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But Renee Bernier, the City Council president, says the market for unskilled labor with limited English is gone.

Bernier, who has a security business, says that when she tried to hire 30 Somalis at $8 an hour to hold "stop and slow" signs at road construction sites, the few who showed interest wanted to work only from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. She was further irked when some Somalis sought low-interest loans for businesses downtown — without good credit or a track record — under an obscure city program.

"How the hell do they find out about this stuff?" she asks.