Free Republic

PHOENIX (Reuters) - At the end of a day of driving around Phoenix in his battered Ford truck scavenging for boxes, Mexican day laborer Jesus Aquilar sells the load to a recycler for pennies a pound, and tosses the yellow receipt with others on his dashboard. Now that President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress have begun a push for comprehensive immigration reform, he wants to ensure he will benefit. When the time comes - if it does - to apply for legal status, the stash of dog-eared receipts could be a paper trail to a hoped-for life out of...

Hours after the savage murder of young mom Larisa Prikhodko, 28, and her mother, Tatyana Prikhodko, in the mom's Sheepshead Bay apartment, Tatyana's live-in boyfriend was caught on surveillance video leaving the premises with two suitcases. Police say Nikolai Rakossi hightailed it to JFK Airport and flew to Moscow on a one-way ticket. The NYPD and the State Department are working with Russian officials to negotiate getting him back, but one law enforcement official tells the Daily News, "If he has money or influential ties there, he's gone. They won't send him back." Rakossi, a 55-year-old Russian national who was...

It's tough out there for day laborers as jobs dwindle with the slumping economy. The workers outside a Home Depot in north San Bernardino say fewer contractors and homeowners have been driving up looking for gardeners, plumbers, painters and carpenters. Salvadoran illegal immigrant Juan Rosales says he's lucky now to earn $150 a week doing construction work, about half what he was making. Mexico immigrant Roberto Panuco, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, says, "We're becoming desperate." He's traveled back to his hometown in northern Mexico to do some farming a few months a year because of the grim job...

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty says the city has an obligation to provide "high-quality customer service" to illegal aliens, which undoubtedly comes as a shock to those legal residents who sometimes question the efficiency of customer service. This is after you have pressed one for English instead of two for Spanish and entered the bureaucratic maze that leads to a plethora of disembodied voices before speaking to an actual living person who transfers you to yet another living being until, somewhere in the process, someone on the other end taps the wrong button and you lose your connection, which means you...

A day laborer's claim that he was hired under false pretenses, kidnapped and abandoned in Tijuana was false, an investigator for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said in a statement Wednesday. Jose Felix Gutierrez left for Mexico on his own May 9 but told his sister he and others had been kidnapped, handcuffed and forcibly removed from the country, said a statement by Detective Jesse Venegas. Gutierrez had been upset over the death of a fellow day laborer in a traffic accident last month at a popular informal day-labor pickup place at Arrow Route and Grove Avenue in Rancho...

Dozens of day laborers who have gathered for years in a Gaithersburg parking lot must find a new place to seek work beginning today because the lot's owners have asked police to shut down the site. The lot, owned by S&B Partnership, is at 117 North Frederick Ave. between a shopping complex and Grace United Methodist Church. Laborers had been allowed to loiter there daily until 9:30 a.m.

Armando Navarro, the longtime Inland activist for immigrant and Latino rights, is in Mexico today, deep into at least his third political battle this year. "We're going into a very precarious, explosive, volatile situation," said the UCR ethnic studies professor, who is in Mexico City protesting the narrow loss by a candidate in July's Mexican presidential election. Earlier this summer, he fought against a San Bernardino city initiative that would have made it illegal to hire or rent homes to undocumented immigrants. The initiative failed to reach the ballot after a judge ruled it had too few signatures.

FRISCO, Texas -- A Frisco day laborer is behind bars, charged in the murder of a man who wanted to paint him nude. Police said the alleged victim, Enrique Rodriguez, 62, solicited the suspect, Mario Alegria, 17, to pose nude for him while he painted or sketched the worker at his far North Dallas apartment. The alleged crime scene was inside the Rodriguez's apartment, where police said he used to take young males to model nude and paid them an hourly rate.

Gaithersburg officials said yesterday that a proposal for a day-laborer center for illegal aliens has been further delayed because landlords, merchants and other residents say it would bring crime and other problems into their neighborhood.

