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July 07, 2003

Freeport alien worker site

Freeport Hiring Site Works Out
Tide turns for laborer haven

By Bart Jones STAFF WRITER

2003 July 04

When the Freeport day laborer hiring site opened in September, so few workers
showed up most days that coordinator Oscar Cortes thought the project might
flop.

As few as five workers would arrive, while three blocks away in the Dunkin'
Donuts and Long Island Rail Road parking lots, a throng of 100 or more men,
mainly Latin American immigrants, would wait for landscaping and construction
contractors to come by and offer them daily jobs.

Today, the roles are reversed: Cortes' site is attracting the bulk of day laborers
in Freeport, while the Dunkin' Donuts location is nearly deserted.

The three groups running the site - Catholic Charities, The Workplace Project of
Hempstead and the Village of Freeport - are calling it a success that may serve
as a model for other communities wrestling with one of the most contentious
issues on Long Island.

"We've turned the corner," Cortes, a Nicaraguan immigrant who holds an MBA
from Adelphi University, said one morning last week as about 40 men waited for
work at the site, in a municipal parking lot on Bennington Avenue in a
semi-industrial zone.

As the Freeport center nears its one-year anniversary, immigration advocates
are launching a renewed effort to set up more day labor hiring sites on Long
Island. They've created a fund that already has $130,000 and is expected to
grow to $250,000 shortly. They say they are taking the initiative because
governments across Long Island have failed to do so.

"We've stepped forward because nobody else was," said Darren Sandow,
program officer for the newly created Work Long Island Fund. "From the Nassau
border all the way out to Montauk, you've got a growing population of day
laborers."

Long Island is home to an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 day laborers. The majority
wait on street corners in communities including
Franklin Square, Inwood, Westbury,
Farmingville and Southampton,
where they crowd around the vehicles of contractors who pull up. But
Freeport, Glen Cove, and
Huntington Station
have created formal hiring sites.

Proponents say the centers resolve traffic safety problems and get the men off
dangerously busy street corners and onto organized sites where they also can
study English, computers and other subjects. Opponents say the locations often
fail to attract many workers and aid illegal activity because some workers are
undocumented immigrants who don't pay income taxes.

The issue has provoked heated debate. A proposed hiring site in
Farmingville was shot down in 2001,
while one that opened in Farmingdale
last August closed about a month later after some community opposition.

Although immigrant advocates and Mayor William F. Glacken are claiming victory
with the new site in Freeport, not everyone supports the idea. "There is no way
that anyone on the face of the Earth can convince me that what's going on there
is legitimate," said local resident Georgia Prunty. She added, "I'd rather be a
dead patriot than a live coward, because we're losing our country."

Cortes, who is employed by Catholic Charities immigrant services, said the
center's turnaround began in early May, when Freeport police intensified efforts
to direct contractors to it. The workers soon followed.

At 6:30 a.m. sharp each day, the men draw numbers to determine who will get
the first jobs that come in. Usually at least half of the 40 or so who show up get
work, Cortes said.

While waiting, they play soccer on the paved parking lot, take English classes
and surf the Internet on one of five computers inside a trailer that has running
water, a bathroom and a television.

"From the first day I came, this has been a good thing," Francisco Machado, 34, a
native of El Salvador, said in Spanish.

Still, not all of Freeport's day laborers are using the location. On Tuesday at 7:15
a.m., a dozen workers were gathered at the Dunkin' Donuts location. A handful
also waited for work at a couple other spots.

Cortes said he hopes to lure all the workers to the new site. "We've finally
arrived," he said. "This is the true deal."

http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/longisland/ny-lisite263358324jul04,0,4778521.story?coll=ny-linews-archive

Posted by dc at July 7, 2003 10:33 PM

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