North County to Get 2nd Hiring Hall for Migrants : Labor: Regulations will stipulate that immigrants must provide INS documentation to register to work.

North County’s second hiring hall for migrants, immigrants and others seeking work is opening in Carlsbad, where men stand almost daily along El Camino Real hoping and waiting for jobs.

City officials and community activists believe the hall, a six-month experiment, may reduce curbside hiring and ease tensions that peaked last year when an Anglo store owner handcuffed and humiliated a loitering Latino migrant worker.

That incident at the Country Store galvanized the political effort to find jobs and housing for the city’s largely ethnic homeless population that has been estimated at anywhere from 500 to 5,000.

“North County has been continually embarrassed nationally and locally by the living conditions,” said Dennis Meehan, a leader of Concerned Citizens of Carlsbad.

His organization and Catholic Charities are building a 50-bed temporary shelter, mostly for homeless migrants, situated half a mile from the hall at El Camino Real and Palomar Airport Road. The hall will open July 15 and the shelter in October or November.

“We hope to provide an opportunity for working-class people to live in dignity and find permanent employment,” said Meehan, who expects the shelter and the hall to “operate in a symbiotic relationship.”

Carlsbad’s hiring hall gets under way a month after the Encinitas City Council voted, somewhat unhappily, to keep its hiring hall--the first in San Diego County--operating until 1992.

Some Encinitas council members were wary of spending more money on the hall, which opened in November, 1989, because of declining job placements and the need to finance other local social programs.

About 1,000 people are registered to obtain jobs through the Encinitas hiring hall, although there is considerable turnover. The number of job placements fell from 620 in December, 1989, to 352 in March, but appears to be rising again, according to a city staff report.

In Carlsbad, officials don’t know how many people to expect at their hiring hall, but they blame the drop in placements in Encinitas on the drought, the recession and seasonal fluctuations in the work force.

The Carlsbad City Council has earmarked $46,300 to operate the hall for six months, using $34,800 of that funding to contract with San Diego County SER/Jobs For Progress, Inc., to run the hall.

The city wants its own experience with a hiring hall rather than depending on the Encinitas example as a gauge of how well a work program will perform.

“We are definitely not going to allow the success or failure of Encinitas to affect whether we do it,” said Marty Orenyak, the director of community development in Carlsbad.

He said there’s a pressing need to provide jobs and housing for the city’s transient migrant workers and long-term immigrant population.

“We know there’s a significant amount of immigrants who sleep in the city in different fields and parks,” Orenyak said. “Sometimes they stay for a day, sometimes they stay for years.”

With the hall’s opening date approaching, the Border Patrol and the Carlsbad Police Department are helping SER distribute leaflets in English and Spanish announcing the establishment of the hiring center.

The English leaflets go to potential employers, while the Spanish announcements are being circulated in migrant camps and street corners, anywhere people can be found who would benefit from the hall.

Jim Lundgren, the supervising member of SER’s three-person, bilingual staff for the hall, is roaming the areas where migrants and immigrants congregate, registering them for the hall.

Immigrants must be legally documented and have filled out an Immigration and Naturalization Service employment eligibility form in order to register.

Lundgren is finding that, although many workers he approaches are enthusiastic about a hiring hall, others are reluctant to give up their practice of standing on a familiar spot on El Camino Real and awaiting for people to come by with work offers.

“Many of these corners, it’s almost like their turf,” Lundgren said. “We have to prove we have something valuable enough to come off the street.”

What the hall will offer is a variety of jobs for the many migrants and immigrants with skills. Some do agricultural work, Lundgren said, and others are trained in auto body, tile, carpentry, landscaping and construction work.

But it’s critical, said SER executive director George Lopez, for employers to register with the hall, where they will be able to place notices for casual, part-time or permanent jobs by phone, FAX or in person.

Individuals can also seek workers through the hall, which is actually a trailer with picnic benches and places to put bicycles. The area where the hall and shelter are situated is served by mass transit.

The hall will operate Monday through Friday, except holidays, from 6 a.m. until 11 a.m., and on Saturday from 7 a.m. until noon.

SER now provides English instruction at the hiring hall in Encinitas, but that’s not part of the contract in Carlsbad, where the City Council will evaluate the hall after six months and decide whether to continue it and modify services.