Council Rejects Hiring Hall and Urges Crackdown : Santa Clarita: Officials will deal with day laborer problem by asking the INS to deport illegal workers.

The Santa Clarita City Council has rejected establishing a proposed hiring center for day laborers in favor of urging federal agents to crack down on workers who are in the country illegally.

“If they’re illegal, they don’t belong here,” Councilwoman Jo Ann Darcy said. “I don’t want to be a bleeding heart all my life. . . . If you thin out the day laborers, you’ll thin your barrio out too.”

The council has been grappling for 18 months with problems posed by up to 100 men who gather daily in the downtown Newhall section of Santa Clarita in search of work. Although local law enforcement officials do not consider the day laborers a crime problem, local merchants have complained that the men scare away customers and occasionally vandalize businesses.

The council had been considering opening a job center for the men next to the railroad tracks in Newhall. But Tuesday, it voted instead to urge the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport those who are in the country illegally.

Darcy also suggested that legal immigrants find jobs at state employment offices and that the city pass out flyers warning illegal aliens against seeking work and employers against hiring them.

In the past, council members have debated what proportion of the men seeking work are in the country illegally and how many of them are legal residents or American citizens. No survey has ever been done.

The council voted unanimously to shelve the proposal, which would have cost the city $25,000 for the first six months to open a center similar to those now in operation in North Hollywood and Brea. The proposal could be revived if the call for a crackdown produces no results, council members said.

The council’s action satisfied some Newhall merchants, who did not want a hiring center near their businesses and who were afraid that if one were established, it would prove unpopular among workers.

“We should just put those workers on a bus heading down I-5 south,” said Tom Boyd, who manages a Newhall coffee shop across the street from a corner frequented by up to 25 day laborers at a time.

But an INS spokeswoman said Wednesday that the agency has limited resources to answer the dozens of complaints about day laborers it receives daily from cities throughout Southern California. The federal agency has been urging cities to establish hiring centers.

“The INS is not going to solve it alone,” said Virginia Kice of the INS. “The city needs to understand there is no quick fix. The INS can only be in so many places at one time.”

Kice strongly urged the city to create an atmosphere that would discourage residents from hiring day laborers as gardeners, construction workers and maids.

“The only way to really address this is to cut off the employment magnet by putting pressure on your fellow residents to stop hiring them,” Kice said.

Last week, the INS arrested 45 men seeking jobs in downtown Newhall.