Laborers Return to Street Corners; Bosses Stay Away

Two days after federal immigration officers arrested 117 day laborers at two popular pick-up spots in Northridge and Canoga Park, workers were back in droves--but employers were not.

Workers in Northridge said that even more men than usual were left standing on the corner of Parthenia Street and Vanalden Avenue on Thursday because of the lack of employers.

During the busiest pick-up hour--between 7 and 8 a.m.--only one employer stopped for three men. About 80 were standing on the corner.

“We don’t have much choice, we have to come back here and try and get work,” said Hector Rosales, 25. He said the patrones --employers, primarily construction and landscaping contractors--are probably reluctant to come back to a spot where their quick curb-side hiring might be interrupted by immigration officers.

Laborers Change Sites

In Canoga Park, the raid seemed to have succeeded only in moving the morning congregation from its previous spot on Canoga Avenue to another, a quarter-mile away on De Soto Avenue. Workers there, too, said it was bad day to find work.

Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Northridge) had requested Tuesday’s raids by 14 U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service agents. Paul Clarke, Fiedler’s executive assistant, said her office had received hundreds of complaints over the years from nearby residents and merchants who attribute vandalism, public drinking and harassment of passers-by to the day laborers.

Clarke said he was pleased that employers were not back at the site and hoped that the trend would continue.

“One of the goals of immigration reform is to make it undesirable for employers to hire these people,” Clarke said. “Hopefully this will have a long-term deterrent effect on employers and workers.”

It is not illegal for American employers to knowingly hire undocumented aliens.

Clarke said Fiedler will push for more raids in the area.

“The people have broken the law just by the act of being here,” Clarke said.

INS officials said it was the first time agents had raided the Northridge site in the blighted Bryant Street-Vanalden Avenue neighborhood. The pick-up spot in Canoga Park, a long-time gathering point for day laborers, had been raided previously.

Most of the 117 men arrested Tuesday said they were from Mexico and opted for voluntary deportation rather than a hearing in immigration court, INS spokesman John Belluardo said.

More raids can be expected in Northridge as part of the recent focus by the INS on high-visibility raids throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties, Belluardo said.

He said the presence of fewer employers at the Northridge and Canoga Park pick-up points was probably because they thought it would be hard to find workers so soon after the raid.

At best, he said, raids are a temporary deterrent to workers and employers.

The Bryant-Vanalden area, a neighborhood sore spot of run-down apartment buildings in an otherwise middle-class area, has gained popularity as a pick-up point in the last year. Whereas previously only a handful of men would gather on one corner, now about 80 stand at the intersection of Vanalden and Parthenia Street and in a liquor-store parking lot.

Most gathered there Thursday morning said they had recently come from Central America, lived in the nearby apartments and had been unable to find permanent work. They said that, by waiting at the intersection, they can find $3- to $5-an-hour jobs three or four days a week.

Men at both the Northridge and Canoga Park locations said their need for work outweighed their fear of the INS.

“It we don’t work, we don’t eat.” said Rafael Maldonado in Northridge. “If this is the only place left for us to find work, and we don’t find it here, how are we going to pay the rent? We will end up sleeping in the park.”