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Some say there’s a better solution to amnesty issue 

If he had documents to legally work in the United States, Jesus Manuel Cardona said he would still have the car that police took away. 

As an illegal Mexican, he had no California driver’s license.  

If he had documents, Rodrigo Lopez would spend more time with his family back in the Mexican countryside.  

If amnesty were granted for these Mexican day workers, they could receive health benefits, fair wages and have the freedom to travel home between jobs as they pleased.  

That’s why day workers in Berkeley were disappointed Tuesday at the White House’s bowing to political pressure and backtracking on possible amnesty for the 3 million Mexicans living illegally in the United States. 

“An amnesty would benefit us,” said Cardona, a 36-year-old Mexican who has worked illegally in the United States for 10 years. “Instead of setting so many requirements for legalization, the presidents should reach a new agreement. It would benefit both us and the government.” 

Ever since he was elected a year ago, Mexican President Vincente Fox has pressed the U.S. government to adopt a new and more open immigration policy towards Mexican workers. His plea seemed to have been heard earlier this month, when Bush’s immigration advisers announced a move toward offering an automatic amnesty to illegal workers from Mexico. But conservative protests led the administration to back away from that idea on Monday. Instead, the Bush administration could set up a multi-stage process that would allow illegal workers to apply for citizenship.  

Berkeley workers, however think that an amnesty would have been a better solution. They fear that a multi-stage process may require workers to show proofs of residency, such as bills, or credit card receipts, that they often don’t have because of their precarious conditions of life. 

By legalizing Mexican workers, Berkeley’s day labors said, the American government would be able to better control the activities of the Mexican workforce and save a large part of the money it currently spends on immigration law enforcement. If they could come and go as they please, workers say they wouldn’t have to pay $1,500 to the men who help them cross the border – called “coyotes.”  

“If I had documents, I would come to work only for a season and then go back to Mexico,” said Lopez, who has been working in the United States since 1988. “But now, since we pay the coyotes so much money, I have to work at least one year to be able to go back home.” 

To Lopez and others among about 100 day workers who hit the corner of Fourth and Hearst streets every day, the amnesty would indeed be the best way to address job insecurity and bad working conditions. 

“Now if you look for a job, you need to have documents, otherwise [employers] pay you whatever they want,” said Cardona, adding that an hour earlier a woman had offered to pay him only $5 an hour for some gardening work. “They look at us as if we didn’t have any needs, but we’re human.” 

One of the main source of frustration for illegal workers is taxes. Most workers use a fake social security number, and although they don’t receive any kind of social benefit, they say many employers withhold taxes from their wages. In the year and a half he worked for a local company, Lopez said he had $2,000 withheld.  

Despite the White House decision to retreat from the amnesty idea, immigrant labor issues advocates are confident that the two nations will work on a solution that satisfies everybody. 

“Bush taking the risk of putting an amnesty proposal on the floor shows that he understand that he has to be attentive to the demand of Latino voters,” said Chloe Osmer, program coordinator at the Center for Labor Research and Education. “I don’t think this is the end of the discussion.” 

But workers are skeptical. At the heart of the problem, they say, is the United States’ reluctance to acknowledge how critical the Mexican workforce is to the national economy.  

“If there had been a law forbidding [companies] to hire illegal workers, then almost all the companies would have gone into bankruptcy and the economy wouldn’t have taken off,” said Cardona. “It’s a difficult situation, we’ll just have to wait and see what [the presidents] tell us.”