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Immigrant Day Laborers: Myths and Realities

SINCE AT LEAST THE 1990S, IMMIGRATION has been an emotional, hot-button issue, with pundits, elected officials, and think tanks like the Center for Immigration Studies mounting a growing anti-immigrant campaign. Their spin often relies on shoddy research and rhetorical arguments that present immigration as simple, ahistorical, and unconnected to broader structural forces. In its battle against “illegals,” the anti-immigrant right has unleashed not only cowboy justice along the U.S.-Mexico border, but also urban protests at worker centers and home improvement stores where mostly immigrant men gather in search of work.1 Groups like Save Our State, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and the Minutemen have targeted these day laborers (jornaleros) as the face of undocumented immigration, blaming an easy target. These groups assert, with little evidence, that day laborers are all illegal immigrants, that their solicitation of employment is criminal, and that creating worker centers for day laborers—that is, formal sites where both workers and employers are encouraged to gather and negotiate hiring— will only attract more illegal immigration. Others on the right argue that day laborers displace workers who might otherwise be employed in the construction, landscaping, or moving industries, as if job growth, particularly in these industries, were fixed. Then there are those on the fringes who claim that day laborers are murderers and rapists who threaten the neighborhoods where they search for work. These claims are all false, used to incite residents and elected officials. To supply factual information on the day labor industry, including the workers and their employers, several colleagues and I launched the National Day Labor Survey (NDLS), in which we interviewed more than 2,600 workers across the United States. It’s the only survey of its kind, and its findings provide the first-ever portrait of these men and their work.2 We estimate there to be about 120,000 workers either seeking or performing day-labor assignments. They are predominantly immigrant and Latino. Most were born in Mexico (59%) and Central America (28%), but the third-largest group (7%) was U.S. born. Two fifths (40%) had lived in the United States for more than six years, and almost 10% had been here more than 20.3 Most day laborers are hired to work residential construction and remodeling jobs, hence their propensity to gather at home improvement stores MAY/JUNE 2007