News (Noticias) Tagged ‘day laborers’

CONTACT:  Maria Archuleta, ACLU national, (917) 892-9180 or (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org
Alessandra Soler Meetze, ACLU of Arizona, (602) 418-5499
Laura Rodriguez, MALDEF, (310) 956-2425; lrodriguez@maldef.org

PHOENIX – The U.S District Court of Arizona today blocked the town of Cave Creek, Arizona from enforcing an anti-solicitation ordinance that infringes on the free speech rights of day laborers in that town. The order ensures that day laborers will be able to exercise their constitutional rights by expressing their availability to work in public areas.

“The court ordered defendants to stop enforcing an unconstitutional law and allow day laborers to express their willingness to work by peaceably standing on the side of the road,” said Mónica M. Ramírez, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project, which is lead counsel in the case. “The Constitution protects everyone in this country and today’s final ruling is a victory for the free speech rights not only of day laborers but of everyone in the town of Cave Creek.”

In late March, the ACLU, the ACLU of Arizona and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) filed a lawsuit against the town of Cave Creek and the town’s mayor and deputy mayor on behalf of Hector Lopez, Leopoldo Ibarra and Ismael Ibarra, three longtime day laborers and Arizona residents who in the past successfully solicited employment in Cave Creek by standing in public areas, peaceably indicating to occupants of passing vehicles their availability for temporary employment. The district court issued a preliminary injunction stopping the town from enforcing the ordinance in June.

After June’s preliminary injunction, the town of Cave Creek agreed not to enforce the anti-solicitation ordinance and to accept a final ruling blocking the law. In its ruling today, the court ordered that the ordinance not be enforced for the same reasons set forth in its June order, in which it stressed that other district courts in the Ninth Circuit have uniformly found similar anti-solicitation ordinances unconstitutional.

“Across the country, courts have found that these local anti-solicitation ordinances, which are merely pretext for targeting day laborers and other Latinos, don’t pass constitutional muster,” said Kristina Campbell, MALDEF staff attorney. “Before other states and local municipalities consider passing similar discriminatory and unlawful ordinances, they should remember that these laws will fail under legal scrutiny and open them up to costly litigation.”

Alessandra Soler Meetze, Director of the ACLU of Arizona said, “The courts have continually found that day laborers and others who wish to exercise their First Amendment right to solicit employment in public places have the right to do so without fear that they will be discriminated against simply because of the color of their skin or because they are perceived to be foreign born.”

In September 2007, the Cave Creek Town Council passed an anti-solicitation ordinance that restricted free speech by prohibiting solicitation of employment, business or contributions from the occupants of vehicles when standing on or next to a street or highway. The ordinance went so far as to bar solicitation from occupants in vehicles that are lawfully parked in public areas.

Before the town passed the ordinance, day laborers – who are usually hired by homeowners to perform services like gardening, moving, light construction, housework and painting – solicited work in public areas.

While the town was apparently motivated by a desire to target immigration, the ordinance applied to everyone in Cave Creek regardless of their nationality or immigration status. The ACLU argued that individuals, regardless of their immigration status, have the right to free speech which includes peaceably soliciting employment in public areas.

Lawyers on the case include Ramírez and Cecillia D. Wang of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project; Pochoda of the ACLU of Arizona; and Campbell and Cynthia Valenzuela of MALDEF.

The court’s permanent injunction and final ruling in Lopez, et al vs. Town of Cave Creek, et. al., is available online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/discrim/36359lgl20080808.html“

Here, he waits — sometimes up to eight hours — in hopes that a passing pickup truck or van en route to a job site will stop and offer him work, even for a fraction of what he earned only a year ago.

Day laborers such as Javier once powered South Florida’s building boom. For almost three years, he worked six days a week, making about $100 a day on construction sites from Miami-Dade to Palm Beach. The work helped him rent an apartment, feed his family and send money back to his southern Mexican village, where he bought a small plot of land for a home he hopes to build.”*

Although few immigrant day laborers realize it, they have the same right as any worker to sue employers for unpaid back wages, even if they are here illegally. In recent months, advocacy groups in the Washington region have been helping such workers file administrative claims and lawsuits, and in some cases they have won.

For José, whose last name is being withheld because he is not in the United States legally, a District superior court judge ruled in February that his claim was more credible than his employer’s. “*

Latino activists, workers and Portland City Council members celebrated the opening of a government-sponsored center for day laborers this afternoon.

The center, for now a trailer and an awning inside a parking lot owned by the Portland Development Commission, offers day laborers a safe and centralized place to seek work in landscaping and construction.

