Everyone dealing with the uncertainty of day labor has a reason for his or her work.
A carpenter needs to pay his family’s medical bills. A local dishwasher works below minimum wage to stay with his U.S.-born children. A cleaning lady pays for her son’s medical school tuition.
The national debate still rages over how the country should deal with Latino immigrants. But whether you are in favor of immigration or not, it’s impossible to ignore its impact.
WHAT IT’S LIKE BACK HOME:
Leon, MexicoEfren Cisneros left his home in Leon, Mexico to come to Chapel Hill about four years ago.
The poor economy there has continued to deteriorate since then.
The situation in Leon is similar to those in many Latino countries, leading people to search for work in the United States
As many as 10,000 jobs could have been lost in Leon's shoe industry since last year.
According to Cisneros and recent news stories from Leon, the
government is wrapped up in
fighting drug cartels instead of focusing on investing in jobs and education.
The dollars and the labor of the Chapel Hill area’s Latinos circle North Carolina, flow across the United States, cross the border and come back again — leaving a mark on our restaurants, retail, infrastructure and future professionals.
And as Latin America faces the global recession with less economic stability and what some call the short end of the North American Free Trade Agreement, some workers say they couldn’t help but look north.
Here are a few of their stories.
Waiting for any truck
Because Efren Cisneros, 45, paints houses, enduring the constant anxiety that he might not find work tomorrow, his father has recovered from near blindness.
Ascension Cisneros, who lives in Leon, Mexico, could afford his eye surgery last year with the help of his son’s carpentry work in and around Chapel Hill. Now, he’s able to watch his grandchildren grow up.
Efren Cisneros’ work can be found in the freshly painted walls and finely crafted wooden floors of student-majority apartment complexes all over Chapel Hill and Carrboro, including The Warehouse on Rosemary Street.
In North Carolina, employers don’t have to ask for documents when they hire independent contractors, defined as nonofficial company employees.
Bill Cheatham is one such employer. He owns Four Seasons Landscaping of Durham and employs workers like Efren Cisneros from the unofficial day labor site at the corner of Jones Ferry Road and Davie Road.
“We kind of pick up anyone willing to do the work,” he said. “They’ve all been good workers.”
Efren Cisneros said he tries to send at least $200 every week to his family, divided between his parents, his siblings, his four children and his three grandchildren.
The difference in value between the Mexican peso and the U.S. dollar is such that migrants like Cisneros can go for days without work and live on bare necessities while helping their families afford a better life.
“What you earn here in one day you can earn in one week in Mexico,” Efren Cisneros said in Spanish. “My whole family can eat for as much as I have to spend to feed just myself.”
Ascencion Cisneros said two of his grandchildren work in a Leon leather factory where wages and hours were cut, but production didn’t change.
Those who have left factories to find better paying jobs or to subsist on family farms have found the global recession difficult to endure.
“We need the money sent from those working in the states because there are such few opportunities for work here,” Ascension Cisneros said in Spanish.
Just up the hill from the Cisneros’ house, three families have lost all of their youth across the border — a trend seen all across Latin America.
David Bacon, a migrant labor expert from Los Angeles who gave a speech at last week’s Latin American Migration conference hosted by UNC’s Institute for the Study of the Americas, emphasized the necessity with which many Latinos migrate.
“Since 1994, 6 million people from Mexico have come to live in the United States,” he said, emphasizing the mass exodus caused by NAFTA.
“You work for half a day to afford a gallon of milk. Most people live in cardboard houses, and that’s when people are working. So when people lose their jobs, and the border is right there, what do you think you’d do?”
Ascension Cisneros said when workers return from the States, they use their savings to invest in their hometowns by opening small businesses and hiring locals.
“They make good use of the money they saved over there,” he said.
And while he misses his son, he said he respects what he has to do.
“For his help supporting his grandchildren and his children, I support him. I just hope he doesn’t lose his identity — his race, that he is a Mexican,” he said.
“If he comes home, I will welcome him, and give him thanks.”
