Laboring over laborers in New York

“The thorny issue of where day laborers can wait to get work doesn’t get easier, whether it’s in the Putnam village of Brewster or Westchester’s Mamaroneck.

What unites the workers, and the villages where they want to seek short-term hire, is easy access to nearby train lines and longstanding custom ”” “everybody” knows that these are the places where individuals looking for cheap labor can hire often-undocumented immigrants to do day jobs.

The fact that the laborers get work despite the resentment of residents and business owners near the locations where they hang out has been a sore point. It is festering all the more in the very active national debate over immigration rights and law-breaking. Through it, some local officials have done their best to address a situation largely out of their control; others have exacerbated tensions, leading, in Mamaroneck’s case, to a federal lawsuit.”

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