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Posts Tagged ‘Day laborers’

Another Part of Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant SB 1070 Shut Down

10:32 am By Maegan La Mala · arizona|Immigration · Comments Off

1 Mar 2012

Yesterday, a federal district court issued a ruling blocking Arizona from enforcing another portion of it’s anti-immigrant law, SB 1070. Specifically, the court found that parts of the law violated the first amendment rights of day laborers soliciting work on public streets.
In defending this portion of the law, the state of Arizona claimed that the purpose of the provision was to ensure traffic safety.

From the National Day Laborer Organizing Network’s Press Release on the decision:

“Not only is the exercise of free speech a crucial civil right,” declared the court, “Plaintiffs have shown that they and their members are being chilled from soliciting employment by the threat of enforcement” of the anti-day labor provisions.

This is the second recent victory for day laborers:

Last week, the Supreme Court declined to review a Ninth Circuit decision striking down on First Amendment grounds a Redondo Beach ordinance that criminalized day labor solicitation (Comité de Jornaleros de Redondo Beach v. City of Redondo Beach). The court’s ruling in Redondo Beach struck down the City of Redondo Beach’s anti-solicitation ordinance as a “facially unconstitutional restriction on speech.”

Oyster Bay Long Island Ordinance Targeting Latino Day Laborers Halted

6:56 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration|Labor|New York · Comments Off

21 May 2010

That was fast. An Oyster Bay, Long Island, NY ordinance targeting Latino day laborers seeking work was shot down yesterday by a Federal Judge, who issued a temporary restraining order barring enforcement of the law until a full hearing on the matter on May 28th.
The decision came following a lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union

The law used the excuse of public safety, claiming that day laborers seeking work in Farmingdale and Locust Valley presented a danger to pedestrians and drivers. Most Latino immigrant workers and their supporters say the law was racial profiling and anti-immigrant.

For now day laborers can return to seeking work in order to provide for themselves and their familias.

Homelessness Up Among Day Laborers in NYC

11:57 am By Maegan La Mala · economy|Immigration|Labor · 6 Comments

5 Jan 2010

According to an article in the NYT (who still thinks it’s ok to use “illegal” as an adjective), homelessness is up among day laborer in Queens.

Mr. Ruano, 38, who had drawn his living from 69th Street and Broadway for six years, has been on the streets since. He and other hard-luck day laborers have slept wherever they can: in the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital Center, in unfinished buildings abandoned by bankrupt developers and under bridges along the freight railroad tracks that slice through western Queens, where dirty mattresses and work boots lay on the rocky ground one recent morning.

“The only reason we don’t go hungry is because there are people who offer us food,” Mr. Ruano said on a snowy Saturday as he clutched a cup of soup from a group of Pentecostals feeding day laborers at a park on Woodside Avenue.

With their isolation and day-to-day existence, the laborers are perhaps the most invisible and hardest-to-reach victims of the recession, advocates and city officials say.

The invisible comment got to me. I have lived in an immigrant neighborhood for a number of years and there is nothing invisible about this trend. There is a small plaza three blocks from casa mala where laborers who aren’t working hang out and more and more I have seen more people there, and yes sleeping.

It’s amazing to me really how visible day laborers are when they are allegedly peeing and drinking on “white streets” but in POC/immigrant neighborhoods, their not having a home is suddenly invisible.

Role Reversals : White Collar Day Laborers

11:15 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Funny|Immigration|Internet|Labor · 2 Comments

9 Apr 2008

Imagine if the roles were reversed like this? Would there be so many protests about white people hanging out in suits in front of office buildings?

Via / Mi Blog es Tu Blog

Baldwin Park California Seeks to Ban Day Laborers

11:40 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · California|Immigration|Labor · Comments Off

13 Nov 2007

Baldwin%20Park%20City.jpg Officials of the city of Baldwin Park, California are considering a new law that would ban day laborers from using city parking lots to find work. The ordinance would also ban street vendors from the same parking lots. The new law would enforce that the lots be used only for parking and accessing buildings. while it seems benign enough, the fact is that this is the second time to city is trying to deal with the day laborers, who are mostly, Latino.

Claims that laborers were harassing customers near the Home Depot on Puente Avenue prompted an approval in June of an ordinance that barred laborers from soliciting employers in parking lots and on sidewalks unless they left a 3-foot buffer for pedestrians.
The law was in effect for 11 days before a judge stopped it from being enforced. The ban was repealed in August as part of a settlement with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which sued the city citing the law’s unconstitutionality.

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