City Plans Hiring Hall for Legal Day Laborers

In the latest step to eliminate illegal aliens from Costa Mesa, the city is closing a deal to rent an abandoned gas station for use as a hiring hall where eligible day laborers can go to find work, Vice Mayor Orville Amburgey said Tuesday.

The city will pay $1,000 per month to rent a building at the southwest corner of 17th Street and Placentia Avenue, which is about six blocks from a park where many laborers gather in the morning looking for work, Amburgey said Tuesday.

“It’s going to afford the people who have become legalized more opportunity to get more gainful employment,” Amburgey said, adding that the facility will start operating in about a month.

Amburgey said undocumented aliens will be prohibited from using the facility.

Workers entering the hall will be screened for green cards by an as-yet-undetermined organization, Amburgey said. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has offered its computer with access to alien registration files for verification of citizenship or confirmation that workers are in the application process for cards.

City Councilwoman Mary Hornbuckle said the state Employment Development Department would run the hall, matching workers with employers and seeking job leads. Hornbuckle said that the city would not handle the citizenship screening and that city officials are deciding what agency could take on that task.

Amburgey anticipates that illegal aliens will then continue to congregate in the park. He said police will call the INS to run checks on men who continue to wait for work in the park after the employment facility opens.

“The INS will be very responsive to the requests of the city, as they have been to the requests of any city,” said Robert Moschorak, associate director of operations for the INS western region, which includes California, Hawaii, Nevada, Arizona and Guam.

“I think it is a very positive step,” Moschorak said. “I recognize the city of Costa Mesa has a problem, and I applaud their efforts.”

However, Rusty Kennedy of the county Human Relations Commission said the city’s claim to clamp down on illegals is “nothing new.”

“Undocumented aliens are already targeted, so there’s no change,” he said. “I don’t believe the city’s activities will have any dramatic change on the way the INS operates in that area.”

Kennedy said he believes that a lack of understanding brings about the complaints of residents near the park regarding the early-morning groups of undocumented workers who gather there to find work.

“It’s people’s fears of seeing a group of ethnic men at a park in a neighborhood that was all white,” he said about how the complaints are generated. “We hope the educational process will alleviate the fears of people who are expressing concern.”

A panel composed of council members, city staff, the city attorney and a member of the city Human Relations Committee will meet next week to complete details on the hiring hall, which was approved by City Council last month, Amburgey said.

“I don’t think there’ll be any problem” putting the plan into effect, City Atty. Thomas Wood said.

Also, Amburgey said he has spoken with many contractors who welcome the idea of the hiring hall because they fear picking up an illegal and being caught by the INS.

“Now, it’s come to the point where we have to take some aggressive action,” Amburgey said, adding that he hopes other cities follow suit.

“It is our objective to remove the presence of illegal immigrants from the city of Costa Mesa.”