Daily Plea: ‘Pick Me!’ : Labor: Dozens of would-be workers, most immigrants, line up at dawn in Costa Mesa to fight for the chance to earn a day’s pay.

As dawn broke near the intersection of 17th Street and Placentia Avenue, two dozen men had already lined up at the Costa Mesa Jobs Center. Dozens of others could be seen headed for the center on bicycles, in cars, and on foot from large, nearby apartment complexes.

“Some of the men get here way before we open the doors at 6,” said Gerardo Jimenez, the city’s program manager at the center, who when he arrived greeted the would-be workers with a warm, “Buenos dias, caballeros.”

Jimenez then passed around a box filled with numbered tags, as each man drew a number. It’s a high-stakes job lottery that could determine whether men like Efren Cortez, a 21-year-old Mexican with thick, wavy black hair, find work or not.

“My friends told me that, with luck and God’s blessing, I can make it here in the United States,” Cortez said. “They said that, if you want to go to the United States, go. Go and try and make it. I did. I wanted to find out for myself. I didn’t know it would be this hard.”

Established in 1988, the jobs center represents a tenuous relationship between predominantly Latino job seekers--some of whom entered the United States illegally--and city governments facing a growing number of citizens’ complaints about illegal immigration, the workers’ so-called intimidating presence, poor hygiene and behavior.

There are indications that Cortez’s struggle is becoming more of a war than a fight for survival, given the political maelstrom created by Gov. Pete Wilson’s aggressive political assault on illegal immigration.

Since the center was opened, other cities such as Orange and Brea have begun their own centers. But the political pendulum, spurred in part by the county’s recession, seems to have dampened enthusiasm for the job centers in other cities.

Recently, Orange City Council members voted to renew funding but only for six months. Laguna Beach, which for years has supported day laborers, recently enacted a tough ordinance against day laborers seeking jobs anywhere other than at a designated area on Laguna Canyon Road.

In Costa Mesa, as at the other two centers, proof of legal immigration is “left up to the employer,” Jimenez said.

“It’s not our job to examine the men’s documentation or paperwork. We’re just a clearinghouse here for the men and contractors,” Jimenez said.

As Jimenez finished his sentence, a green pickup drove up. Jimenez ran to the driver, who told Jimenez he needed two men to help him move furniture. The driver told Jimenez that instead of choosing by lottery numbers, he would pick the two himself, setting off a chain reaction among the hopefuls. Each man shouted his number. Then, as the racket increased, they began yelling to the employer, in heavily accented English, “I work hard! Pick me! Pick me!” And, “No! Choose me! Me!”

“OK, you and you,” the employer said as the two anointed men quickly jumped into the truck bed.

Of the 147 men who sought work on a recent weekday, only 33 found jobs. Cortez was not among them.

“I’ll keep trying,” Cortez said. “Hey, we’re good for the economy here. We help anyone who needs help and wants to pay us. And, how many citizens want to work in the hot sun doing yardwork?”

Six days a week, from 6 to 11 a.m., the center becomes a headquarters for as many as 150 day laborers who sit in rows of chairs and wait for employers to drive up in cars and trucks.

The center, which is leased by the city, used to be a gas station. Most of the action occurs before 9 a.m.; after that, employers only drift in. After 9 a.m., the center changes. As the hope of finding a day’s work dwindles, the men begin thinking about tomorrow’s chances.

Meanwhile, volunteers teach English while others, such as Orlando Pimentel Sanchez, an evangelical street minister who brings hot coffee and Mexican sweetbread for the men, use the center to talk about the word of God.

When the center started, it was a solution to residents’ complaints of men loitering on street corners and parks seeking day labor. The center’s $90,000-a-year budget is a more reasonable and less costly approach than paying for police sweeps, said Costa Mesa Mayor Sandra L. Genis.

“Funding was a hard thing for (the city) this year,” Genis said. “We talked about it, but we remembered all those complaints when they were on the streets. If we close the doors, we start the whole dilemma all over again.”

Jimenez and other staff members did not want to talk on the record about the politics of immigration. But three weeks ago, when an anti-immigration group picketed the center, they were shouted down by the Spanish-speaking men, who stood up and showed them their work permits, Cortez said.

