Hiring Site Draws Protests

Carrying posters and bullhorns, about 200 protesters and counter-protesters jeered at each other Saturday morning at a controversial new day-laborer site near a Burbank Home Depot.

The three-hour rally was tense at times but largely peaceful. There were no arrests or reports of violence, said Burbank Police Lt. Ron Caruso.

Day-laborer sites, where homeowners and contractors can hire temporary help, have become flashpoints in the widening political war over illegal immigration. Critics say the sites make it possible for illegal immigrants to stay and support themselves in the United States.

Most of this rally consisted of each side shouting at each other through bullhorns.

Opponents of the hiring hall waved U.S. flags and held signs, such as “boycott illegal alien depot,” and yelled at people entering and leaving the Home Depot parking lot.

Protesters called for closure of the site and directed their anger at Home Depot, which constructed it, and the city of Burbank, which made its construction a condition of Home Depot’s building permit.

Such requirements are unusual, but Burbank officials sought to create a safe and orderly place for laborers to congregate.

“We want to make it politically incorrect for employers to frequent day-labor sites,” said Robin Hvidston, an illegal immigration activist from Upland who is affiliated with the Minuteman Project, a group that occasionally patrols the border.

The protest seemed to have the desired effect -- at least temporarily. Employers stayed away from the site during the rally.

Counter-protesters accused opponents of the site of racism and told them to go home.

Olin Tezcatlipoca, director of the Mexica Movement, an indigenous rights group, said day laborers are responding to the demand for work that most Americans aren’t rushing to do, from moving furniture to pulling weeds.

The hiring site opened Jan. 12 in a corner of Home Depot’s parking lot. To operate it, Burbank uses the $94,000 in annual fees Home Depot pays for the cost of additional city services. Catholic Charities of Los Angeles runs the site for the city.