HARRY REID’S NEVADA:
Harry Reid is listed on JUDICIAL WATCH’S 10 MOST CORRUPT IN 2007.
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“Similarly, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada has been “aggressively pushing amnesty” for illegal immigrants, says Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, another Washington group urging limits on immigration.”
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GRINGO DAY LABOR CENTERS
The new faces of day labor
U.S. citizens are joining immigrants in store parking lots
Steve Marcus
Ken Buchanan, left, waits for work at a Home Depot Thursday morning. Most weeks he’s there six days. The most he’s made in a week: $140.
By Timothy Pratt
Mon, Nov 2, 2009 (2 a.m.)
It sounds like a George Lopez joke.
“Times are so bad that I saw an Anglo day laborer standing outside Home Depot the other day.”
Except it’s true.
In the latest sign of the Las Vegas Valley’s economic free fall, U.S. citizens are starting to show up in the early mornings outside home improvement stores and plant nurseries across the Las Vegas Valley, jostling with illegal immigrants for a shot at a few hours of work.
Experts say the slow-starting but seemingly inexorable trend is occurring nationwide.
“It’s the equivalent of selling apples in the Great Depression,” said Harley Shaiken, chairman of the Center for Latin American studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
But it is not only a sign of the times, they add. If the numbers of citizens among the day laborers in cities across the country continue to grow, it’s likely to increase the ire of followers of TV host Lou Dobbs and others who will see illegal immigrants as stealing food off the tables of the nation’s native-born or naturalized poor.
Or, it may flip certain canards upside down in the immigration debate, easing tensions in some communities.
In the Las Vegas Valley, where the most recent unemployment rate was 13.9 percent, one face of this phenomenon is Ken Buchanan. The 50-year-old describes himself as a “food and beverage” guy, most recently working for four years at Renata’s Sunset Lanes casino and, before that, 30 years in a string of restaurants, hotels and casinos here and in his birthplace, Chicago.
But in 2006 Renata’s closed for remodeling. When the casino reopened as Wildfire, the management did not rehire Buchanan, he said.
In the months that followed, Buchanan discovered the difficulty of seeking work in his fifth decade, eventually winding up at Green Valley Car Wash, where he stayed for about two years, he said.
The banks foreclosed on the house he was renting. In the attempt to grab his things two steps ahead of the constable, he wound up missing work. He lost his job. He became homeless.
A Hispanic man Buchanan met in Renata’s sports book told him he had picked up work standing outside the Home Depot on Pecos Road at Patrick Lane. One July day, Buchanan gave it a try. At first, he got nothing but sunburn. But then he started to get work. Now he’s at the Home Depot six days most weeks.
Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said he has been seeing the same thing elsewhere. “It’s happening, though still not in massive numbers,” Alvarado said. In the past six months or so, he has heard of “americanos” on the street corners and parking lots of Silver Spring, Md., Long Island, N.Y., and Southern California locations.
“It’s just beginning,” he said. “But I think it’s only going to increase.”
A recent morning’s swing through the valley produced reports of the same phenomenon. At Star Nursery on Cheyenne Road west of Tenaya Way, Nicolas stood shivering under a hooded sweatshirt, hoping a car or pickup would stop. The Mexican immigrant said he had seen a couple of “white guys” showing up recently, though not on the blustery cold days last week.
At Home Depot on Decatur Boulevard north of Tropicana Avenue, Jose said the same thing, adding that “it’s never more than three or four, but they’re coming out.”
Farther south, in front of Moon Valley Nursery on Eastern Avenue, Israel said a couple of “americanos” — white and black, he added — have come out for work in recent months. “But they tend to stay only a few days.”
As a salesman at Moon Valley, Mike Fugitt’s job includes making sure the laborers don’t come into the nursery’s parking lot, because their presence draws complaints from some customers. In the past three months or so, he said, more of those laborers have been telling him, “But I’m an American.” That includes some Hispanics, he added. “But I treat them all the same; they can’t be trespassing,” he said.
Workers at all the sites said the presence of the americanos hasn’t made work scarcer or produced any conflict. Some suggested that people hiring day laborers prefer Hispanics anyway, because of their reputation as hard workers.
Shaiken said shaking up the mix at day labor sites may eventually produce conflict in the greater society. “It essentially shreds the argument that Americans don’t want certain jobs,” he said.
