Day Laborers [ILLEGALS] to Get Off-Street Pickup Site

The Northern Virginia Journal ^ | 5/1/03 | Tom Steinfeldt

[chambley1]

Day laborers might soon leave the south Arlington street corner where they wait early each morning to rush prospective employers' trucks in search of work.

Arlington County plans to open a $100,000 pavilion by June on county land for the workers to congregate between 6 a.m. and noon Monday through Saturday. The facility, to include a drinking fountain and portable bathroom, will be located on South 27th Street at Shirlington Road, just a block from the area where workers currently pick up jobs.

``It definitely is seen as a positive change," said Diego Grajales, executive director of the Shirlington Employment and Education Center. The center will manage pavilion operations. ``I would see that there will be no problems."

The change aims to alleviate minor traffic hang-ups, address neighborhood complaints of loitering workers and provide more organized conditions for workers to get hired. The move also corresponds with improvements planned for the laborers' hang-out, the trailhead of the W&OD Railroad Regional Park.

The nonprofit Employment and Education Center helps connect laborers with employers who meet at its building located a few hundred yards away from the pavilion site. It provides a more orderly manner of finding work than the often chaotic situation found on the street, where a throng of workers huddle around construction vans in hopes of being hired.

But upward of 100 laborers per day, most of them Hispanic men, opt to find work by grabbing a ride off the street instead of at the center.

By managing the pavilion, the center aims to increase the number of day laborers who utilize its resources, Grajales said.

About 2,500 laborers and 500 employers are registered in the center's database, which is used to link the most qualified workers with available jobs, he said.

The county will use signs to advertise the location change from the street corner to the pavilion, and employers will have access to an adjacent parking lot to pick up workers, Assistant County Manager Dotty Dake said.

``We anticipate there being awareness of this happening," she said.

Laborers who fail to find work by noon will be able to head to county parkland adjacent to the pavilion. Currently, workers linger along the street corner throughout the day, creating what some residents consider a neighborhood blight.

Adding the pavilion helps begin to remedy problems associated with day laborers, said Dr. Alfred O. Taylor, president of the Nauck Civic Association.

``It's only the tip of the iceberg for what you do with day laborers," he said.

The pavilion will locate laborers away from the immediate residential neighborhood in Nauck, helping appease community concerns, Dake said.

``I would not strike it down, I think it's a good start," Taylor said. But more needs to be done to address concerns related to day laborers such as centralizing more human and educational services, which could also save tax money, Taylor said. The community perception of the Employment and Education Center as solely a Latino project also needs to be improved, he said.

``[The pavilion] is not really solving the problem," he said. ``It's putting a Band-Aid on the problem."

[chambley1]

Arlington County Board

countyboard@co.arlington.va.us

[cgk]

I learned the hard way about 8 years ago not to drive a truck past these guys in the Home Depot parking lot. They MOB you, even if you are a woman with a baby and no one else is in the vehicle. It was a melee, and only when I pounded on the horn did some of them take a look inside and SEE I WAS NOT HIRING! They yanked the two who made it into the bed of the truck out, thankfully and I drove off in tears.

[Onelifetogive]

This doesn't solve the WHOLE problem. It is still very difficult and dangerous for the workers to get all the way from Mexico to the pavillion. That should be the next step.

Air conditioned buses...maybe unsold airline seats could be purchased by taxpayers for the "dayworkers" safety and comfort in getting from Mexico to Arlington. And there are so many sharp edges on the fence they have to cut or climb. We need safer fencing materials along the border so that "migrants" won't get cuts and scratches.

[Tacis]

What agency is responsible for confirming the right of each of these folks to work in the US? What agency is now responsible for arresting those who are here legally, and deporting them back to whence they came?

[snopercod]

In my area, there is an Exxon station where the day laborers wait for work. They don't mob people, and are very polite.

[humblegunner]

Ping.

[hot august night]

How awful for you. They should all be deported, and the military be put on the border, once and for all.

[FITZ]

They MOB you,

It's actually very sad that people are so desperate ---in spite of coming from a country so rich in resources and where there is plenty of wealth but completely in the hands of so few. Of course the elite over there want us to "solve" the problem by taking in as many millions as they care to send us ---just so they never have to change their corrupt system.

[End Times Sentinel]

It is still very difficult and dangerous for the workers to get all the way from Mexico to the pavillion. That should be the next step.

 

But you plan doesn't address what to do with them when they arrive.  I could see putting them up in an unsold luxury hotel room (tax payers would be happy to subsidize room service or meals at the hotel restaurant), but what if there was a convention in town and a shortage of hotel rooms?  Maybe it would be smarter to build homes for them.  The new projects here in Philadelphia were constructed for the paltry sum of $286,000, so I'm sure it could be pulled off for just less than twice that in Northern Virginia.

Actually, the building homes would have two positive effects:  One, it would provide work for the laborers, and two, it would encourage them to send for their wives, kids, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, cousins, neighbors, etc. which in turn would increase diversity in the area. 

Owl_Eagle

" WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH"

[skeeter]

Our local Home Depot has to employ a security service to ensure the "day laborers" not get too aggressive in offering their services. They tend to behave like NY squeegie men if not watched.

[Joe Hadenuf]

I guess the rumor we've been spreading in California is working.. In the last year we have been putting out the word to illegals that places like Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee etc, welcome illegals with open arms......

[Desecrated]

Good stuff! But what if they don't want to work? Surely we can provide them social security, right?

BTW, the word "owl" has been deemed offensive and will no longer be able to used in any public school textbook. Is "eagle" next?

[hot august night]

"I think I'll move to Maine..."

Better stay away from Lewiston. The Somalis have taken it over, courtesy of the ongoing giveaway of our country by Uncle Sam.

[hot august night]

Type in the "Find in Forum" search the words "Somali immigrants" and scroll way down...you will find a lot of interesting articles on this subject.

They are legal, all right -- the government relocated them to the U.S. because of their "refugee" status. Many Somalis voluntarily relocated to Lewiston because they openly stated in the press that the welfare benefits were the best there, after conducting much research. The Somalis are a huge strain on the city budget now because they are eating up all the public resources, and there is big unemployment in Maine. A lot of the Somalis are single women with a lot of kids, and are now getting welfare, free housing, free medical, free everything. Most don't work, and feel a sense of entitlement.

[FITZ]

Many of the people from Mexico around here have never worked a day in their life ----lots come over, have their babies at taxpayer expense, leave the hospital and head right on over to the welfare office to pick up their welfare check. They'll never go back but many will never get an education or learn English ---and so the welfare check is much better than any kind of work they can get. At least the ones who come over to work are a bit more respectable ---but there really isn't enough day labor kind of work for as many illegals as we have coming in.

[FreeLass]

Why are Federal agents not at these pick-ups arresting the people who hire these illegals and arresting the illegals.

I guess, because the Americans in this neighborhood, stand by and continue to allow this unlawfullness.

They should be calling Federal agents to be there to arrest these people.

They should be video-taping the license plates of those who pick them up and reporting them to authorities.

Americans in this neighborhood should be uniting and swarming on their government offices to arrest and prosecute these criminals.

[Brian Allen]

<< What agency is responsible for confirming the right of each of these folks to work in the US? What agency is now responsible for arresting those who are here illegally, and deporting them back to whence they came? >>

An agency of the Administration of United States of America's President and Armed Forces Commander-In-Chief, George Walker Bush.

An agency, need I add, that is in total derelection of its every responsibility -- and which allows the criminal alien colonization of America to increase at the rate of 3,000 nett invaders per day!