Latino Workers Drift Back to Site That Drew Complaints

Last month, the city of Laguna Beach opened an outdoor hiring hall on a remote stretch of Laguna Canyon Road in hopes of luring Latino dayworkers away from a Coast Highway convenience store, where they drew complaints.

Initially, the plan worked. But now some of the dayworkers have drifted back to their old haunt, complaining that the canyon is too cold. The Circle K store, they say, is warm and has food and coffee. And, they say, it seems easier to find jobs in town than out in the canyon.

“Little by little, we are returning,” said Juan Diaz, 25, an immigrant from Acapulco, Mexico.

The management at Circle K, however, is not so happy. Neither are some residents, who fear the dozen or so workers milling near their homes each morning will swell back to nearly 100, as was the situation before the city in mid-December set up its hiring hall on a dirt parking lot along Laguna Canyon Road.

“My heart goes out to them, but I can’t take this,” said Sydney Mack, a woman who lives on nearby Chiquita Street. “I am considering moving from my home of 17 years.”

Perminder Singh, the Circle K manager, said he has noticed a gradual increase in the number of workers congregating outside his business on the corner of North Coast Highway and Viejo Street.

“It was good for a couple of days, but now they are starting to come back,” Singh said Thursday morning as 15 dayworkers mingled outside his store. At the canyon pickup site, about 45 men waited for jobs at the same time Thursday.

“Nobody knows what to do now,” Singh said.

City Manager Kenneth C. Frank acknowledged that the city’s plan has not removed all the day laborers from north Laguna Beach. But a spot check by city employees last week found only six workers at the Circle K and 57 at the canyon location, he said.

“I’m not saying it’s perfect (but) we think it’s been pretty darn successful,” Frank said. “I mean, look at what’s happening in Orange,” where dayworkers congregate on Chapman Avenue. “They’ve had raids, leaned on people and the workers are right back.”

The number of workers at the Circle K has been so reduced that they pose little of the problem they did before, Frank said. Neighbors had complained that the laborers’ urinated and defecated in public, and Circle K management complained that they harassed female customers and shoplifted.

Singh said those problems are returning.

“The ladies, especially, are scared to come in here,” Singh said.

But workers outside Singh’s store denied that they caused problems.

“We are here to work, that is all,” said Pablo Martinez, 40, of Orange.

Martinez, who left a wife and 10 children in Mexico to find work in the United States, said that he spent a few days at the Laguna Canyon job site but quickly returned to the Coast Highway site.

“It is sunnier here earlier,” Martinez said. “In the canyon it is very cold.”

At the canyon site, where several workers wore scarfs over their faces to ward off the 48-degree chill, Eutimio Mancilla, 26, of Acapulco, said through chattering teeth, “It’s too cold in this place. In this place it is cold every morning.”

It also draws fewer employers, the men say.

Outside the Circle K, Lino Quintana, 35, an immigrant from the Mexican state of Guerrero, said patrones , American employers, stop there for coffee and laborers.

Finally, some Latino workers said they feel safer from immigration raids at the convenience store--where they can scan approaching streets--than in the canyon, where Laguna Canyon Road curves quickly out of view. “Also there is no place to hide (in the canyon),” Diaz said.

Frank said, however, that the exact opposite is true. A sweep through Laguna Beach last week by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service concentrated in the northern area, resulting in a few apprehensions of undocumented workers, Frank said. But the INS left the new hiring hall location alone.

“The INS is cooperating to keep the pressure on north Laguna,” Frank said.