Day laborers find sites beyond Vista borders
by Edward Sifuentes
760 740-3511 or
esifuen...@nctimes.com

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/08/12/news/top_stories/20_02_498...

About two dozen Latino men stood on a dusty corner
near Melrose Drive and North Santa Fe Avenue on
an early morning this week. Several men there said
that the area has been a traditional hiring site for more
than 10 years. Their numbers may not be growing, but
an increasing number of them are workers who once
stood on Vista corners, they said.
Rogelio Rodriguez, a thin 24-year-old man, said that
he has picked up odd jobs on this and other nearby
streets for more than two years. But work is drying up,
he said, partly due to anti-illegal immigration activist
groups, including the San Diego Minutemen and the
Vista Citizen's Brigade.
"There's been a lot of pressure (from the groups),"
he said. "And soon this, too, is going to disappear."

Rodriguez said he had not worked in three days and
worked only two days last week.

For months, activists from the Minutemen have staged
protests at a popular hiring site on South Santa Fe and
Escondido avenues, inside Vista's city limits. They
aimed cameras at would-be employers and hand out
flyers saying it is against the law to hire illegal immigrants.
Vista recently passed a law that requires employers to
register with the city before hiring day laborers.

The law, which took effect July 28, requires those who
hire day laborers to get registration certificates from
the city and display them in a car window. It also requires
people written terms of employment to the laborers they
hire.

Officials have said that the goal is to reduce the number
of unscrupulous employers taking advantage of workers.

Immigrant rights activists say the law is a thinly veiled
attempt to remove workers from the corner, which is
also home to a busy shopping center with grocery stores,
restaurants and office space.
The men, who are predominantly immigrants from Mexico,
work for homeowners in the area and small landscaping
and construction companies. Jobs usually range from a
few hours to a few days. They earn about $8 to $10 an
hour, the men said.
At the Melrose site, Oswaldo, a stocky 30-year-old
man who did not want to give his last name, said he
has worked in construction for about eight years. But
construction work has decreased in recent months,
and companies that once did not look closely at work
documents now are more reluctant to hire illegal immigrant
workers, he said.

"More than 50 percent of the workers were Mexicans,"
he said in Spanish. "Only the owners and the supervisors
were white."

In the mornings, the men sit along a chain-link fence
surrounding a large vacant lot along the east side of
Melrose Drive south of Willowbrook Drive. Some sip
coffee purchased from a lunch truck that caters to them
each morning as they watch a small but steady stream
of cars travel from Vista headed north to State Route 76.

Oceanside police Sgt. Leonard Mata said Thursday
that he had not heard of complaints from area residents
about the hiring site, which is on the Oceanside edge
of the Oceanside-Vista border. But activists have taken
notice of the site.

Jeff Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen, said
members of his group watch the Melrose Drive area
routinely and protest there occasionally. He said the
group's observers have noticed a drop in the number
of day laborers recently, from about 70 down to about 30.

"We're just monitoring it," Schwilk said. "If it grows, we'll
hit it harder."

Schwilk said the Melrose site is just one of the many day
labor sites his group watches on a regular basis. There
are several along East Vista Way north of the Vista city
limits in an unincorporated part of the county near Bonsall.
There are others in Encinitas, Fallbrook and San Diego,
he said.

Schwilk and other advocates say the drop in workers looking for jobs in the Vista
shopping center is welcome news, and that residents should feel safer shopping there.

Immigrant rights advocates have criticized the Minutemen's tactics and the city's
day-labor law, saying neither addresses the problem and that the workers have only
been further scattered throughout the region. Some are asking city officials to
establish a formal hiring center, similar to centers in Carlsbad and Escondido.

"They are not going to go away," said Sal Martinez, president of SER Jobs for
Progress in Oceanside, which runs a hiring center in Carlsbad. "The employers will go
to other places to hire people. The workers won't be at that site, but it's like
catching smoke."

Martinez said he spoke with city officials about the idea weeks ago but has not heard
from them since. A hiring center would not completely solve the street hiring issue
in Vista, Martinez said, but it would go a long way to address some of the city and
its residents' concerns.

"I do believe that this is an effective way of helping to deal with this issue in
Vista," Martinez said. "It's a touchy political football, but it's a problem that is
not going to go away."
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