Day Laborers in this Recession

Today on KALW's Crosscurrents, you can hear my report on how the economic crisis has affected day laborers, three quarters of which are estimated to be undocumented immigrants.

I spoke with many day laborers for this piece, but decided to profile Amadeos. He is a middle aged man from El Salvador, who crossed illegally into the United States six years ago, and now lives in San Francisco with his wife and baby. I met him on the corner of Oak and Divisadero, where there is a Kelly Moore Paint Store, a typical place for day laborers to congregate and look for jobs.

I went back today to check in with him, and he says everything has stayed pretty much the same, very little work, but now there are fewer and fewer guys on the corner because many have gone back to their native countries. I talked with some of the other men there today, and two confessed that they were ready to go home, if only they had the money to pay for it. It seems to weigh on them heavily, this choice of whether to return or not. "If the economy is bad here, it trickles through the rest of the world, and to our native countries," one man named Santiago told me. "So you can imagine how bad it must be back there, probably worse than here." But they stick around, they tell me, in case the stimulus money creates more jobs, or if there is an advancement in Washington on immigration reform. "It's really difficult right now, but we have to keep trying...no hay otra," Santiago tells me...there's no other choice.