City leaders and activists are hoping they’ll congregate there starting Monday morning instead of their usual gathering spots — the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Interstate 84 and Southeast 6th Avenue and East Burnside Street.”*

Say adios to machismo. Hispanic male immigrants are now among a new generation of men who are conquering cooking, cleaning and shopping as necessity breeds invention. For them, a quick call home provides comforting advice for brands and products that will make life as a single guy, or soltero, livable.

Latinos who come to this country to work as day laborers in construction, landscaping and restaurant jobs often find themselves on their own with many learning to cook meals, clean house and shop for the first time, according to a recent story in The Washington Post. “*

One year ago today, a local day-laborer hiring site opened its doors in a tense atmosphere. In the initial weeks, a swarm of angry residents would set up lawn chairs across the street every morning and glare at Hispanic workers walking into the center.

“We didn’t have a lot of initial momentum opening this place because a lot of the workers were scared,” said Mariana Boneo, executive director of the Hispanic Resource Center, the group that runs the site. “It really deterred the workers from coming here.”"*

Xenon Pictures has acquired North American rights to “Amexicano”, starring 2008 Grammy(TM) Nominee Jennifer Pena, in a mid-six figure deal.

“Amexicano”, helmed by Matthew Bonifacio, made its world premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and most recently won the Grand Jury Prize (THX Award) for Best Narrative Feature at the 2008 Sonoma Valley Film Festival. The award jury was comprised of Kirk Honeycutt (Chief Film Critic, Hollywood Reporter), Michael Jones (Managing Editor, Film Festivals, Variety) and Chris Gore (Founder, Film Threat).

The film also stars Manny Perez (”Bella”, “El Cantante”), newcomer Raul Castillo, and Carmine Famiglietti, who also wrote the film. Famiglietti and Bonifacio also served as producers through their production company, The Brooklyn-Queens Experiment, in association with Madison Park Pictures. “Amexicano” was executive produced by Cesar A. Baez and Stephen Ashkinos. Xenon Pictures is eyeing a spring/summer release.

“We wanted to put a face on the undocumented day laborers in America,” said Bonifacio. “With the coming presidential election, immigration is obviously going to be a major issue. We feel ‘Amexicano’ allows audiences to look at the face of an illegal alien and decide for themselves if our nation is making the right choices,” said Famiglietti.

“The political aspects of the film are certainly intriguing and mirror (in a very different way) those that made ‘A Day Without a Mexican’ such a success for us,” said Xenon’s Chief Operating Officer Steve Housden, “but just like with ‘A Day Without a Mexican’, ‘Amexicano’ is enjoyable entertainment, rather than bare political discourse.”

Bonifacio and Famiglietti’s first feature, “Lbs.”, made its world premiere at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The Shutter Speed Group negotiated on behalf of the production company.”*

The deportations have sent a shock wave through the large and fast-growing network of Latino evangelical churches in Arizona and across the nation, many of which are filled with undocumented immigrants.

Local pastors fearful of stepped-up immigration enforcement are canceling retreats north of the Phoenix area. Some national church leaders are concerned the deportations could open the door for immigration raids at churches.

The Prescott deportations echoed incidents in the Valley that have raised tensions between church leaders and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. A crime sweep by sheriff’s deputies in September resulted in arrests of undocumented day laborers near a church sanctuary in Cave Creek, and another on Good Friday led to arrests of illegal immigrants in east Phoenix.”*

“Unfortunately, the history of the United States as popularized on TV or classrooms seems like it was made by Disney,” explains journalist Roberto Lovato, who’s written on the subject for diverse publications like The Nation, Los Angeles Times and more, and also served as executive director of the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), one of America’s largest immigrant rights organizations. “It’s not real. We talk a lot about the Holocaust, but we don’t talk about Native Americans. There’s no Holocaust museum for them. We don’t have an Ellis Island for the black slaves. Most of the slaves came through Sullivan’s Island, and it should be a monument, but it’s not. A sense of history is profoundly and institutionally lacking, and so you’re going to have a population that looks at this treatment of immigrants as natural.”

Such a permissive attitude toward criminalization has led to everything from the boom in the immigrant security complex, which has turned into a billion-dollar bonanza, to the tacit endorsement of militias like The Minuteman Project, whose border patrols and presence at immigrant rights protests and rallies has caused no shortage of damage and controversy.

