to patrol their New Orleans locations and the problem has lessened to a degree.

The Home Depot has proven more problematic and aggressive, Jallardo said.

The Kenner location posted “No Loitering” signs and had workers found on the premises arrested daily.

The workers now gather in the parking lot of a neighboring business, Carnita’s, a Honduran restaurant. Jallardo said because the workers spend so much money in the restaurant, the owner has no problem with their presence.

Home Depot spokesman Ron DeFeo said the company is aware of the problem in New Orleans and they have a non-solicitation policy at all their stores. But there is little they can do by themselves, he said.

“The existence of day laborer issues are beyond Home Depot’s control,” DeFeo said.

The workers that don’t gather at Carnita’s stand on the public sidewalk where they continue to be harassed by Kenner police who threaten them with calls to federal immigration officials, Jallardo said. The department is investigating his claims.

“The workers won’t leave because the contractors are coming back and they need the money and the jobs, and the community needs the workers to rebuild. That’s the reality,” Jallardo said.

Jallardo said he would like to meet with the police and Kenner city officials to establish designated areas where the workers can gather without fear of harassment or arrest. The ideal solution would be the creation of day labor centers, he said.

Day labor centers are like drive-throughs for migrant labor, said Ann Maurer, senior assistant attorney for the city of Glendale, Calif., home to one of 65 day labor center locations across the country.

The Glendale center is run by Catholic Charities, funded by the city at $80,000 per year and has a daily employment rate of 80 percent, Maurer said.

The day laborer leaders maintain law and order and self-policing the group based on a code of conduct created by the police, the city and the workers.

This would eliminate the cost of jailing migrant workers and free up the police to focus on serious crimes, Jallardo said.

Carraway said he would be in favor of anything that would put an end to the constant stream of calls involving complaints against the workers.

Emile Lafourcade, public information officer for Kenner Mayor Ed Muniz said this is a “police issue” and if day laborers want to find employment they can go to the Department of Labor. If they are undocumented, “they should get documented,” Lafourcade said. When asked about day labor centers in other cities, Lafourcade suggested laborers “should go to those cities and avail themselves of their services.”

The construction industry added 559,000 more jobs in 2006 and 372,000 of those jobs went to Hispanic workers, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C.

Without the day laborers construction in New Orleans would slow to a crawl and so would sales at Lowe’s and Home Depot, Jallardo said.

“But they would never admit that.”•


http://www.neworleanscitybusiness.com/v ... ecID=18609

Jallardo said he would like to meet with the police and Kenner city officials to establish designated areas where the workers can gather without fear of harassment or arrest. The ideal solution would be the creation of day labor centers, he said

How about you gather in front of the ICE office and save them the bother of rounding your illegal ass up!
Why can't we have Americans re-build New Orleans?
Greedy contractors...

Tuesday » March 27 » 2007

National Guard helping patrol New Orleans
Nagin seeks extension for troopers

Canadian Press


Tuesday, March 27, 2007


BATON ROUGE, La. - Mayor Ray Nagin said Monday that he wants the National Guard and state police to stay in New Orleans through the end of the summer to help fight crime, though he'll need a fresh commitment from Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

Nagin wants Blanco to keep the 60 state troopers and 300 National Guardsmen in the city past the June 30 deadline to help the depleted police department patrol the streets of hurricane-and crime-devastated New Orleans.

"If we get through this summer, and we get through it in pretty good shape, I think we can start to wean off of the National Guard and particularly the state troopers," Nagin told reporters after a speech to the Press Club of Baton Rouge.

A Blanco spokeswoman said the governor has not determined whether to extend the deadline.

"Closer to that time, the governor will re-evaluate the situation with Mayor Nagin . . . to discuss what the needs are," spokeswoman Marie Centanni said.

Three people were fatally shot in the city over the weekend, the first killings in about two weeks, city police spokeswoman Bambi Hall said. The city has had 40 killings this year, she said.

Its rate of 96 killings per 100,000 people give it the highest homicide rate in the country, according to a Tulane University study.

© The Canadian Press 2007








Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world ... 20&k=78865

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, laborer salaries ranged between $13 and $15 per hour but have since dropped to between $6 and $10.

So illegal aliens are depressing their own wages by as much as 50%.

The construction industry added 559,000 more jobs in 2006 and 372,000 of those jobs went to Hispanic workers, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C.

May every illegal alien hired in 2006 loose his job in 2007 which is entirely possible with the housing slump now.