Contractors Divided Over Day Laborers

Long Island's Economy And Culture Shape Views

Day laborers gather in a Home Depot parking lot in Freeport, N.Y., waiting for work. The construction business on Long Island, once dominated by local whites, now relies heavily on Hispanic immigrants. (By Michelle Garcia -- The Washington Post)

FREEPORT, N.Y. -- The green pickup truck accented with stickers of yellow ribbons and U.S. flags belongs to Robert Stokes. A few yards away in the Home Depot parking lot, Tom Lippolt stretches out in his shiny, white pickup.

Both are contractors, in their forties, married, with homes near the ocean and annual incomes of $120,000. They both grew up in suburban Long Island. But they hold very different views of the day laborers who wait for contractors like them to cruise through the parking lot and offer them a day's wage.

"I wouldn't hire anyone," Stokes says as he loads tools into his truck. "They don't pay taxes." He doesn't buy the argument that immigrants do work that native-born Americans won't.

"I get people calling all the time -- someone gets laid off, they need work," says Stokes, who has 20 years' experience under his contractor's belt. He limits work hires to friends and family. "How can you bring someone you don't know into someone else's home?"

In his pickup, Lippolt casts his blue eyes toward the waiting day laborers.

"They're filling in the gaps," he says. "It seems like all the kids want to be stockbrokers. We don't have young people coming in to fill these places, all these trade jobs."

When Stokes and Lippolt were growing up, Long Island was anchored by a mix of blue-collar white men like them and mid-level professionals. Their families were part of the post-World War II exodus from the city, chasing the dream of suburban life.

But the heart of Long Island is different now. "The economy has changed, and industry is not what it once was. Education levels have gone up, particularly in the white community," said Bruce Katz, director of the metropolitan policy program at the Brookings Institution.

White men on Long Island in the financial and banking industries outnumber those in construction and the trades by 3 to 1, according to a recent Census study. And the blue-collar work has browned. Spanish-speaking immigrants -- legal and illegal -- now take on manual labor jobs. But if they are needed, they are not always welcome.

For years, many people in middle-class neighborhoods such as the ones that Stokes and Lippolt live in complained about men living in overcrowded housing, or loitering at doughnut shops and convenience stores as they waited for work. Six years ago, two men posed as contractors and beat their hired hands with shovels. A few years later, five teenagers firebombed a Mexican family's home.

Lippolt and Stokes could easily represent the two sides of an argument over illegal immigration. The construction industry is heavily dependent on immigrant labor. But, as is often the case with contentious issues, their differing stands stem more from circumstance than ideology.

"Things are working" in his world, Stokes said. He has a ready supply of family and friends who work with him. His son joined the business, and many of his friends still strap on a tool belt every day. He has little need, and less desire, to hire illegal immigrants, or any day laborers, for that matter.