LAGUNA BEACH - A day-labor site along Laguna Canyon Road will remain in operation for at least another year after the city reached a lease agreement with the California Department of Transportation. City Manager Ken Frank revealed the news Tuesday night to 100 people packed inside the City Council chambers and was met with applause and boos.

Caltrans ordered a longtime Laguna Beach day labor center to close Friday, saying it was illegally operating on state property, land that the state didn't even know it owned. The state Department of Transportation issued the order after a Laguna Beach resident who is a member of the Minuteman Project border patrol group checked property records and brought the information forward as part of a protest against the center.

BURBANK – Chris James needed help moving a piano and three dozen boxes of records from his music studio, but instead of corralling some buddies he rented a truck and hired day laborers outside the local Home Depot. The two Guatemalan men finished the job in an hour and a half, hauling a piano and wedging a sofa into his condo, then stacking the boxes in a back room, for less than $40. It was first time James hired day laborers but it won't be his last. “Absolutely satisfied,” said James, 31. The No. 1 employers of day laborers, many...

Tobar estimated that, at the Shirlington center, an average of half the people seeking work there have some type of legal immigration status.

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y., Nov. 21 - The railroad station here looked different on Monday. The crowd of 20 or so Hispanic day laborers was gone, having abandoned the sidewalk in front of the station where the workers had long congregated on weekdays to wait for a job to drive up.

The two Ecuadorean day laborers were standing outside the East Hampton train station yesterday at 7:15 a.m. hoping for a daily job in construction, landscaping, painting or anything. But thanks to an aggressive campaign by the East Hampton Village Police Department aimed at cracking down on undocumented workers and the people who hire them, they were out of luck.

The issue of illegal aliens is reaching the parody stage, if only because politicians, communities and activists are stuck between elementary laws and their sense of humanity. The Herndon Town Council has decided to set up a facility in response to the day laborers who have overtaken a 7-Eleven near the Dulles Toll Road. The day laborers, some illegal, are being rewarded with taxpayer money because of their bad behavior. If you are of a certain age in America, you probably are puzzled. For if you attended Catholic school back in the day, bad behavior often resulted in a ruler...

Religious and political leaders say changes would end the appeal of border watchers A group of religious and political leaders made an urgent call for immigration reform Tuesday while also denouncing the Minutemen. The leaders, including Catholic Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza and City Councilmen Gordon Quan and Adrian Garcia, said a congressional program allowing workers to come here legally would eliminate the need for groups like the Minutemen to monitor illegal immigrants. They called on area members of Congress to take the lead on the issue. "We have a serious problem here in our community and across the United States,"...

Richard Gutierrez, U.S. Department of Justice..... DAY LABORER COMMUNITY TASK FORCE REPORT TO PRINCE WILLIAM BOARD OF COUNTY SUPERVISORS April 18, 2005 DAY LABORER COMMUNITY TASK FORCE TO: Honorable Prince William Board of County Supervisors FROM: Stu Christiano, Chairman Day Laborer Community Task Force DATE: April 18, 2005 RE: Task Force Report Recent events have identified increased community concerns regarding day laborers and their efforts to obtain work in the Woodbridge community. The Day Laborer Community Task Force (DLCTF), established November 23, 2004, offers the following recommendations to mitigate community concerns that have arisen in connection with the gathering of...

A rally supporting Redondo Beach Police for arresting day laborers illegally soliciting work on public land is being planned. "We are coming to Redondo Beach in response to the judge's restriction on the Police Department and city officials," stated a member of the Save Our State organization that is planning the rally. ------- Save Our State is a grass-roots political group that does not feel the government is doing enough to curb illegal immigration, states their literature. www.saveourstate.org

Save Our License - Save Our State Event When: Sunday, January 2, 2005 Time: 10:30 a.m. Location: Redondo Beach Civic Center 415 Diamond Street Corner of Diamond St. & Pacific Coast Hwy Petition Gathering for Save Our License Flyer Promotion for Save Our State Rally Flyers, Petitions and Coffee Provided Email: www.saveourstate.org for more information