By Yesenia Amaro

For The Enterprise

As the day breaks, the men are gathered around the parking lot of the Home Depot in Shoreline, off Highway 99, waiting to get work, yet knowing that it might not come that day.

They are primarily migrants from Mexico, whose ages range from their late teens to their 60s.

Whenever a police car passes by, the men walk toward the outskirts of the shopping center to avoid conflict.

“When I see a cop, I walk towards the edge of the parking lot,” said Luis Herrera, from Chiapas, Mexico. “Some of the guys have been given tickets.”

A few minutes after the police are gone, the men return to their original location, where they wait for construction and landscaping contractors to come and offer them work as day laborers.

Contractors drive up and approach with work offers.

The number of men chosen to work depends on the contractor’s needs. The parties negotiate over pay. If wages are too low, some decide to wait for a better offer, while others take advantage of the opportunity in case they might not get anything else. According to the men who have been there longer, the pay can be anywhere from $10 to $25 dollars per hour. The majority of the workers get paid cash once they accomplish their jobs, but occasionally a few of them prefer to get paid by check.

“I accept the job offer when they pay me $13 and up,” Herrera said. “Lately there’s a contractor that needs me twice during the week and he pays me up to $25 an hour.”

Most of the time the contractors feel satisfied with the work that the labor workers provide and they compensate them more than what they had agreed to. Eighty percent of the contractors are white; a few of them are Asian and Hispanic. According to the men, the white contractors are the best to work with and the worst are the ones of their own race. Out of all the men that were interviewed, there was only one specific incident where the worker said he was exploited.

“One of my own race, whom with I worked for three days, disappeared,” said Marco Carrillo, 34, from Honduras. “I never saw him again, he never paid me.”

According to the labor workers, the contractors take them to the job site and bring them back to their original location at the end of the day.

If by 2-3 p.m. the men have not found work, they go home to come back and wait again the next day. In most of the occasions when the laborers land work, they only get hired for a couple of hours. Some of them might be fortunate and get contracted to work for consecutive days, or even permanently.

“If luck is on your side, you might get a permanent job here,” said Ernesto Gonzalez.

This is a temporary job for those new faces who have recently arrived from Mexico. For the most part they go to work there while they find a stable job. Others don’t really know about job agencies or lack the required documents and they see that as an easy way to make money decently.

“I’m waiting for someone that is going to call me regarding a job,” said Eduardo Diaz, 17, who came here from Puebla, Mexico.

Familiar faces return during seasons of high construction activity. The majority of them have indoor jobs during the winter. During the summer they decide to work in construction to make more money.

“During the summer I usually come to look for work here,” said Manuel Moreno, who has been in Washington for two years. “Once it begins to rain I work in restaurants, I usually work indoors during the winter.”

A few of them go there to look for a job as a labor worker because they were laid off from their steady jobs. They prefer to go there because it pays better than the employment agencies.

“I was laid off from my job,” said Gonzales. “I think it’s easier to come here, because there’s agencies that pay [less than] what you can make here in […] one day.”

The common ground among the labor workers is that they all have their families in Mexico. They risked their lives to cross the border to provide their families with a brighter future and better opportunities.

“I have a son who is going to the university in Mexico, and I have to help him with the costs,” said Moreno. “I send money to my family at least once a month.”

The men usually send money to their families every month or whenever they have money saved up. Many of them plan to return home with their families within the next couple of years or even days.

“I’m going back to Mexico in September,” said Herrera. “I have accomplished my goals, now I’m going back.”

Yesenia Amaro is a reporter with La Raza del Noereste newspaper.