Jobs Fewer, Yet Illegal Immigrants Pour In

Despite crackdowns on day laborers and a sluggish economy that has left few jobs, Orange County hiring halls say hundreds of predominantly Latino immigrants continue to pour into job centers and congregate on street corners in search of work.

“Our cities are inundated,” said Hector Valles, who is in charge of the Dana Point Labor Service, a city-funded telephone exchange program primarily for employers and Spanish-speaking day workers. Valles said he places 15 to 20 people a day in domestic jobs and has a waiting list of 800 men and women.

“Most of them are Mexican, but many also come from parts of South America like Guatemala, and other countries,” Valles said. “The majority are here illegally.”

For those illegal immigrants, the prospects of landing a job through one of the centers are poor. But the sluggish economy has left them with few choices, and they routinely brave the lines in an often-futile effort to land work.

What is happening in Dana Point seems to be mirrored across the county--from Costa Mesa to Orange to Anaheim--where officials say that despite a recent step-up of enforcement efforts, hundreds of day workers, many of them illegal, continue to risk arrest in order to find work.

In the midst of this, authorities have stepped up efforts to apprehend illegal immigrants. Three weeks ago, Border Patrol officers caught 150 suspected illegal immigrants during a dawn raid near Chapman Avenue and Hewes Street in Orange.

And last week, more than 200 people were apprehended during another morning raid that began at Chapman and Hewes and spilled into the nearby Orange Park Villas apartment complex, said Charles Geer, patrol agent in charge of the U.S. Border Patrol at the San Clemente checkpoint.

The arrests at Orange Park Villas ignited a storm of protests, primarily from Latino-rights activists who claimed that Border Patrol agents committed abuses as they chased suspected illegal immigrants through the complex.

Yet, despite highly publicized incidents as these, immigrants seem to feel the risk is one they are willing to take. In their Mexican homeland, the alternative is unemployment and a country suffering economic chaos.

“Yes, I know of all the problems,” said Jesus Gomez, 23, a resident of Orange Park Villas. “But it’s still better here.”

On a recent weekday, an estimated 200 predominantly Latino job seekers congregated along Chapman Avenue east of the Costa Mesa Freeway in Orange.

At the Orange Job Resource Center, where clients are not questioned about their immigration status, an average of 120 people register every day for employment, said Carmen Saldana, the center’s director. The center was created as an alternative for Latino day workers who used to congregate on city street corners and clash with angry street merchants. Most go away empty-handed: only 13 were hired on the recent weekday.

The immigrant job seekers’ difficulties grow out of the national and local economic slowdown, which has taken its hardest toll at the bottom of the employment ladder.

Orange County’s unemployment rate hit 5.4%, a seven-year high, in June before dipping to 5.3% in July, according to state figures. And yet, more and more workers keep arriving at county job centers, operators of those facilities say.

Saldana agreed, saying, “We’ve never seen a decline of new people. We’ve always had a constant flow.”

Because only a small portion are finding jobs through the center, Saldana said, many of the Latino men and some women prefer hunting for jobs along Chapman by walking in groups of five or six and flagging down construction and paint contractors, and other potential employers.

They risk arrest by police for loitering and apprehension by immigration officers, she said.

“Some of them don’t like the odds of finding work here, which is about a 30% chance,” she said. “Others refuse any kind of place of employment and are real independent. They don’t like anybody telling them anything. And we have certain rules here where everybody fills out a card and they must be here at a certain hour.”

If illegal immigrants continue seeking jobs along Chapman, more roundups may be in store, said Orange Police Chief Merrill V. Duncan.

“The city’s hiring center was considered a sanctuary (for immigrants). The INS didn’t bother them there,” Duncan said. “But these people have just inundated the local doughnut shop and several other businesses on Chapman and they really can’t do business with all these men hanging around there.”

Similar disturbances are being reported in other Orange County cities, and the problem has prompted local governments to pass an unusual resolution encouraging a “cooperative” effort with the Mexican government to help slow illegal immigration into California. This would be done by providing “accurate information” to Mexican citizens on work and housing opportunities in California, said William E. Hodge, executive director of the Orange County division of the League of California Cities.

“The appearance of this resolution is due to the fact that more and more cities are feeling the impact,” Hodge said. “It’s an effort to dispel misinformation.”

Hodge said that representatives of the division’s 29 member cities passed the resolution, which was recommended by the Dana Point City Council on Aug. 8. It now goes to the statewide body for passage at its annual conference on Oct. 13, he said.

Previous efforts to stem the flow of illegal immigration have not always proved successful, however.

Five years ago, the INS supported passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act as a means of stemming the flow of illegal immigration.

The most sweeping immigration reform in two decades, the act established a program for amnesty and also a system of penalties against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The employer sanctions were seen as a cornerstone in the effort to stop illegal immigration.

But the number of illegal immigrants arrested nationwide--considered a rough gauge of actual illegal immigration--has gone up. From October, 1990, to July, 1991, apprehensions numbered 885,507, a 5% increase over the same period in the previous fiscal year, said Cassie Boothe, an INS spokeswoman in Washington, D.C.

In light of the economic crisis in Mexico, and in other countries in Central and South America, many believe those national INS figures are low, and at least one immigration expert says he believes the flow of illegal immigrants into Southern California will continue to rise.

Still, some praise the League of Cities’ effort to let potential immigrants know about the dire economic situation that awaits them in Southern California.

“As far as what the league is doing, that would be a useful thing to do because the Mexican government used to issue those advisories in the past,” said Dave Simcox, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative Washington think tank on immigration issues.

Still, for many immigrants, the risk of jail or deportation is better than facing the economic crisis in their native countries.

“Yes, we heard it was bad up here (in Southern California),” said Serapio Carlos Rodriguez, 28, who was among hundreds of day laborers looking for work in Orange last week. “But if we can find work for two or three or maybe four days out of the month, we can make enough to pay for food and help on the rent.”

Rodriguez said he had arrived in Orange County a week before. He left his hometown of Veracruz, several hundred miles southeast of Mexico City, because many workers there are on strike for better wages, and several major textile factories have shut down.

As bad as the job market may be here, it still beats Veracruz, he added.

“In Mexico, I have to work at least eight days just to buy one kilogram of meat,” Rodriguez said. “Here, it’s a lot cheaper to live than in Mexico. Our government keeps giving us promises that things will improve. But they don’t. That’s why I’m here.”