Slowdown’s Silent Victims

Jose Avelar gets the good news first. After working eight years in high-end Santa Monica hotels, he qualifies for $171 in weekly unemployment benefits.

Then, the bad news: Because his immigration status is murky, he probably won’t collect a dime of it.

Avelar’s once-promising future has turned bleak almost overnight. The 28-year-old father of four, who lost his banquet job in the post-terrorism travel collapse, found an eviction notice under his door last week. His phone service was cut a week earlier, and his new Ford Taurus probably will be repossessed next month.

Now, as he absorbs another blow in the state unemployment office, he struggles for optimism. “We can make tamales,” he says, considering a desperate leap into the underground economy.

Just two months ago, workers such as Avelar were in such high demand that hotel and restaurant associations called them “essential” and lobbied Congress for immigration reform. That sort of talk has all but disappeared as the nation focuses on security and war.

The workers are still here, however, legal or not. They are hotel maids and banquet servers, dishwashers and airport concession vendors--among those most vulnerable to the sudden economic slowdown.

At least 100,000 unionized hotel and restaurant workers nationwide are now jobless or working extremely short hours, according to the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees union. Many more nonunion employees also have been thrown out of work.

Interviews with labor and community activists, demographers and workers themselves suggest that a significant share of those laid-off employees are undocumented or working under temporary permits soon to expire. That’s especially true in immigrant magnets such as New York and Los Angeles, where a third or more of hospitality workers may have questionable legal status.

One indication: Of the 43 restaurant employees killed at the top of the World Trade Center last month, 12 were working with false Social Security numbers--a revelation that surprised even their union representatives.

“Almost by definition, you don’t know because you don’t have a system to track them,” said Paul Harrington, a population expert at Northeastern University in Boston.

His analysis of recent census figures found that the nation’s illegal immigrant population grew far faster during the last decade than had been previously thought. Estimates now range from 8 million to more than 12 million, according to several demographers.

State jobless benefit claims don’t reflect such workers, Harrington said, and monthly federal employment surveys may undercount them. But that doesn’t lessen the impact of their job losses on the communities in which they live. “Eventually, it’s going to play out in the social services,” Harrington said. “You’ll see it at the soup kitchens, maybe eventually in the criminal justice system. This is tough stuff for a society to absorb.”

Stretched thin in the best of times, most recent immigrants have no reserves to fall back on. Unemployed, they may be forced to squeeze together in already crowded housing. Without medical insurance, they may swamp emergency rooms that were strained before the crisis.

Few qualify for unemployment insurance or other government aid, and those who do--because they hold temporary work permits--are reluctant to apply. Doing so could label them “public charges,” prejudicing whatever chance they have of gaining permanent legal residency.

That’s the thinking of Elisa Mena, a Salvadoran immigrant who has cleaned rooms at the upscale Beverly Wilshire Hotel for two years. Although not officially laid off, she has worked only three days in the last month and has little hope her job will last.

Because she holds a work permit available to certain Central American immigrants, Mena could collect up to $200 in weekly unemployment benefits. Despite encouragement from state eligibility workers, she will not apply. Probably 90% of her co-workers have made the same decision, she said.

“They can tell us it’s not a problem now, but that might change,” said Mena, who hopes to gain permanent legal status within the next year, before her oldest daughter turns 21. “[Immigration service officials] will see that in an emergency, we asked for help. They might think we would do the same thing again.”

Mena has supported six children on her $9.97-per-hour job, but just barely. Now even small luxuries such as fast food meals have been cut. She prays that tourists and business travelers will come back, that she’ll be working overtime again by Christmas.

Otherwise, because her skills are limited and no hotels are hiring these days, she has few options. Returning to El Salvador, which she fled 13 years ago, is not a consideration. “The economic situation is worse there,” she said. “It would be a disaster.”

Such stories have become routine at food banks and union halls across Los Angeles, and to a lesser extent, the nation.

“It’s a tremendous problem, and it’s everywhere,” said Stephen Rediker, who operates Face to Face, an immigrant aid center in Westchester County, just north of New York City.

