Andrew Friedman

Law Enforcement?

Yesterday's New York Times had an interesting juxtaposition of articles on immigrant day laborers.

On the cover of the Metro Section, in Peter Applebome's "Our Towns" column, an article appears about eight Guatemalan men who were arrested and face deportaion for playing soccer on an empty Putnam County school field on January 9th. The arrests came just days after xenophobic residents organized a protest against the increased number of immigrant workers in town. Police then cracked down and arrested these men for trespassing when they were playing soccer. It's almost impossible to imagine a group of blond teenagers or local dads getting arrested for the same offense. So much for equality before the law.

But, immigrant workers get it both coming and going. Steven Greenhouse wrote an article in the National Section that detailed the rampant lawlessness that day laborers suffer on the job. His article was based on a broad survey of close to 3000 workers at 264 hiring sites in 20 states done by academics. The study found that 49% of workers had not been paid for work done in the previous two months, and 44% were denied legally required breaks during the workday. If we extrapolate those results to the approximately 120,000 day laborers working in the U.S., we have some pretty major legal violations.

Where was law enforcement when these workers needed them you might ask? In fact, the study showed that, too. They were arresting (9%), citing (11%), or chasing (37%) the workers as they waited for work.

What about the employers? Apparently, they don't have anything to woorry about.

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Posted at 7:48 AM, Jan 23, 2006 in Labor
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