The information presented here is intended to provide basic education, not specific legal advice. Before taking any action that may have legal consequences to yourself or someone else, consult a licensed attorney in your state.

Communities have become concerned about day laborer issues because of the proliferation of day labor "pick-up" sites-locations where workers gather waiting to be hired for short-term labor, usually by contractors or private individuals. These sites often spring up near home improvement centers and truck rental businesses, and they can result in hundreds of idle men congregating in a parking lot or on the street. Typically, these sites will raise quality of life concerns, such as public safety, health, and welfare, as well as facilitating widespread violations of immigration, employment, wage, health and safety, and tax laws.

Statements by government officials and academic studies indicate that 40 to 80 percent of male day laborers (day labor is an almost exclusively male phenomena) are not authorized to work in the U.S.

Complaints about casual day labor sites often begin when local residents and merchants object to loitering, public urination, litter, or sexual harassment problems. These complaints, if documented by photos or videos and written affidavits, can often be resolved through local and state misdemeanor laws. It is especially important to involve business owners who believe their businesses are being harmed by day labor sites, or even the local Chamber of Commerce.

Protest tactics often have significant immediate effects. In Marin County, California, the Marin Immigration Reform Association announced to the press that it would photograph and video both day laborers and employers at San Rafael day labor sites. The monitoring was done openly, with media coverage, and the documentation was forwarded to the INS District Director. As a result, the INS increased sweeps of the targeted sites.

Photos and videos of curbside hiring may be of interest to the IRS-especially if the photos include license plates of the cars that are stopping to hire day laborers. The IRS is not particularly concerned with whether the workers are here illegally, but it is very interested in whether taxes have been paid. It is a virtual certainty that curbside hires are being paid in cash and off the books and that the income is not being declared.

Another widely adopted approach, which has been upheld by state and federal courts, is for local governments to enact an ordinance to prohibit all solicitations of moving vehicles. The courts have held that regulations limited to vehicle solicitation serve a legitimate public purpose, are not unconstitutionally vague, over-broad, or content-based, and do not violate the First Amendment. A second approach, often included in the same ordinance, is to prohibit the use of privately owned commercial parking facilities for solicitation of moving vehicles without explicit permission of the property owner. FAIR can provide model ordinances.

Activists may also adapt a strategy that has been used to bring lawsuits against drug and crack houses, where residents have shown injuries to businesses or property based on public nuisance claims that are very similar to the concerns raised by the tolerance of illegal alien workers within city limits.

Hiring Halls

In some communities, local politicians seek to deal with the day laborer issue by creating hiring sites of their own. They hope to satisfy the demands of the community and merchants to get day laborers off the street corners, while not offending alien advocacy groups. A designated hiring site concentrates day laborers in a single location in a community, while permitting the aliens to go on seeking employment. Numerous open borders groups also have created hiring halls on behalf of the aliens.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) makes it clear that any person who knowingly encourages an alien to reside in the U.S. illegally has committed a federal felony. The INA also makes it illegal to recruit someone for employment if you know he/she is an illegal alien and prohibits hiring a person without verifying documentation showing that the person is authorized to work in the U.S. Helping illegal aliens to remain in the U.S. is not protected by the First Amendment, and courts have ruled that it is illegal for non-profit and religious organizations to knowingly assist an employer in violating employment sanctions, regardless of claims that their convictions require them to assist aliens.

Taken together, these provisions prohibit a person or entity, including non-profit or religious organizations, from creating hiring halls dedicated to assisting people known to be illegal aliens in obtaining employment.

Local governments operating hiring halls often claim that they are not employers or recruiters and therefore are not required to verify the employment status of workers who use their facilities, any more than they are required to check the citizenship status of users of other municipal facilities.

In order to fight this argument in the courts, citizens must be able to show that government officials responsible for authorizing, funding, maintaining, or regulating the hiring had actual knowledge that hiring hall users or beneficiaries were illegal aliens or other unauthorized workers. The best way to do this is to write formal, registered letters of complaint to the members of the city council that authorizes the center, stating that the beneficiaries are illegal aliens, and including all evidence supporting that claim. (Since facts about legal residence cannot be established based on appearance alone, immigration reform activists can pose as prospective employers and hire workers from these hiring halls. Once the hiring has taken place, the employer must verify the legal status of the employee. If, as is often the case, the employees cannot produce valid documentation, that is evidence that the hiring hall and its operators are acting in reckless disregard of the law.) If the city council, planning commission, or other municipal body holds hearings or other public sessions, statements that operating a hiring hall facilitates violations of federal law should be entered into the public record.

Activists should verify whether the hiring hall has a policy of only servicing job seekers who are citizens or aliens with employment authorization. Hiring halls with screening policies should be of less concern, unless there is evidence that the screening procedure used is ineffective, perfunctory, or inconsistent.

Activists must also identify and document the amounts and sources of financial support used to pay for the hiring hall. Financial support could be in the form of direct funding or contractual arrangements with intermediaries, often non-profit advocacy organizations with strong open-borders political agendas. If Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds are used to pay for services to illegal aliens, statutes restricting the use of federal funds may also have been violated.

Most importantly, local government officials must operate in the open and hold open hearings about local issues. A city council meeting in which large numbers of citizens demand to be heard on these issues will almost always influence the decision the council makes.