Cities That Are Outlawing Day Laborers

Sept. 14 was a day of shame for the city of Costa Mesa. On that day Costa Mesa police arrested 15 Latino men under an ordinance that makes it illegal to solicit work in Lions Park and certain other public places. Mass arrests for solicitation are not uncommon when prostitution or drugs are being solicited. These men, however, were soliciting honest work. If you’re Latino, and you try that in Costa Mesa, it can land you in jail.

White, English-speaking men don’t solicit work in Lions Park because they don’t have to. The jobs offered to dayworkers are hard, onerous, dirty and low-paying. It is work that only the honest poor will do.

In Costa Mesa those people are Latino, most of them Mexican. Some are undocumented. That’s nothing new. Mexican men and women, both documented and undocumented, have been doing our dirty work for generations. The economy of the state of California could not function without them. Usurping the role of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Costa Mesa City Council is trying to rid the city of undocumented workers.

Through a systematic campaign of intimidation and deprivation they have tried to force employers and even charitable organizations into acting as de facto enforcement agents of the INS. The only result has been the harassment and humiliation of disadvantaged Latino workers and their families, both documented and undocumented.

Recently, the City Council added a subsection to their shameful ordinance that makes it a crime even to appear to intend to solicit work. The police can’t be enjoying the awkward and preposterous enforcement mandate imposed on them by the City Council.

The workers may get arrested, but they won’t go away. As one dayworker stated, they are more afraid of going hungry than of going to jail. The freedom to seek work to provide for one’s family is a natural right, a divine right. A community with any sense of social justice would defend that right vigorously and vocally. The silence in Costa Mesa since Sept. 14th has been deafening and shameful.

STEVE READY

Costa Mesa