INS Crackdown Drying Up Job Pool, Day Laborers Say

Workers at the San Fernando Valley’s two largest day-labor pickup spots said Tuesday that curb-side job offers have all but dried up since federal officials announced a crackdown on employers who habitually hire illegal aliens.

Dozens of men standing along stretches of Canoga Avenue and Vanowen Street in Canoga Park and Victory Boulevard and Kester Avenue in Van Nuys said they had gone five days without work and only three or four drive-up employers had stopped each morning since the announcement last week.

Immigration and Naturalization Service officials launched a campaign against day-labor employers Thursday, warning that their vehicles will be confiscated and they will face stiff fines if they are found to be transporting and hiring illegal aliens.

“The bosses are staying away from us. They are afraid now to come and pick us up,” said Nery Cabrera, 26, who travels from downtown Los Angeles to Canoga Park each morning in search of day labor. “I’ve gone five days without work.”

The 1986 immigration law prohibits employers from hiring undocumented workers. All employers are required to verify the citizenship of potential employees or ask for proof of work authorization before hiring workers, including day laborers, said INS Los Angeles Deputy District Director Bill Carroll.

INS agents will watch day-labor spots to determine if an employer is regularly hiring illegal aliens, Carroll said.

Pickup Points in Crackdown

He would not say if any Valley locations are under investigation, but said that spots throughout Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties that serve as pickup points for thousands of men are included in the crackdown.

Workers at the two Valley locations said that before the announcement, they had been picked up for work four or five days a week. Many travel from Los Angeles because word has spread that work is plentiful in the Valley, especially at construction projects.

At the Canoga Park site, near a construction materials firm, about a dozen men at one corner said the crackdown is unfair because they have applied for amnesty under the new immigration law and have temporary work permits.

“Now that we are in the United States legally and have rights, they are being violated,” said Cabrera, who said he has a work permit. “The employers think everyone standing here is illegal because we are all Latino. It’s not true.”

Antonio Rujamas, 40, of Los Angeles, said although he has a work permit, the $40 to $50 a day he has earned as a laborer is better than the $4.25-an-hour minimum wage at a factory.

“But now, I don’t know what I’m going to do. If there are no more jobs here it will be hard to support my family with minimum wages,” Rujamas said.

Carroll said the dramatic drop in work availability is “what we hoped would happen.”

“Those who have work permits should get jobs that will protect them,” Carroll said. “They should not be standing out on the street corner where employers can exploit them.”

He predicted that the absence of work eventually will lead to decreases in the number of workers who congregate at the corners, a practice that nearby merchants and residents complain is a disruptive, unsightly nuisance.

One Van Nuys merchant said that the 100 or more men who gather at his Victory-Kester corner have hurt his mini-market business by blocking driveways and loitering on his property.

“We have no family business, no decent business. No lady would walk into this store,” said Ramin Bet-Jacob, 22, whose family owns the store. “It’s like a little Tijuana out there.”

He welcomed word of the crackdown, having repeatedly called the INS with complaints.

As Bet-Jacob stood in front of the store, two employers in a white pickup truck pulled into his parking lot and a throng of laborers tried to hop in the back. Several workers said it was only the third pickup by 9 a.m. Tuesday.

“Just trying to get some workers,” a man said before briskly driving away.

Eloy Cruz, 20, of North Hollywood wasn’t fast enough and missed the truck. The Mexican immigrant said he did not have a worker permit and he is broke after nearly a week without finding day labor.

“The Americans need our work, they like us to work for them,” he said. “But if I can’t work here, I will have to go back to Mexico.”