COLUMN ONE : REGIONAL REPORT : Migrant Labor: City Issue Now : Some municipalities try to drive away immigrant workers, while others have set up job-hunting centers. All agree it’s no longer just a federal matter.

Nearby homeowners complained about a thriving immigrant squatter encampment on a Carlsbad hillside, so San Diego County officials took action. Inspectors declared the site a health hazard, forcing shanties to be bulldozed and migrant families evicted.

Lawmakers in Costa Mesa, seeking to reduce the proliferation of immigrant day laborers on city streets, tried to cut financial support to charities that provided food, clothing and other aid to undocumented workers.

In northwestern Los Angeles County, the city of Agoura Hills opted for a conciliatory approach. Rejecting a proposal to outlaw curbside job solicitation, the City Council designated a hiring zone where all employment-seekers can gather.

Immigration issues were once exclusively the domain of the federal government. Now Southern California cities and counties, particularly affluent communities along the coast, are setting immigration-related policies of their own.

Local residents and officials see themselves filling gaps left by the federal government, which they argue has ignored the repercussions of mass immigration on local communities. California now attracts as many as one-half of all new immigrants--legal and illegal--entering the United States, according to some estimates.

“The community has been overrun and has had enough,” said Orville Amburgey, a Costa Mesa city councilman who led an effort to rid the Orange County city of undocumented Latinos, but whose stridence on the issue may have cost him some votes in his unsuccessful November reelection effort.

One city, Encinitas, went so far as to declare a “state of emergency” and last month billed the federal government almost $300,000 in immigrant-related costs, including those for cleaning up encampments, hiring guards to keep squatters off city land and setting up a hiring hall for legal day laborers. The federal government declined payment this week.

Meanwhile, Rep. Ron Packard, a Republican who represents portions of San Diego and Orange counties, has floated the possibility that communities might file a class-action lawsuit aimed at forcing federal lawmakers to reimburse area governments for costs such as housing, education, medical care, law enforcement and other expenses associated with new immigrants.

“There are just a variety of things that cities are having to deal with that are not their making or responsibility,” Packard said.

Some complaints reflect real problems of health and public safety, immigrant advocates acknowledge. If local communities respond thoughtfully, they say, both immigrants and longtime residents can benefit from improved traffic safety, sanitary conditions and housing while job-seekers get help with their search.

“I think when the public safety is infringed, or there is concern about crime or health, then the municipal governments may have a responsibility to step in,” said Robin Blackwell, former coordinator of the Orange County Coalition for Immigrant Rights.

But instead of seeking solutions, critics say, many suburban officials aim only to push immigrants out of town. “Everything seems to be framed in the context of, ‘What can we do to get rid of these people?’ ” said Linda Wong, president of California Tomorrow, a nonprofit organization studying the state’s growing ethnic diversity.

Local government actions have been inspired largely by the heightened visibility of immigrant laborers at makeshift curbside employment sites.

In recent years, home building has pushed rapidly into vast stretches of Southland farmland where immigrant laborers live and rely heavily on curbside locations in seeking employment. Moreover, immigrants continue to pour in from Mexico, and the 1986 amnesty program has allowed the newly legalized to look for work more openly.

Local debates over what to do about day laborers and other immigration-related issues have been divisive and, on occasion, racially charged. Many residents associate the new immigrants with crime, overcrowding, declining school standards and a general deterioration in lifestyle--views that parallel anti-immigrant sentiments throughout U.S. history.

“Something has got to be done at the border, or else our wonderful little Orange County is not going to be so wonderful anymore,” said Jean Miller, an Orange resident who has complained to her City Council about groups of Latino job-seekers who, she says, often deposit litter near her condominium complex.

Responding to the proliferation of street corner hiring sites, city councils in Encinitas, Costa Mesa and Orange enacted laws banning curbside hiring. Encinitas rescinded its statute after a federal judge called it a violation of 1st Amendment protections of free speech. Costa Mesa officials are appealing a judicial ruling voiding a portion of its ordinance, but other provisions outlawing drive-by job solicitation in Costa Mesa are being enforced. The Orange law also remains in effect.

Lawmakers in those three cities also have set up and staffed day-labor hiring centers that serve only legal U.S. residents.

“We felt that we did not want to assist people who are in this country illegally,” said Costa Mesa Councilman Edward Glasgow, a retired police captain. “Apparently the people down there are used to rebellion and being contrary to the law, and they don’t see any necessity to come into our country and obey our laws,” Glasgow added, referring to illegal immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.

Regionwide, undocumented immigrants head for street corners, occasionally within sight of the city-run hiring centers, seeking jobs that typically pay between $4 and $5 an hour--unacceptable to many U.S. citizens but decent wages for unskilled workers who might make $4 or $5 a day in much of Mexico and Central America.

“Those of us without papers have no choice but to come here and wait on the street,” said Adrian Arango, 20, who was recently seeking day labor while standing along El Camino Real in Encinitas, at a spot about 20 yards from the city’s hiring trailer. “All of us wish we could remain in Mexico, but the salaries there don’t allow us to live properly,” Arango explained, his chance for employment diminishing as the day wore on. “I have a wife and child to feed. Here in Encinitas, people don’t seem to understand that.”