But for every so-called Minuteman who has showed up to inflate patriotism or disrupt undocumented day laborers at work, it seems there have been many more immigration rights supporters, including groups such as The Center for Community Change, The Coalition For Humane Immigrant Rights, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, International ANSWER, Brown Berets, and many more. That imbalance mirrors the national battle over immigration criminalization; indeed, most election-year polls have shown that the public doesn’t rate immigration as a higher priority for candidates than other topics, such as the economy or the Iraq war.”*

It wasn’t easy launching the Latino Union, which works on behalf of day laborers. And it hasn’t gotten any easier four years after the agency opened a small storefront at 3416 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. in the Albany Park neighborhood so the workers do not have to stand on street corners to get hired. Chicago also has four main hiring corners for day laborers.

Yet the problem faced by Aranda, executive director of the Latino Union, pales in comparison to other places across the U.S. where a groundswell of anti-immigrant sentiment has led to demonstrations, counterdemonstrations, legal battles and the closing of some centers.

Indeed, day labor supporters worry that many of the nation’s 60 centers like Chicago’s, as well as the more than 1,000 street corners nationwide where day laborers gather, will face problems in the coming months as rising unemployment and anti-illegal-immigrant attitudes congeal into a potent brew.”*

The housing boom made construction one of San Joaquin County’s fastest-growing industries from 2002 to 2005, according to a 2006 California Employment Development Department report.

It’s a different story now. The residential building halt and mounting foreclosure crisis, the latter of which has displaced many San Joaquin County families, also have left a shortage of work for Martin and other laborers who once built and landscaped those homes.

A number of those workers - mainly the undocumented portion - head every day to Stockton’s Gateway Plaza to solicit jobs. The workers historically gathered on the block at the bottom of the El Dorado Street exit from the Crosstown Freeway to solicit daily jobs.”*

*From: http://www.recordnet.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Adolfo Reyes recalls walking on a sidewalk in Farmingville Sunday morning. He remembers greeting several other Mexican day laborers.

His memory goes blank at that point. The next thing he remembers is briefly opening his eyes in an ambulance, then in an emergency room. He couldn’t move his right arm or his right leg. Blood was flowing from his side, his elbow, his calf.

Doctors told Reyes, 42, that he flew up in the air, bounced on the roof of a car and landed on the ground when a hit-and-run driver barreled into him on County Road 83. Now Reyes is trying to figure out whether he was the victim of a reckless driver who panicked and left the scene, or if he was the target of a hate crime.”*

*From: http://www.newsday.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

CONTACT: Maria Archuleta, ACLU, (212) 519-7808 or 549-2666; media@aclu.org
Alessandra Soler Meetze, ACLU-AZ, (602) 650-1854 or 602-418-5499 (cell)
Laura Rodriguez, MALDEF, (310) 956-2425; lrodriguez@maldef.org

PHOENIX – A local Arizona anti-solicitation ordinance targeting day laborers violates the free speech rights of individuals who express their availability to work by standing in public areas, charged the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Arizona and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) in a lawsuit filed today in U.S. District Court in Phoenix.

The coalition filed the lawsuit against the town of Cave Creek and the town’s mayor and deputy mayor on behalf of Hector Lopez, Leopoldo Ibarra and Ismael Ibarra, three longtime day laborers and Arizona residents who in the past successfully solicited employment in Cave Creek by standing in public areas, peaceably indicating to occupants of passing vehicles their availability for temporary employment. Lopez, Ibarra and Ibarra currently wish to make their availability for day labor known but fear that they will be cited or arrested for violating the ordinance.

“This ordinance unfairly and unlawfully singles out and punishes day laborers by taking away their right to free speech,” said Mónica Ramírez, a staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “That’s just not the way America works. The Constitution protects all people in this country, and all persons have the right to communicate freely - particularly in public areas - regardless of their background.”

In September 2007, the Cave Creek Town Council passed an anti-solicitation ordinance that restricts free speech by prohibiting solicitation of employment, business or contributions from the occupants of vehicles when standing on or next to a street or highway - including the sidewalk. The ordinance goes so far as to bar solicitation from occupants in vehicles that are lawfully parked in public areas.

Before the town passed the ordinance, day laborers - who are usually hired by homeowners to perform services like gardening, moving, light construction, housework and painting - solicited work in public areas.

While the town was apparently motivated by a desire to target illegal immigration, the ordinance applies to everyone in Cave Creek, regardless of their nationality or immigration status. The ordinance is so overbroad that it also applies to Salvation Army bell ringers asking for holiday contributions and high school cheerleaders advertising a car wash on a sidewalk or street.