In the current economy, he added, “we’re almost sure to see die-hard opponents of illegal immigrants seize on the fact that we have legal workers in day labor markets,” heating an already-inflamed debate.
In the longer term, it may also lead to a more rigorous analysis of future labor markets, including revised estimates of how many immigrants would be needed under a guest worker program, as proposed in recent congressional bills.
At the same time, Shaiken said, the issue won’t become central to the debate before Congress over what is known as comprehensive reform, including a pathway for legalizing millions of workers. “The point is, do we really want a labor market with day labor work as a career path? It’s more a commentary on the economy right now,” he said.
Although Alvarado allowed that the change in day labor sites was an undeniable sign of the withering economy, he also sees a “beautiful irony” in U.S. citizens seeking work as day laborers.
That’s because his organization has defended the free-speech rights of day laborers in at least 10 court cases over more than a decade. Up to now, courts have ruled in favor of the laborers.
“We always knew (these cases) would be useful not only for immigrants, but also for U.S. citizens,” Alvarado said. “We knew there would be a time when the economy would reach this point, and they also would be looking for work this way.”
Buchanan likes to wear a Cubs or White Sox cap as a sign of his Chicago heritage when he stands with one or two Hispanic laborers about 20 yards south of a larger crowd. He said he has gone through an education of sorts in the past four months. He has always worked around Hispanics in restaurants, hotels and casinos, but now he understands the issue of immigration from up close.
His sojourn got off to a rocky start. On one of his first days on the street outside Home Depot, another laborer told him he should move along because too many people were at the spot.
“I told him, ‘I’m an American citizen and you’re trying to push me off American soil?’ ” The man walked away, and Buchanan says he hasn’t had another problem with his competitors since.
Instead, Buchanan has found himself defending the rights of his fellow laborers on more than one occasion. One day, a man tried to hire a bunch of them for $5 an hour. Again, Buchanan pulled out the “citizen card.” But this time, he was telling the other person that he, a U.S. citizen, knew about minimum wage laws, and was going to make sure those laws were followed. “I said, ‘You want me to write down your license plate number?’ ” Buchanan recalled. The guy drove away.
Now, he said, “I get along with everybody here.”
He stands in a smaller group because he thinks that helps to get work. He reads the daily tea leaves of the trade, like the end of the month being a good time for moving jobs, because many people are moving in or out. His best week so far: $140. His longest stint without work: the first two weeks, “until I learned to be more aggressive.”
Antonio Bernabe, day labor organizer for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said the appearance of more and more U.S. citizens seeking day labor work on corners and in parking lots poses new challenges for organizations such as his. In recent months, he said, he has found himself explaining to a whole new group the legal rights of workers, as well as approaching local authorities to discuss the entry of new people into what he called “the world of day labor.” That group includes blacks and Asians, he said.
Another difference is that now he’s giving those explanations to laborers in English.
Bernabe said organizers came across one case where a local sheriff had been sending officers to answer complaints about day laborers and then found one day that the sheriff’s neighbor, a citizen, was among them. Police in that area have been less likely to harass laborers since then, he said. These events will occur more, changing people’s attitudes in the process, he said.
“For a long time, people have looked at day laborers and said, ‘The problem is the immigrants.’ Now the economy is changing. Now people may see it’s a problem of the labor market, of the rights of workers,” Bernabe said.
Buchanan, meanwhile, looks forward to a future that includes a steady job and an apartment. “I’m trying to dig my way out of this,” he said. When he does, however, he sees himself as a changed man.
“Before, I was part of the majority. Now I’m part of the minority ... I’m not going to forget this. I’m not going to forget any of this.”
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ECONOMIC SCENE: How recession has changed the immigration debate
Politics, economics, demographics all come into play.
By David R. Francis | Staff Writer/ June 25, 2009 edition
The deep US recession has had one effect that polls say would please most Americans: Illegal immigration is falling.
More illegal immigrants are leaving. Fewer people are sneaking in – perhaps 200,000 a year instead of 500,000 in recent years, estimates Steven Camarota, an economist at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. Thus, America’s illegal population has fallen from about 12 million in February 2007 to almost 11 million this February, he calculates.
So when immigration becomes a hot topic again – as it will, inevitably – will the recession have shifted the terms of the debate?
In some ways, yes. The US slump proves that immigration is sensitive to economic conditions. It also weakens the argument of pro-immigration forces that there are some jobs Americans won’t do. Mr. Camarota finds that claim “absurd on its face.”
He points to a newly available sampling of 4.7 million workers in 465 occupations, a massive survey that asks respondents whether they were born in the US. The US-born already hold a clear majority of jobs people often regard as being left to immigrants, such as housekeeping and grounds-maintenance workers. Only in picking fresh produce do immigrants hold a small majority.
Of course, economics is just one component of the immigration debate. Politics plays a huge role.
For example: some 1 million immigrants become US citizens every year. About 300,000 more of them become Democrats than Republicans.
That advantage could be one reason that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, has blocked several immigration-control bills from coming to the floor, says Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, a nonprofit advocate for cutting immigration.
HARRY REID’S STATE OF NEVADA IS 25% ILLEGAL, AND HAS SOARING WELFARE COSTS FOR ILLEGALS!
Similarly, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada has been “aggressively pushing amnesty” for illegal immigrants, says Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, another Washington group urging limits on immigration.
Critics sometimes call various forms of amnesty “a Democratic registration program.”
The third component of the debate – the demographics – is vital in the long run. In the 1990s, the US had its biggest 10-year jump in population in its history – 32.7 million – and the fastest growth rate since the 1960s. The growth rate has slowed this decade, but the US is still on track to add some 28 million residents.
That’s the elephant in the room, Mr. Beck says. If President Obama really wants to reach his goals of energy independence and lower carbon emissions, he will have to restrain immigration, he argues. (US-born Americans have a birthrate slightly below the replacement level.) Otherwise, the projected population rise from 307 million today to 439 million in 2050 will swamp his intentions – and heighten other challenges, such as congestion and education.
So far, though, Mr. Obama has shown no enthusiasm for braking that growth, Beck and Mr. Stein say. Obama has said he would like to get illegal immigrants “out of the shadows and on a pathway to citizenship.” The one big change he’s made from the last years of the Bush administration is that instead of raiding plants to round up illegal immigrants, he wants to focus pressure on their employers.
The president plans to hold a key meeting with congressional leaders on immigration reform on June 17. The session is expected to clarify (at least a little) the White House’s position.
Meanwhile, a multimillion-dollar fundraising battle has broken out between pro-amnesty and antiamnesty groups.
It will, warns Stein, be “vitriolic, vicious.”
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MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
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LA RAZA – “THE (MEXICAN) RACE”….
THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA
1126 16th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
202-785 1670
Get on La Raza’s email list to find out what this fascist party is doing to expand the Mexican occupation. NCLR.org
FOR THE EXPANSION OF THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE, AND MEXICAN SUPREMACY
LA RAZA is the virulently racist political party for ILLEGALS (only Mexicans) and the corporations that benefit from illegals, and the employers of illegals. IT IS ILLEGAL TO HIRE AN ILLEGAL.
LA RAZA IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of AMERICA and has contempt for AMERICANS, AMERICAN LAWS, AMERICAN LANGUAGE, AMERICAN BORDERS, and the AMERICAN FLAG.
LA RAZA does like the AMERICAN WELFARE SYSTEM. The welfare system in the country is so good that Mexico has dumped 38 million of their poor, illiterate , criminal and frequently pregnant over our border.
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FAIRUS.org
FEDERATION FOR AMERICAN IMMIGRATION REFORM
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LosAngelesTimes
Do a search for Mexican gangs, or go to “Mexico Under Siege”
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usillegalaliens.com
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USCFILE.org
Cut and paste articles and post email all over the country!
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REPORT ILLEGALS TO: 1-866-DHS-2-ICE.
http://www.ice.gov/ ICE, ice, ICE
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JUDICIALWATCH.org
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Report Illegals & Employers Toll Free... (866) 347-2423
INS National Customer Service Center Phone: 1-800-375-5283.
http://www.reportillegals.com/
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You can contact President Obama and let him know of your opposition to amnesty for illegal aliens:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/
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Here is the Department of Homeland Security's Hotline for reporting suspected illegal employees and employers: 866-347-2423 (YOU MAY BE WASTING YOUR TIME HERE. HISPANDERING OBAMA SELECTED LA RAZA JANET NAPOLITANO TO HEAD “HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP” FOR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS)
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Immigration Enforcement Group Defends Against Amnesty Push
The ALIPAC Team
www.alipac.us
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