“I’ve been working in the United States since 1991,” Cortez said. “I’m not robbing anybody. Every day I come here, I’m seeking work. That’s bad?”

Eric Alvarez, 21, was more blunt. He disagreed with Wilson’s proposal to prevent the children of illegal immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens by being born in this country.

“I heard the governor didn’t want to help our children become U.S. citizens any more,” Alvarez said. “Why is he doing this? When he campaigned for governor, he asked for the help of the Latino community. If this country starts to enforce restrictions against us, then I have questions: What about our dreams? What about our families in Mexico? There just isn’t enough money there to feed our children. That’s why we’re here.”

The center is not exclusively for immigrants.

Bill Kay, 50, a union carpenter who drives nearly every day from San Bernardino to the center, was among a dozen or so Anglos who sought temporary jobs.

Kay acknowledged that as a union member he has “no business” seeking work at the center. But he said he lost priority for an apprenticeship at his local when he was called up during Operation Desert Storm last year as a military reservist.

“I shouldn’t be doing this, but I got to survive,” he said.

On immigration, Kay said he agrees with Gov. Wilson’s call for stricter laws.

“I don’t want to hurt anybody,” Kay said. “But these guys first start with jobs like ditch digging that pay $4 to $5 an hour. Then they might end up working across from a Builders Emporium and they go in there and buy a carpenter’s belt and start calling themselves carpenters so they can get more pay.”

Another Anglo, Mike Barker, 47, said: “I don’t put them down because they’re Mexican. They’re in the same situation as me. And there isn’t enough work here right now.”

Jimenez said, “Usually, our English-speaking people get picked for jobs faster than the others. If someone wants a crew, they hire six or seven Spanish-speaking men and one person who can speak both languages.”

Employers prefer hiring an immigrant because they are willing to work hard, said Carmen Saldana, executive director from the Orange Job Center.

“The Anglos call on the telephone and hear that they have to be here physically at 6 a.m.,” Saldana said. “And the Anglos get turned off. They don’t want to come in. They want us to take their phone numbers and call them when a job comes in, and we just can’t do that.”

Tom Coultrup, an employer with West Star Builders, said he has used the Costa Mesa center for years. Before it was established, he picked up laborers at a nearby doughnut shop, but stopped when he noticed he was under surveillance by the U.S. Border Patrol.

“Now, this center helps keep me legal. I know I can come in here and pick up whoever I need,” Coultrup said. He added that he prefers immigrant workers to U.S. citizens.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Coultrup said, “I can’t get a white guy to work hard or even show up the next day. We do building tear-downs, and it’s back-breaking work. You don’t see a white guy jumping up and down saying, ‘Pick me!’ They don’t want to work in the hot sun for the minimum wage.”

Msgr. Jaime Soto, head of Hispanic ministries in Orange County for the Catholic Diocese, has welcomed Spanish-speaking immigrants to Orange County. He argues that those groups and individuals who want to close the borders to immigration cannot appreciate the “drastic” economic factors many of these immigrants faced in their home countries.

“No one leaves their hometown without some dire necessity motivating them,” Soto said. “There is a desire to work and that infusion of the industrial spirit is something that California needs more of in these despairing times, rather than less of.”

For example, Ramiro Pena, 26, who sought work at the Brea Job Center, said the economy in Mexico City is terrible.

“I had to make a decision. I had to think about my kids, my wife, and my parents,” Pena said. “I worked in an aluminum plant cutting metal where the work was hot and sweaty. Often the plant manager didn’t let us open the doors and it had few windows. Each month, I earned about $200. It was hard work and I had to be there eight hours a day, six days a week.”

When a few friends who had found jobs in New York, Chicago and New Jersey went home for a visit, they told Pena they were able to buy cars, and consider buying homes too.

“I had to come to see if I could make it too,” he said. He added that he moved to Orange County through friends from his hometown.

He was paid $6 an hour for painting a house, earning about $145 for one week. That is roughly what he and some of the other men said they made in a month back home.

“It’s not a lot,” he said, “but it’s better than I was making in Mexico.”