The ACLU argues that individuals, regardless of their immigration status, have the right to free speech which includes soliciting employment.
“By attempting to take away the First Amendment rights of day laborers, Cave Creek has endangered the free speech rights of every group in town,” said Dan Pochoda, Legal Director of the ACLU of Arizona. “The very people who fought to have this law passed have, in effect, forfeited their own First Amendment rights to peaceably solicit for their interest or cause.”

Kristina Campbell, a staff attorney with MALDEF, said, “The Cave Creek anti-solicitation ordinance is a clear violation of the First Amendment right to engage in free speech. Day laborers are the most visible and vulnerable segment of the immigrant population, and they and others who wish to exercise their First Amendment right to solicit employment in public places have the right to do so without fear that they will be targeted in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner and suffer fines and arrest as a result.”

Lawyers on the case include Ramírez and Cecillia D. Wang of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project; Pochoda of the ACLU of Arizona; and Campbell and Cynthia Valenzuela of MALDEF.

More information on the case, Lopez, et al vs. Town of Cave Creek, et. al., is available online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/discrim/34642lgl20080325.html

Ric Salinas aims his video camera at the slightly nervous-looking young woman, smiles, and launches into his first question: “So, tell us about being Jewish in Mexico!”

It must be Salinas’ sunny, friendly disposition – or maybe the stoic, fatherly look of his colleague, Herbert Siguenza, sitting next to him – but pretty soon the woman, Tabatha Daly, is chattering all about her life. Her Russian grandparents’ move to the U.S. The family’s relocation to Mexico. Growing up an outsider in Mexico City, then feeling doubly misunderstood after moving to California, where Latinos find her even more exotic than non-Latinos do.

“I never felt like part of the regular world,” Daly said of her childhood in Mexico City. “I felt segregated and I lived a different experience than people outside my circle. And I find myself different from other Latin people here.”"*

*From: http://www.ocregister.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

The men pull their caps down tightly over their eyes as they walk through the clinic door at the crux of International Boulevard and 25th Street in Oakland.

They come with pain in their backs, arms and hands from strenuous work as day laborers. They come with elevated blood sugar levels from eating cheap, accessible carbohydrates. And they come with alcoholism, depression and the anxiety of the poor and undocumented.

On the other side of the door is Laura Perez, a petite 31-year-old Peruvian in form-fitting jeans - part-sister, part-therapist - and not so long ago undocumented as well. She has flourished connecting with immigrant clients, and in October Perez went to Washington, D.C., to accept $125,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for her role as executive director at the Fruitvale neighborhood clinic, Street Level Health Project.”*

*From: http://www.sfgate.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Members of the Lowcountry’s Hispanic community are concerned. That’s because the Latin American Council announced they are cutting ties with the dozens of day laborers who meet there every morning. It’s a decision the council thinks will ultimately help them serve the people better.

Many ride their bikes miles every day, just to wait at The Latin American Council for someone to stop and offer work. Because they know once they’re at that building, their odds of making money increase.”*

*From: http://www.wsav.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

The system that has organized, managed and assisted day laborers in the area for more than three years will end this month after the area’s largest Hispanic advocacy group decided to cut ties with the temporary workers.

The board of the Hilton Head Island-based Latin American Council ofSouth Carolina voted last week to stop providing a meeting place and oversight for the dozens of day laborers who have gathered daily since 2004 in the council’s parking lot at Fairfield Square on William Hilton Parkway near Spanish Wells Road.”*

*From: http://www.islandpacket.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

FOR some time now, Mayor Mark Epley and his supporters have been asking around for a place in this resort community where Hispanic day laborers who come looking for work could meet up with contractors or anybody else with a job to offer.

And the response? “Not good,” Mr. Epley said.

The search took on new urgency following a judge’s ruling on Jan. 2 against a plan Mr. Epley put in motion in March to make a 6-acre village park adjacent to a busy 7-Eleven at the village’s far northern edge into an informal open-air hiring site.”*

*From: http://www.nytimes.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Mesa mayor hopefuls weighed in on how to fix day laborer problems - one of the most intractable problems the city has ever faced, according to one candidate. Claudia Walters, Scott Smith and Rex Griswold fielded that question among others Wednesday night during a forum with the Mesa Association of Hispanic Citizens.

On the issue of the large number of day laborers gathering on city streets, Walters said it was “one of the most intractable problems” she’d ever seen.”*

*From: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

The protesters gather every morning before dawn, monitoring the entrance to a fenced compound called the Macehualli Work Center. They are trying to shut the place down. They wave placards and take photos of anyone driving in to pick up the day laborers who congregate there. They want nothing less than to save America from what they call “the invasion.”

