Thread: Safe haven (for illegal aliens)

($10 an hour + lunch isn't a low wage for day work, i know many americans who would take that). Casa Freehold is AIDING AND ABETING ILLEGAL ALIENS. mi casa no es su casa.

http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic ... 50357/1003

Safe haven
Casa Freehold has emerged as an advocate for illegal immigrants, earning both praise for guarding workers' civil rights and criticism for protecting workers who are here illegally.
Home News Tribune Online 05/15/06
By MICHAEL L. DIAMOND
GANNETT NEW JERSEY
Last month, as illegal immigrants gathered at Freehold Borough Hall to call attention to their contributions to the region's economy, Rita Dentino thought for a second about why she devotes 16 hours a day to Casa Freehold.



She could have picked a more lucrative career than to advocate for people who have little money. But there she was last week, at once organizing the demonstration, taking calls on her cell phone and explaining how she got here.

"Any time, in any place in history, when there's a group of people being treated badly, it behooves us to look at it, step up and do something about it," said Dentino, a 61-year-old Howell resident and a member of the Casa Freehold steering committee. "It could just as well be us tomorrow."

Dentino and her fellow members have turned Casa Freehold into a program that labor activists say is helping illegal immigrants obtain basic civil rights, whether it is ensuring workers get paid at least minimum wage or seeing to it that workers receive medical care at local hospitals.

Despite the group's work, Casa Freehold isn't held in esteem by everyone, particularly those who say it only aids people who have broken the law by coming to the United States illegally.

Casa Freehold emerged in 2003 after two groups — residents who support immigrant rights and the day laborers themselves — came together to fight a decision by borough officials to close the muster zone, an area on Throckmorton Street where employers hired workers for the day, Dentino said.

Dentino said the workers were vulnerable to exploitation. So the group worked with religious leaders to set up shop at at the former Second Baptist Church (now the New Beginnings Agape Christian Center) for three months until the borough agreed to reopen the muster zone.

Since then, Dentino, who taught English to Cuban refugees as a seventh grader in the 1950s, has been in the middle of the immigrants' struggle. She said she wakes up each day at 6 a.m., picks up bread for the workers donated by Panera Bread Co., gets to the muster zone at about 7:30 a.m. and works — teaching English, staying on top of problems, accompanying workers to the hospital — until 10 p.m.

At the muster zone, about 80 laborers sign up for work each day, which guarantees an orderly process. Employers choose workers based on whose turn it is, rather than the tallest or the strongest, she said.

Casa Freehold has taught the workers how to negotiate for their daily pay. The going rate is $10 an hour, plus lunch. Workers give $1 from their earnings to Casa Freehold, Dentino said.

"It wants us all to be united, to work together and to look out for the well-being for everyone," said Antonio Hernandez, 48, who has been in the United States for 15 years, and is here illegally. Dentino translated.

Casa Freehold isn't alone. Janice Fine, a professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, said she has found about 140 worker centers in 31 states nationwide that are providing a safe haven for illegal immigrants.

The centers help workers serve as a watchdog. They tell workers about their rights, so the workers are paid what they are owed. They offer other services such as English and computer literacy classes, Fine said.

"In the absence of any federal policy that makes sense, municipalities have to deal with this and negotiate solutions, town by town, city by city," Fine said, comparing worker centers to settlement houses in the late 1800s and early 1900s, where immigrants learned skills they needed to survive in America.

"What's really important about these organizations is they help bring the stakeholders together — the newcomers, local businesses, residents, police, and help them work together to find a workable solution so everybody feels their rights and needs are protected."

Some observers, however, said worker centers only feed into the growing problem of employers hiring illegal immigrants — a trend that some say depresses wages, drains hospitals and schools of resources and leaves millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.

Casa Freehold doesn't check workers' legal documents. But to get a job, workers are supposed to present their employers with two forms of identification — a driver's license and a Social Security card, for example. But the system has broken down, said John Keeley, spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C. group that calls for fewer immigrants but a better climate for those who are here.

Immigrants have easy access to fraudulent Social Security cards through the underground market, Keeley said, and the Social Security Administration has done little the past two years to crack down on the process.

Are worker centers making the best out of a bad situation? Keeley doesn't think so.

"It's a direct violation of U.S. labor law, because it's been illegal to hire an illegal alien in this country since 1986," Keeley said. "I don't think aiding and abetting lawbreaking is making good of any problem."

Dentino, a former social worker who works weekends for a photographer to make extra money, presses on without much public support. But the immigrants' stories tear at her.

They have spent thousands of dollars on harrowing journeys from Latin America to find work that will pay them enough to care for their families back home, she said. They do blue-collar work without complaint, and they keep getting hired, she said.

"It's going to continue whether people say they want it or don't want it," Dentino said. "It's not going to disappear."

NoIllegalsAllowed
I've moved this to "news" so that everyone can see this, especially those of us from NJ & NY

Ok

"Any time, in any place in history, when there's a group of people being treated badly, it behooves us to look at it, step up and do something about it," said Dentino, a 61-year-old Howell resident and a member of the Casa Freehold steering committee. "It could just as well be us tomorrow."

Oh it will most definitely be us tomorrow if things stay as they are, however I seriously doubt we will get all the handouts and help the illegals are getting.

Casa Break-the-law is more like it. These people should be arrested.