Dropping Out to Take Day Jobs

Many Immigrant Students Miss Out on Education to Maintain Standard of Living

At 18, high-school junior Kelvin Villalobos shares more disparities with his classmates than a three-year age difference. While other students begin every morning waiting for the school bus to arrive, Villalobos stands at a street corner further down, awaiting the arrival of a contractor-any contractor-that will offer him employment sufficient to secure a day's wages.

A recent immigrant from El Salvador, Villalobos has been in and out of school since last November when his immigration status cost him his steady night job and required him to turn to day labor to make up for lost income.

But Villalobos is just one of many-a largely invisible population of young immigrants forced to take on day jobs in order to maintain a stable income and standard of living. According to a Nnational Day labor Study, the day-laborer workforce is predominantly immigrant and relatively youthful, 83 percent of whom rely on day-labor work as their sole source of income. And after Montgomery County announced in March the plans for a pilot program to aid immigrants with little formal education, more light is being shed on students like Villalobos, those who are missing out on education altogether.

At Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, where Villalobos is enrolled as a junior, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher Jane Winter says that the issue has been on and off over the past few years. It is not uncommon, according to Winter, that students enroll older than most and leave part way through the year as a result of extenuating circumstances. "There are a number of [ESOL] teachers that may have had one or two students leave in the past year," Winter says.

For Villalobos, the situation began when his former employer discovered he did not have a green card, but that Villalobos was instead here on "immigration status," a classification the Immigration and Naturalization Service gives to international visitors when they enter the U.S., according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. But because Villalobos currently lives with his sister and her husband, he must pay his share of the rent-and so he is seeking financial solace in a construction day job.

Jennifer Tanner, Villalobos's environmental-science teacher at Blair, first began noticing that Villalobos was missing a lot of class and having problems at home, financially. But, according to Tanner, Villalobos was a junior on track for graduation. "Had he finished this year, he would have graduated," Tanner says. "It seems like he wants to be here. He seems motivated."

Such is the conflicting issue as many educationally-potential young immigrants are being stripped of their shot at a solid education-the critical last few years of high school. According to Abel Valenzuela, associate professor of Chicano studies and urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, many day laborers arrive with some education. His study of the day-labor culture in the greater Washington, D.C. region and parts of Baltimore concluded that 50 percent of day laborers have only at least some middle-school education while a lower 39 percent have at least a high-school education.

In Montgomery County, some initiatives are being taken to assuage the predicament of students being forced to drop out of school. At Blair, Winter is also instructor of the school's Multidisciplinary Education, Training and Support (METS) program, a county initiative to help students who have experienced an interruption in their schooling receive daily instruction in basic skills and ESOL. At his school, Villalobos was taking a full seven-period day of on-level subjects similar to other students-including the county's National, State and Local government course, principles of algebra and geometry , and Spanish class--in an effort to assimilate to his new education in America.

But such efforts are easily lost in the move to maintain financial stability.

The same situation has burdened brothers Marlen Cortez-Hernandez, Wilson Cortez, and Wilber Hernandez-Cortez (whose last names were variably changed after arriving in the U.S.). The three brothers, all students at Blair, have been in and out of school, taking on day jobs to support their family. Currently, only one of the three-Wilber-is left at Blair, while both Marlen and Wilson are taking on day jobs. Classmates of Villalobos, they are also relied upon for a sizeable portion of the family income.

According to the National Day Labor Study, most day laborers were born in Mexico and Central America and consequently arrive with little command of the English language. For Villalobos, his broken English has been a barrier to communicating with non-Spanish speakers.

The increased frequency of immigrant day laborers prompted CASA de Maryland, a community organization aimed at improving the quality of life and fighting for "equal treatment and full access to resources and opportunities for low-income Latinos and their families," to open a permanent day-laborer center in 1993. the center is located in East Silver Spring-not far from Blair High-where employers register before hiring workers.

According to the CASA, the presence of day laborers is increasing nationwide.

And because state law only mandates that minors be actively enrolled in school until the age of 16, there remains a small gap of high school, of the junior and senior years, during which students like Villalobos, Hernandez-Cortez, Cortez, and Cortez-Hernandez are able to forgo their official graduation and leave school to pursue day labor-adding a younger demographic to the already burgeoning population. But many argue what is legal is not always ethical. "This has happened before," Tanner says. "I'm not officially sure whether he would like to come back [now], but it's an unfortunate circumstance."

The issue has also entered the legal sector where lawmakers and government officials have been working to protect the large portion of the labor market. U.S. Representative Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL) promoted the "Day Laborer Fairness and Protection Act," while just this past Tuesday, eastern Long Island lawmakers defeated a bill that would have banned those seeking day jobs from congregating on public roads.

For Villalobos, such a road is necessary before he can achieve the financial stability he left school to pursue--a road that, for many unable to receive a high-school diploma, often remains in a continual cycle of earning wages by the day. "He seems really motivated to learn and come to class," Tanner says, recalling that his teenage years would be better spent in a classroom rather than at a construction site.

Ashley Lau is a senior at Montgomery Blair High School.