Waiting for graduation
If Graciela Sigueroa was selling vegetables in Guatemala instead of traveling the Southeast in search of houses to clean, her son wouldn’t have the money to go through medical school in California.
But thanks to a commitment to her son that takes her across the Virginia border and out to Wilmington in search of a day’s work, the United States might soon boast one more neurosurgeon.
“My son is studying in the university, and that’s my dream. If I was working in Guatemala, I wouldn’t be able to reach that goal,” Sigueroa said in Spanish.
“Thanks to those who have given me work, I can realize this dream.”
In order for Sigueroa to afford her son’s tuition, she cuts corners with the clothes she buys and sometimes with the food she eats.
But she sees the Latino population as a community and makes the effort to spend her extra dollars at the local Latino-owned businesses.
Since the recession hit the community in 2008, Sigueroa said she and other Latinos haven’t been able to afford as much fresh food and cooked meals from the tiendas.
She took home a basket full of freshly butchered beef and fresh vegetables from Toledo’s Taqueria that she planned to use in her soup that night, even though she’d only worked four days that week.
Her red T-shirt was a gift from a friend and her shoes were picked up at a yard sale.
According to a Hispanic economic impact study by the Kenan-Flagler Business School in 2006, as of 2002 Hispanic-owned N.C. businesses were a $1.8 billion industry, and as of 2004, Latino buying power in the state was $8.35 billion.
But Sigueroa is an exception. Like many who are unemployed, when the Latino population isn’t working, it isn’t buying.
Mariana Dominguez works the cash register at Toledo’s Tacqueria where Sigueroa was shopping. She’s worked there for six months, but even in that time she said she’s seen business decrease, especially at the restaurant, empty at 7 p.m. on a Thursday.
“There are a lot of diabetics because they’re eating fast food. It’s too expensive to buy food at the tiendas Mexicanas,” Sigueroa said. “If a banana costs 99 cents and a pack of cookies costs 75 cents, you buy the cookies.”
It’s a choice she’s had to make.
Waiting for his rights
If Domingo didn’t work for below minimum wage washing dishes in a local Mexican restaurant, he would have to cross the border and leave his U.S-born children and his wife behind.
But thanks to a commitment to his family that compels him to work 12 hours a day nearly every day for almost half the minimum wage, Chapel Hill has one more man serving chips and salsa.
Domingo asked for his last name to not be published because of his immigration status.
Last year, he filed a complaint against a Franklin Street restaurant for paying him less than the minimum wage. The Daily Tar Heel confirmed the complaint to be on file at the N.C. Department of Labor. Now, he endures the same low wages and long hours at a new restaurant.
“I’ve thought of going home, but I don’t know how I would take the children,” Domingo said in Spanish.
Domingo’s daughter is seven months old. His son is only 2.
“A lot of people in this area, they live off of restaurants around here,” said Rafael Gallegos, associate director of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Human Rights Center.
“So when you pay $7 at one of those places on Franklin Street, well, you can pay $7 because the person who’s making that food is making less than that.”
Gallegos, an advocate for day laborers, helped Domingo file the complaint.
According to the 2006 business school study, non-Hispanic workers in the leisure and hospitality industry, which includes restaurants, make $28,014 a year on average,. Hispanic workers pull in around $17,571.
Domingo said he earns $700 every two weeks. If he were paid at minimum wage, he would earn $1,000.
At Domingo’s last job, he said he worked 12-hour days without breaks and was only paid $50 a day.
While his wages could have been a violation of the N.C. Wage and Hour Law, at-will employees, those who work without a contract, do not have to be guaranteed any breaks, no matter the number of hours worked.
When Domingo quit that job, he said he complained to the Department of Labor that he be paid for the hours he’d already worked prior to quitting — a compensation required under N.C. labor law.
“They took advantage of us, they pressured us,” he said. “We thought the pay would increase but it never did.”
Now Domingo said he doesn’t think it’s worth it to keep challenging the conditions under which immigrants like himself must work.
“About the same thing is happening where I work now, but I have to deal with it unless I want to go without work.”
Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
