Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made
to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
~ Frederick Douglass ~
Immigrant Day Laborers in Houston
They are needed and they are reviled. They work in broad daylight and they exist in the shadows.
Houston has an estimated 3,000 day workers who frequent 29 street intersections looking for work.
The off-the-books labor force swells to 5,000 on the weekends.
The issue of day laborers in Houston and around the country has been a flashpoint in the debate
over illegal immigration, largely because most of the workers are undocumented.
Even if day laborers have many more good months than bad months, it is unlikely that their annual
earnings will exceed $15,000, keeping them at or below the federal poverty threshold.
But they want to work. They wait for hours in the heat, hoping for a job.
It's better than sitting on your ass and watching TV all day.