Day laborers : a generalized profile.

There are few facts that define the day labor phenomenon . Most day laborers are illegal immigrants who dodge the border patrol to find work in the U.S. Most of them are farmers primarily from Latino countries. The majority of day laborers come from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (see table 4). The majority are men aged between 18-55, a large prime number of them don’t speak English, and Spanish is the common spoken language. The gathering sites are usually street corners and curb, mainly next to hardware or lumber stores such as Home Depot. There are approximately 200 day labor sites spread all over the city . At each site there are between 20-30 workers who wait to be picked up for daily jobs as gardeners, construction workers or other unskilled temporary workers. They are not selective about the kind of work they are being offered. The minimum wage varies from site to site; established by the workers themselves, it’s usually 6-8 dollars an hour, although some veterans say they make up to $14 an hour. "Romero is lucky to get work only twice a week but it has been enough for him to send his mother nearly $1000 a month, a king’s ransom in Mexico, and enough to get his 19 years old brother to America" . 76% of the workers were found to be undocumented (see table 2), the majority of them are at day labor sites because of the lack of formal jobs in the market.