Pacific Beach Group Calls For Hiring Hall for Migrants

A Pacific Beach community group, concerned about Latino day workers congregating at some heavily traveled intersections, is calling for the creation of what is believed to be San Diego’s first hiring hall for migrant laborers.

The Hispanic Awareness Coalition, a committee of the Pacific Beach Town Council, is contacting government officials, studying Encinitas’ recently established hiring hall and seeking land and funds for a hiring hall that it wants to see opened within a year, said Linda Lopez, vice president of the town council.

The move is a response to a perceived increase in the number of Latino day workers congregating at intersections such as Grand Avenue and Olney Street, where as many as 100 to 150 wait to be picked up for day jobs as gardeners and construction laborers, said Barbara Hughes, president of the town council. The organization has no official government standing but advises the San Diego City Council.

Many of the workers live in crowded apartments near that intersection, said Lopez, who added that a smaller number of workers congregate at the intersection of Ingraham Street and Pacific Beach Drive.

Area landlords and business owners have complained that the laborers use drugs and urinate and defecate on the streets, Hughes said.

Lopez said that INS officials have told her that the majority of laborers gathering there are documented workers.

“This whole thing is just coming to a boiling point,” Hughes said. “We have angry landlords who don’t want the people hanging around on the corner there. We want to do something about it before it gets ugly.”

The hiring hall “would take them off the streets,” Hughes said. “It would also be a place where the employers could call and they could come. It would have a little more order to it, and those men could go in and sign up and maybe they could find permanent jobs.”

City Councilman Bruce Henderson, who has visited the intersection at Grand and Olney and arranged for U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service sweeps there, has not decided whether he supports creation of a hiring hall, an aide said.

Henderson plans to tour the area with the INS’ Western region commissioner, Ben Davidian, before taking a position, said the aide, who requested anonymity.

“Bruce’s inclination is that the way you dry up this problem is to really nail the illegal employers,” the aide said.

Robert Rubio, director of operations for Rubio’s restaurants, which has two outlets in Pacific Beach, said that he would contribute funds toward the creation of a hiring hall and believes that other Pacific Beach business owners would do the same.