In Costa Mesa, the City Council took an extra step. Reasoning that illegal immigrants are in part drawn to the Orange County community by the availability of free food, clothing and other charitable assistance, authorities attempted to withhold federal grant money from groups serving that population. The effort was derailed in June when Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp, citing “clear injustices and absurdities” that could result, rejected a ruling that would have permitted the cutoff.

Some local governments in Southern California have opted for accommodation--so much so that they have been at odds with U.S. immigration policy.

Five years ago, the Los Angeles City Council declared the city a refuge for immigrants--a largely symbolic stance but a clear rebuke to U.S. policy.

Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Ana are among cities that have barred police from detaining residents solely on suspicions about their immigration status. Officials argue that police shouldn’t be spending their time on such a victimless crime, and they fear collaboration with the Immigration and Naturalization Service will dissuade immigrants and refugees from contacting police officers about more serious crimes.

Several communities are seeking a non-confrontational approach to day laborers. Officials in the Orange County cities of Brea and Laguna Beach designated day-labor sites that serve all job-seekers, regardless of immigration status. The same open-door policy is in effect at the two city-sponsored day-labor sites in Los Angeles, a hiring zone in Agoura Hills, and a more recent site at Zuma Beach that is funded with community donations and staffed by volunteers.

The cities reasoned that it was better to open up employment sites for everyone rather than force undocumented workers to other locations that might disrupt traffic and anger residents.

Perhaps the most novel effort to date is a telephone job referral service developed in Dana Point last year. Bilingual volunteers and a part-time paid coordinator attempt to match laborers, including the undocumented, with employers who call in looking for workers.

“We took the bull by the horns and said, ‘This has gone far enough, let’s see what we can do,’ ” said Hector Valles, a retired furniture manufacturer who coordinates the program. “Each city has to take care of the problem in its own back yard. The federal government can’t possibly handle it all.”

Nowhere has the issue been more heatedly debated than in northern San Diego County, a fast-growing area of some 800,000 residents where new expensive housing developments regularly crop up next to longtime immigrant squatter settlements of cardboard, scrap wood and plastic. Providing ample cover for the makeshift villages is the region’s rugged, canyon-pocked terrain, which is marked by extensive brush, dense eucalyptus thickets, steep hillsides and deep ravines.

“What bothers me is the health problem,” said Joyce Stiffler, a 23-year-resident of Kelly Drive in Carlsbad, citing a group of more than a dozen homeless Latino immigrant men who set up a camp this summer in the bush less than 10 yards from her back fence. Her home is one of the older ones in an area where development is rapidly transforming farmland into suburbia. “I feel like we’re fighting a losing battle. The Board of Health came in here last year and cleaned one bunch out, and now they’re back again. . . . Do we feel threatened? You bet we do.”

So concerned are San Diego-area lawmakers that they are actively lobbying against a U.S. Border Patrol plan to expand the federal immigration checkpoint along Interstate 5, the coastal region’s main north-south artery. San Diego officials fear that a more efficient checkpoint could “bottle up” even more northbound immigrants in their communities.

“We feel we’re getting more and more illegals as it is,” said Carlsbad Mayor Bud Lewis.

Throughout the area, officials have cracked down on illegal encampments. Almost two years ago, San Diego County officials declared that a squatter site housing up to 200 immigrants in Carlsbad was a health menace, forcing the eventual eviction of the hamlet, which was known as Valle Verde, or Green Valley. Most residents relocated to more isolated enclaves in the brush.

Last summer, acting at the request of Encinitas officials, sheriff’s deputies and Border Patrol agents raided several camps and conducted sweeps along day-labor gathering sites.

In August, a citizens committee studying ethnic friction in the city of Poway endorsed the continued “eradication” of illegal migrant encampments, while simultaneously bemoaning the lack of federally funded alternatives. “We are in a refugee situation, but without normal assistance given to refugees, such as temporary housing, medical relief, legal aid and relocation assistance,” the citizens report stated.

Some alternative approaches have emerged. In recent months, a number of cities--including San Diego, Carlsbad and Oceanside--have announced plans to use a mix of federal, state and local funds in the construction of much-needed housing for agricultural laborers and the homeless. Most city governments had previously resisted such efforts.

Meantime, San Diego city officials have granted de facto recognition to one of the region’s largest squatter encampments, in the Rancho Penasquitos area, easing fears of eviction among the 100 to 300 immigrants who reside there. Working with church activists, officials have sought to make clean water and portable toilets available, collect trash and reduce the threat of fire.

“We realized that eviction would have just moved them to another canyon, where the conditions probably would have been worse,” said Jack McGrory, assistant city manager in San Diego. “We recognize that this labor pool is important to our economy. In the longer term, of course, these people are going to have to be provided with some permanent housing. The question is: Who’s going to pay for that? . . . We hope the federal government will recognize its responsibility. It’s an international issue, and the cities are simply caught in the middle.”