Question by Maricopa County: What are your thoughts U.S. citizens are starting to show up in the early mornings at Home Depot?
It sounds like a George Lopez joke.
"Times are so bad that I saw an Anglo day laborer standing outside Home Depot the other day."
Except it's true.
In the latest sign of the Las Vegas Valley's economic free fall, U.S. citizens are starting to show up in the early mornings outside home improvement stores and plant nurseries across the Las Vegas Valley, jostling with illegal immigrants for a shot at a few hours of work.
Experts say the slow-starting but seemingly inexorable trend is occurring nationwide.
"It's the equivalent of selling apples in the Great Depression," said Harley Shaiken, chairman of the Center for Latin American studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
But it is not only a sign of the times, they add. If the numbers of citizens among the day laborers in cities across the country continue to grow, it's likely to increase the ire of followers of TV host Lou Dobbs and others who will see illegal immigrants as stealing food off the tables of the nation's native-born or naturalized poor.
Or, it may flip certain canards upside down in the immigration debate, easing tensions in some communities.
In the Las Vegas Valley, where the most recent unemployment rate was 13.9 percent, one face of this phenomenon is Ken Buchanan. The 50-year-old describes himself as a "food and beverage" guy, most recently working for four years at Renata's Sunset Lanes casino and, before that, 30 years in a string of restaurants, hotels and casinos here and in his birthplace, Chicago.
But in 2006 Renata's closed for remodeling. When the casino reopened as Wildfire, the management did not rehire Buchanan, he said.
In the months that followed, Buchanan discovered the difficulty of seeking work in his fifth decade, eventually winding up at Green Valley Car Wash, where he stayed for about two years, he said.
The banks foreclosed on the house he was renting. In the attempt to grab his things two steps ahead of the constable, he wound up missing work. He lost his job. He became homeless.
A Hispanic man Buchanan met in Renata's sports book told him he had picked up work standing outside the Home Depot on Pecos Road at Patrick Lane. One July day, Buchanan gave it a try. At first, he got nothing but sunburn. But then he started to get work. Now he's at the Home Depot six days most weeks.
Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said he has been seeing the same thing elsewhere. "It's happening, though still not in massive numbers," Alvarado said. In the past six months or so, he has heard of "americanos" on the street corners and parking lots of Silver Spring, Md., Long Island, N.Y., and Southern California locations.
"It's just beginning," he said. "But I think it's only going to increase."
http://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/nov/02/new-faces-day-labor/
Best answer:
Answer by Jimchristopher
Home Depot should run all of the hispanics off or call immigration. I have seen them out at a home depot on the coast after katrina, i called immigration and they were not there the next day. US citizens are going to have to start taking drastic measures with all of this because the government is doing nothing. We need to take care of our own people instead of a bunch of illegals or foreigners. If these people want to come over here then they should have money saved to come with. I bet if we went to their country, DO YOU ACTUALLY THINK THAT THEIR GOVERNMENT WOULD HELP US? NO THEY WOULD NOT. Start complaining inside the home depot and furthermore, arrest the people that are hiring these illegals and fine them no less than 100,000 dollars and it would come to a halt.
What do you think? Answer below!