“Most of us don’t feel safe on the Phoenix streets without being armed,” says Wes Pecsok, a contractor who keeps his pistol in an inner vest pocket. “We’re not going to be intimidated by these thugs. ”

The protesters are members of the Minutemen, Riders USA, United for a Sovereign America. They find a common bond in their rage, their fury at the government, their loathing of Hispanics in the U.S. illegally. They say that many immigrants carry disease, and kill cops, and rape children.”*

*From: http://www.insidebayarea.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Decrying the surge in hate speech and violence that has surrounded the immigration debate, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., launched a campaign today to end hate speech in the immigration debate and called on presidential candidates and news media networks to divorce themselves from known hate and vigilante groups and to end rhetoric that demonizes immigrants and Hispanic Americans.

“The immigration issue deserves serious debate and serious solutions,” said Janet Murguía, NCLR President and CEO. “We cannot have that debate as long as hate has the floor.”

Murguía chastised cable news television for “handing hate a microphone” over the past three years by hosting spokespeople from hate and vigilante groups such as Dan Stein of Federation for American Immigration Reform and Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox of the Minuteman Project more than 110 times, usually identifying them only as “anti-immigration advocates.” She singled out television pundits such as CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck and MSNBC political commentator Pat Buchanan for parroting hate speech and driving the immigration debate in a manner that demonizes the Hispanic community.

Presidential candidates who seize on the immigration issue to avoid talking about other issues such as Iraq and the economy also came under fire from Murguía. She faulted them for “amigo shopping,” a derogatory term used by suburban youth who attack and rob day laborers knowing that their victims have little recourse. Murguía specifically called on Mike Huckabee, 2008 presidential candidate and former governor of Arkansas, to renounce the endorsement of, and sever all ties to, Jim Gilchrist, a cofounder of the Minuteman Project and a self-avowed “vigilante.”

“There’s a bully in the room,” said Murguía, “and each of these candidates has a choice. They can stand up to the bully or they can cater to him. It is a question of courage or cowardice. To date, we have seen far too little courage.”

Relying heavily on documentation provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, Murguía catalogued the rise in the use of code words that label immigrants and Latinos as a threat to the American way of life. She articulated four categories of code words, rhetoric that:

* Refers to immigrants as “an army of invaders” or an “invading force”
* Associates immigrants with animals and refers to them as “a massive horde” or “swarm”
* Accuses immigrants of “bringing crime and disease” to America, including “leprosy, tuberculosis, and malaria” and “gang warfare”
* Purveys the conspiracy theory of “reconquista” or “Atzlán” – the taking back of lands in the southwestern United States for Mexico

(Click here to view a short video reel illustrating some examples www.wecanstopthehate.org.)

NCLR is conducting a campaign to educate Americans about the use of hate speech and the growing rise in violence against Latinos. Called the “Wave of Hope Campaign,” it features:

* An anti-hate website entitled “We can stop the hate ”
* Engaging media networks and candidates to separate themselves from hate groups and hate speech
o This week, NCLR wrote to Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee asking him to renounce the support of, and sever all ties to, Jim Gilchrist.
o NCLR also wrote to three cable news networks – Fox, CNN, and MSNBC – asking to meet with top management about extremists appearing regularly on their programming and ending the hate speech parroted by network news commentators.
* Working with other minority groups to confront hate speech
* Asking candidates to elevate the debate and “pledge” to reject hate speech

Stating that “words have consequences,” Murguía pointed to an FBI report which shows a 23% rise in violence against Latinos. “To the Latino community,” said Murguía, “the surge in hate speech and violence is appalling. But, it should be appalling to everyone.”

Murguía said she recognized that ultimately the power to change the debate lies with the Hispanic community itself. “Latinos buy products from the advertisers supporting these programs,” she said. “Latinos vote in primaries and in the general election. We have a significant role to play picking winners and losers in both arenas. We need to make it clear to those who embrace hate that they do so at their own economic and political peril.””*

*From: http://www.nclr.org
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

On Dec. 5, two day laborers, in conjunction with the workers’ rights group Chicago Committee for the Right to Work, filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Chicago. They charged city police with systematically harassing and falsely arresting workers who gather on the city’s street corners in search of employment.

“Day laborers have been suffering from police harassment for decades in this city and it’s come to a point where we want to do something to end it,” says B. Loewe, planning director of Latino Union of Chicago, a workers’ rights organization that helped prepare the lawsuit.”*

*From: http://www.inthesetimes.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish