Day laborers out in the cold as slump bites

By Tim Gaynor

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Mexican builder Juan Alcaraz stands in the chill early morning air at a day labor site in the Arizona capital and waits for a "patron" or employer to roll up and hire him. He's done a lot of that lately.

"At one time, I worked 10 days straight, now I'm lucky to get a single day," he said. "I've never seen it so tough."

Alcaraz is among thousands of day laborers, almost all of them illegal immigrants, who hire out to lay concrete, do home repairs and tidy yards across the United States and who are feeling the pinch as the fast-deepening recession takes hold.

Many "jornaleros," as they are known in Spanish, worked five or more days a week earning up to $1,400 a month during the good times, according to a University of California at Los Angeles study two years ago, most saving money to support families in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

But as U.S. construction stumbles, home foreclosures bite and credit dries up amid the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, workers in the casual labor pool from California to New York are facing hard times.

"It's only getting worse," said Gerson Hernandez, 40, a Salvadoran who has painted homes for 14 years in Los Angeles, as he waited with other migrant laborers outside a Home Depot store in the Glendale area of the city.

In New York, more than 100 men stood in the cold in the Jackson Heights section of Queens one morning last week, bundled in their hooded jackets with hands buried in their pockets, waiting for jobs that would never come.

"I worked two or three days in November," said Roberto Romero, 51, a Venezuelan worker acutely aware of the perils of life without a safety net.

"Sometimes you can have breakfast with that or maybe have a coffee. Then you look for work and try again tomorrow. It's bitter," he added.

WAGE THEFT ON THE RISE

Feelings run high about illegal immigration in the United States, where an estimated 12 million undocumented workers hide in plain sight.

After the U.S. government failed to pass legislation overhauling immigration laws last year, many U.S. states and some local authorities have acted to clamp down on illegal immigrants.

As the economy soured in recent months, day laborers complain they are facing increasing hostility as they look for work at work centers and strip mall parking lots from Los Angeles to New York.

At the Macehualli Work Center in Phoenix, jornaleros said anti-immigration activists frequently picket the site, telling workers to go back home, and urging potential employers not to hire them. In Queens, workers said they were made to feel distinctly unwelcome by neighbors who don't like the sight of idle strangers crowding their sidewalk.

"We are offensive to them, just because we come here to look for work," said Mexican laborer Vidal Benitez, 46.