Amnesty Puts Dilemma of Dayworkers in Cities’ Court

For Alfredo Alcocer Camacho, amnesty so far has meant little more than the privilege of standing on a curb in Orange weekday mornings without fear of being whisked away by the Border Patrol.

He speaks no English. He has no car, no steady job, no vision of a brighter future for himself in the United States. In his pocket, carefully wrapped in plastic, he has a receipt showing that he has applied for legal resident status and has an interview date later this year.

“I’d like to work here this year and next, then return to my family,” said Alcocer, 41, dressed in blue jeans, boots and a broad-brimmed hat--much as he might have dressed in his native village of Angamacutiro in the interior Mexican state of Michoacan. “In the meantime I have to stay here to keep my family fed.”

Alcocer, who has applied for legal residency as an agricultural worker, said he might try to get regular work once his application is approved.

$35 to $40 a Day

But for now, even though a factory or business owner could legally employ him, Alcocer is content to show up at a shopping center parking lot on Chapman Avenue every day and hope someone will pay him $35 or $40 for eight hours of gardening or construction work.

In the cities of Orange, Costa Mesa and Laguna Beach, as well as in other cities in the county, scores of men like Alcocer continue to seek work on the streets rather than use their newly legalized status to get permanent jobs.

“This is the way they’ve gotten work since they’ve been here,” said Carlos Ornelas, a member of a Costa Mesa church group that has been studying the day laborer situation in that city. “The majority of these people come from rural areas, and this is what they do for a living.”

The Immigration and Naturalization Service last week attempted to make that work more scarce for those without papers by announcing that agents would impound the vehicles of employers caught picking up illegal aliens. The INS is expected to begin enforcing that policy this week.

The Border Patrol, which at one time could sweep the corners and parks and arrest nearly everyone they stopped and questioned, now find that as many as half the men they detain are here legally--or at least can make a good enough claim to amnesty eligibility so that immigration authorities must let them go.

The change brings a new, decidedly local aspect to what cities once claimed was a problem for federal authorities: what to do about large numbers of suddenly legal residents who congregate on private and public property to find work, spurring complaints from other residents and business owners who say that they disrupt the community.

“It’s going to become more of a local problem as more and more of these people are legalized,” said Harold Ezell, INS Western regional commissioner. “There is only one real way there is going to be a sustained cleanup of the street corners . . . by city councils or police departments coming to grips with the problem.”

Some cities are attempting to do just that.

The Costa Mesa City Council recently authorized City Manager Allan Roeder to take a number of steps to solve problems caused by the dozens of men who congregate each day in Lions Park and at nearby businesses. Specific measures endorsed by the council include the stationing of a park ranger at the park, heavier police patrols of the neighborhood and organizing soccer games for those men who do not get work each day.

Councilwoman Mary Hornbuckle said the idea on which “the majority of the council pins its greatest hopes” is finding another site for the informal hiring hall, preferably in an industrial area and away from residential neighborhoods.

The city would have to make sure that it does not facilitate the hiring of illegal aliens at a new pickup spot, but at the same time cannot take on the federal government’s role of separating those here illegally from legal residents, Hornbuckle said.

“That is not the role of the city,” she said. “We will be in a tricky situation if we harass them.”

The Laguna Beach City Council is also trying to find another site for the hundred or so men who gather each day along Coast Highway.

The council asked Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) to request permission from the state Department of Parks and Recreation to use a parking lot at Crystal Cove State Park, about 2 miles north of the city limits.

The Parks and Recreation Department, however, told Ferguson that the responsibility for finding another location rests with the state Employment Development Department, and suggested that he take the matter up with that agency.

“We understand their (Laguna Beach’s) concerns,” said Les McCargo, chief deputy director of the parks agency. “The question is how can we accommodate the EDD’s need and make it suitable for visitors to Crystal Cove? There is equal anxiety for people coming to the park to use it.”

Ferguson’s office has not yet acted on the agency’s response, a staff aide said.

In Orange, police continue to cite workers along Chapman Avenue who violate minor infractions such as littering and jaywalking, and, if they are unable to produce evidence of legal resident status, they turn them over to the Border Patrol.

When officers first began enforcing the policy in February, “99% (of those apprehended) admitted illegal status,” and police turned over 15 to 20 illegal aliens a day to immigration authorities, Acting Police Chief Dean Richards said.

That number has dropped to about 10 a week, Richards said, as more and more workers claim legal status. “We’ve still got our same manpower out there,” Richards said.

Not all of the workers on the streets who claim legal status actually have it, or even are eligible for it, said INS Commissioner Ezell. Many of those let go by the Border Patrol and local police claim to be eligible for amnesty under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act’s provisions for agricultural workers.

Under that part of the law, applicants need only have worked 90 days in agriculture between May 1, 1985, and May 1, 1986, to qualify for legal status. Non-agricultural program applicants had to document continuous residency and employment or self-sufficiency since Jan. 1, 1982.

While the legalization program expired in May for most people, agricultural workers have until Nov. 30 to submit their applications. In the meantime, immigration authorities are instructed to give workers who claim they are eligible for the program and intend to apply the benefit of the doubt, Ezell said.

“I’ll be glad when that ends on Nov. 30,” Ezell said. “Then everybody will be on the same ground. If there’s been one tremendous abuse of the amnesty law, it’s been agricultural workers.”