Posted on 04/29/2006 10:08:17 AM PDT by LouAvul
BURBANK, Calif. (AP) - Chris James needed help moving a piano and three dozen boxes of records from his music studio - so instead of corralling some buddies, he rented a truck and hired some labor from outside the local Home Depot.
Within minutes, two Guatemalan men promised $12.50 an hour were in his truck.
If James, 31, worked solo "it would take all day."
The two men finished the job in an hour and a half while James looked on. For hauling a piano and wedging a sofa into his condo, then stacking the boxes in a back room, James owed the men less than $40.
It's the kind of scene replayed daily across the nation.
It was first time James hired day laborers, but it won't be his last.
"Absolutely satisfied," said James. "Relaxing."
The No. 1 employers of day laborers are private homeowners - not construction contractors, not professional landscapers.
"Day labor is not a niche market," said Abel Valenzuela, a UCLA professor and one of three authors of the first national day labor study, which was released in January. "It's now entering different aspects of the national mainstream economy."
Forty-nine percent of day labor employers are homeowners, according to 2,660 laborers interviewed for the study. Contractors were second, at 43 percent. The study also found that three quarters of day laborers were illegal immigrants and most were from Latin America.
There are myriad reasons homeowners hire the men who call themselves "jornaleros." They are a flexible labor pool with no red tape and no overhead. And they'll do backbreaking jobs much cheaper than traditional contractors.
Day laborers like homeowners, too.
Shady contractors routinely stiff them. Not homeowners -the workers know where they live.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.excite.com ...
I am sure they were overlooked at the Home Depot.
Not. Hey. Maybe the guy should have cruised the Mall and Starbucks to get himm some WORKERS hired. Yes. That's the ticket
The article was basically saying -- as far as I can tell --it's like pointing out that part of the drug problem is the suburban couple who smokes a joint before going to the Phil Collins concert...which is accurate.
It's also saying that this is a non-centralized problem. It isn't a couple hundred businesses hiring hundreds of thousands of illegals, but hundreds of thousands of private citizens hiring just a couple of illegals at a time.
I've never hired an illegal. I needed a fence put up, went to the local church, and found a bunch of teens that put up my $500 fencing for $200.
The fence people gave me a figure of $2400. Yes, the kids got the gate wrong, but we can fix that easy. Teens are dying for jobs here and McDonalds only pays $6.50 an hour. It took the 3 of them 3 hours to put up my fence.
They were happy.
ping
To get a roof put on, I went to the local church mens group and hired them for $500 + a case of iced beer (it was a Catholic church).
One day, 5 guys having a fun day of it, church getting a nice donation, and my house was done.
If you formalized that model via church youth groups or the local Food Bank (extend it to include a Job Bank) you'd have the local illegal problem solved overnight.
Lock up and fine the homeowners the same as any business!
p.s.
Roofing isn't fun, even under the best of circumstances. It's one of the two or three worst jobs I've ever done. I HATE TAR!
Niche market is right. There are no day laborers hanging around my Home Depot...there just aren't that many illegals who stay here in Cochise County.
They're all headed for places with better money and more homeowners, I guess...that, and far fewer BP agents!
wouldn't have a problem at all, I have 3 teenage grandsons within 2 blocks, one phone call at $12.50/hour and I'd have 5 young menat my door in due time.
I don't agree with the message from the MSM that Americans or legal aliens/documented workers won't perform work. I think it's bs.
I think the MSM has missed 2 points intentionally:
1. Once the illegals are granted rights and redress in the US Courts, their value will be greatly diminished for employers; and
2. Once a US federal district judge proclaims that illegals have full access to all social benefits, including Social Security, the American taxpayer is going to have to pay dearly for this nonsense.
And the worst is the overall effect will be that it will be a "disadvantage" to be a citizen in the US.
Can't be done.
Rules, regulations, laws, and permits put a stop to all formalizing it. If you want anything done to your house and not involve a contractor, you have to break some law or another.
In Chicago, it is the law.
"There was a guy in our town who paid illegals to rip out his asbestos insulation"
dI do that myself, it's harmless!
I've breathed hundreds of pounds of it 40-50 years ago.
It's a lawyers disease!
I wonder if the homeowners have read about the crimes committed by illegals before they brought them home.
People just don't seem to think, many of these people would not dream of picking up any other stranger on a corner and taking him or her to their home and letting them see what all they have in the way of possessions worth stealing, or letting them see family members that might appeal to them as victims. Yet they buy into the whole "illegals are decent hard working people who only come here to work" many do come here for that reason, but many come here to commit crimes. How would you know the difference?
You are absolutely right. It's the need for instant gratification when it comes to labor. Instead of having the courtesy to arrange for an American citizen to do the work by calling a day or two ahead of time, those who hire illegals wait to the last minute.
They also seem to not even think of them as people. The one time I had the misfortune of being at a home where someone had hired illegal day labor, I was sickened by the neocolonial attitude. Able-bodied people were standing around "supervising," expecting the laborers to work far harder than they would have, and the person who hired them seemed to not want them to even catch their breath because the person was concerned about getting their "money's worth." One of the laborers had Central American gang tattoos, but again the person who had hired them seemed oblivious to the idea that they may pose some danger by knowing where the person lived, who lived there, and what items that person had in her home. I jumped in and started working alongside them, which I think shocked the laborers, the able-bodied "supervisors" and the "employer." But since I had arrived too late to prevent the foolish, lawbreaking move of hiring them, I figured I would do my best to make sure they were sent on their way as soon as possible.
And yes the people who took the piano were Americans.
So, you confine it to non-building stuff -- cleaning out basements/garages, moving, lawn work, etc.
" If you want anything done to your house and not involve a contractor, you have to break some law or another."
BS! The owners can do any construction except to install a new meter panel or make a sewer connection to the city sewer, and that is residental or commercial.
Unfortunately, most HS and college kids, even those who NEED the money, won't get their a$$es out of bed before 1:00!
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