Post by Freehold Resident on Aug 4, 2006 8:41:14 GMT -5
The Urban Migrants
By ROBEN FARZAD
Published: July 20, 2005
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. - Eight years ago, Sister Margaret Rose Smyth had to go out of her way to find illegal immigrants who might need her help, listening for Spanish conversations at the Kmart on the North Fork of Long Island.
Skip to next paragraph
Shannon Stapleton for The New York Times
In New York, day laborers in the Jackson Heights section of Queens hoped for jobs that pay as little as $60 a day.
Now every day, Sister Margaret, a Roman Catholic nun who is the director of the North Fork Spanish Apostolate, typically sees off two early-morning buses filled with laborers seeking work along the Long Island Expressway, giving them business tips and moral support.
By the time her workday ends 12 hours later, she has met with scores of other workers seeking her advice on everything from alcoholism and burial arrangements to documents and wages.
"The housing and construction boom has more people working," Sister Margaret said, noting that now she sees 1,000 immigrants from Mexico and Central America, most of them undocumented, at church each week.
"Somebody made it to Riverhead and got the word out," she said.
Indeed, the housing boom, with its promise of consistent and better-paying work, has in the last five years attracted undocumented laborers not just to Long Island, but also to hot housing markets across the country - among them the areas around Chicago; Washington; Freehold, N.J.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Jupiter, Fla.
But unlike the agricultural work that traditionally drew immigrant laborers to little-populated areas of the country, construction labor is conspicuously in the heart of the suburbs, with laborers gathering in Home Depot parking lots, outside convenience stores and on street corners.
Many are remaining in the suburbs afterward to do landscaping, painting, kitchen renovations and other home improvement work.
In the process, longtime residents are being forced to confront the issue of illegal immigration as never before, dotting the national map with dozens of new battlefronts in the debate on workers living in the United States without legal status.
While the nature of illegal immigration makes exact numbers hard to come by, the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization, estimates that the unauthorized migrant population jumped by 25 percent from 2000 to 2004, to at least 10.3 million. About 20 to 25 percent of the entire construction work force in this country, the center estimated, is undocumented.
Abel Valenzuela Jr., a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has canvassed more than 80 worker sites nationwide, estimates that 75 to 85 percent of all day labor is in home construction, repair and landscaping.
"The housing boom and construction is driving the day labor issue into the suburbs," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that favors tighter immigration controls. The growing presence of illegal immigrants has been burden on local hospitals and schools and is "sparking political activism at the local level," he said. "Until now," he added, "there hasn't been enough of a catalyst to get local people speaking out."
But Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research at the Pew Hispanic Center, said that it would be unfair to characterize illegal immigrants as a drain on society, noting that many of them pay taxes but are ineligible for government services. Moreover, he said, they contribute to a critical sector of the economy. "Construction day laborers are responding to a demand, and definitely filling a need," he said. "If you took away that labor force, I doubt it would have a positive effect."
Freehold, N.J. - the subject of the Bruce Springsteen song "My Hometown" - is one place the debate has surfaced, as local residents cope uneasily with the growing number of immigrant workers who seek construction and landscaping jobs in western Monmouth County.
"Freehold is being used as day labor central," said Marc LeVine, a former councilman in the blue-collar borough who founded Pressing Elected Officials to Protect Our Living Environment - with the acronym People - to campaign against illegal immigration. "There's a culture clash and animosity toward not just the workers, but the wealthy people who demand the day labor."
Mr. LeVine estimates that Freehold is now home to at least 3,000 to 4,000 illegal immigrants, a significant fraction of the borough's recognized population of 11,000 people who were counted in the 2000 census. That off-the-books population increase, Mr. LeVine said, has strained schools and hospitals and driven up taxes. "Nobody is sending us money to help us with these costs," he said. "This cannot be a free-for-all."
By ROBEN FARZAD
Published: July 20, 2005
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. - Eight years ago, Sister Margaret Rose Smyth had to go out of her way to find illegal immigrants who might need her help, listening for Spanish conversations at the Kmart on the North Fork of Long Island.
Skip to next paragraph
Shannon Stapleton for The New York Times
In New York, day laborers in the Jackson Heights section of Queens hoped for jobs that pay as little as $60 a day.
Now every day, Sister Margaret, a Roman Catholic nun who is the director of the North Fork Spanish Apostolate, typically sees off two early-morning buses filled with laborers seeking work along the Long Island Expressway, giving them business tips and moral support.
By the time her workday ends 12 hours later, she has met with scores of other workers seeking her advice on everything from alcoholism and burial arrangements to documents and wages.
"The housing and construction boom has more people working," Sister Margaret said, noting that now she sees 1,000 immigrants from Mexico and Central America, most of them undocumented, at church each week.
"Somebody made it to Riverhead and got the word out," she said.
Indeed, the housing boom, with its promise of consistent and better-paying work, has in the last five years attracted undocumented laborers not just to Long Island, but also to hot housing markets across the country - among them the areas around Chicago; Washington; Freehold, N.J.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Jupiter, Fla.
But unlike the agricultural work that traditionally drew immigrant laborers to little-populated areas of the country, construction labor is conspicuously in the heart of the suburbs, with laborers gathering in Home Depot parking lots, outside convenience stores and on street corners.
Many are remaining in the suburbs afterward to do landscaping, painting, kitchen renovations and other home improvement work.
In the process, longtime residents are being forced to confront the issue of illegal immigration as never before, dotting the national map with dozens of new battlefronts in the debate on workers living in the United States without legal status.
While the nature of illegal immigration makes exact numbers hard to come by, the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization, estimates that the unauthorized migrant population jumped by 25 percent from 2000 to 2004, to at least 10.3 million. About 20 to 25 percent of the entire construction work force in this country, the center estimated, is undocumented.
Abel Valenzuela Jr., a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has canvassed more than 80 worker sites nationwide, estimates that 75 to 85 percent of all day labor is in home construction, repair and landscaping.
"The housing boom and construction is driving the day labor issue into the suburbs," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that favors tighter immigration controls. The growing presence of illegal immigrants has been burden on local hospitals and schools and is "sparking political activism at the local level," he said. "Until now," he added, "there hasn't been enough of a catalyst to get local people speaking out."
But Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research at the Pew Hispanic Center, said that it would be unfair to characterize illegal immigrants as a drain on society, noting that many of them pay taxes but are ineligible for government services. Moreover, he said, they contribute to a critical sector of the economy. "Construction day laborers are responding to a demand, and definitely filling a need," he said. "If you took away that labor force, I doubt it would have a positive effect."
Freehold, N.J. - the subject of the Bruce Springsteen song "My Hometown" - is one place the debate has surfaced, as local residents cope uneasily with the growing number of immigrant workers who seek construction and landscaping jobs in western Monmouth County.
"Freehold is being used as day labor central," said Marc LeVine, a former councilman in the blue-collar borough who founded Pressing Elected Officials to Protect Our Living Environment - with the acronym People - to campaign against illegal immigration. "There's a culture clash and animosity toward not just the workers, but the wealthy people who demand the day labor."
Mr. LeVine estimates that Freehold is now home to at least 3,000 to 4,000 illegal immigrants, a significant fraction of the borough's recognized population of 11,000 people who were counted in the 2000 census. That off-the-books population increase, Mr. LeVine said, has strained schools and hospitals and driven up taxes. "Nobody is sending us money to help us with these costs," he said. "This cannot be a free-for-all."