“We are working with quite a few families that were affected directly, that lost people. They were doing menial tasks [in the World Trade Center] and they were killed. And the families are afraid to come forward. They’re even afraid to go to the Red Cross.”

Hundreds of recent immigrant workers in New York were made instantly jobless when their workplaces were destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and many more have lost their jobs in now-desolate hotels. “These people have no safety net,” Rediker said, “and you don’t even know they exist because they’re not coming forward.”

Indeed, immigrants are practically off the radar screen in Washington, where the most favored tool for helping laid-off workers is now an extension of unemployment benefits.

“Our community is not out there making noise,” said Rep. Hilda Solis (D-El Monte), who has proposed a one-time $300 tax rebate for all low-wage workers, regardless of citizenship status. She hopes the rebate, which would cost an estimated $16 billion, will become part of the economic stimulus package under discussion.

“It’s not enough, but we have to take what we can get,” Solis said. “I know that in places like Los Angeles, many people are a paycheck away from being homeless.”

This hostile scenario is a surreal contrast to life before September. At the tail end of an economic boom, low-wage workers were just beginning to see improvements in their paychecks. There were gains in union organizing, strong new contracts and even serious talk of a new amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Hotel and restaurant associations were among the lead agents in the Essential Workers Immigration Coalition, formed a year ago to lobby Congress for immigration reform. They said the future of their industries depended on bringing foreign workers out of the shadows.

“We’ve really had to set that aside right now,” said Judy Golub, a spokeswoman for the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., which also is a coalition member.

Rising unemployment and concerns about foreign-born terrorists have quickly flipped the perception of immigrants, she said, with immediate consequences. Member attorneys report that Immigration and Naturalization Service adjudicators, who interview applicants for legal residency, are taking a tougher stance.

“It’s not an official policy,” Golub said, “but they appear to be stricter, trying to find a basis for denial.”

This is terrible news for Avelar, a native of Guadalajara, whose dream was to gain legal status and move up through the ranks of the service staff at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel.

Just a few months ago, it seemed a plausible goal. He was getting good performance reviews at the hotel, where he worked the restaurant, banquets and room service. Just recently, he said, he was promised a promotion to manage food service in the pool area--a coup he celebrated by buying a new car.

He filed for legal residency in April, based on his marriage to a legal U.S. resident. He said he then obtained a temporary work permit, which is about to expire. Without it, he is not entitled to unemployment benefits.

Since the East Coast attacks, Avelar said, he has worked just 13 hours. It was always a struggle to pay the bills with his $9.87 hourly wage, and many were already overdue. It didn’t take long for the phone service to be cut.

Then he failed to pay the $675 monthly rent for his one-bedroom apartment in Inglewood. The eviction notice came Oct. 10.

“It’s very difficult,” he said, reaching for words as he sat on a double bed in the family’s living room. His four children, 8 months to 6 years old, giggled, snuggling up to their mother, Patricia, who came to Los Angeles from Honduras at age 4.

In recent weeks, Avelar has filled out job applications at dozens of hotels, restaurants, supermarkets and discount stores. They tell him they will call if anything comes up. Every afternoon, he stops by the nearby apartment of his father, whose telephone he now uses. So far, no one has called.

His father, Jose Avelar Sr., also recently lost his hotel job, at the upscale Le Merigot hotel in Santa Monica. He has had no more luck in finding work. Five adults--he, his wife, and three teenage stepsons--crowd into his one-bedroom apartment in Inglewood. Soon, they may be joined by his son’s growing family.

Two weeks ago, Avelar Jr. drove to the state unemployment office in Santa Monica to check on benefits. A clerk directed him to a telephone on the facing wall, explaining applications are no longer taken in person.

Avelar waited 15 minutes for a response, then a voice in Spanish told him what he already suspected was true: He had earned benefits, but probably could not collect them.

For a moment, Avelar’s expression betrayed a month of accumulated despair. Then it was gone. He took a deep breath and walked outside, where his wife and children waited for him.