Hey this article was great. Thank you Nick. It's so important to put a face and a story to a group of folks that are often marginalized and misunderstood. Check out youtube.com/mczoomin for videos produced by Julio Navarette an intern here at the MC. There are three Day Worker shorts uploaded. One of which is about the blogging class they are taking!

Oh please, what a load of garbage. Round up these illegals and throw them out of the country. This paper just panders to illegal immigrants and there cause and ignores the cost to the state and taxpayers.

These people thumb their noses at our laws. They come here without visas, drive without licenses or insurance, and take jobs from those here with a Visa or are Citizens.

We cannot have an honest dialogue on immigration if we continue ignoring the larger forces that drive migration. People migrate to flee persecution, civil wars, natural disasters, or economic shifts in their home country. Historically, immigration policies in the U.S., such as the “Chinese Exclusion Act” of 1882 or “Operation Wetback” in 1954, have been explicitly biased against particular nationalities. For centuries, generations of immigrants have come to America in search of a better tomorrow. Most importantly, this is the land of opportunity, where every individual should have a chance to succeed by his or her own merit.

Julio:

Who is ignoring the forces that drive migration? Our immigration system is clear about how to migrate to this country legally and hundreds of thousands of people do it legally every year. Illegals obviously feel they have more of a claim to come here over others who patiently wait. You can't have a conversation when people are cheating behind your back.

If any of you pundits honestly believe that a poor, uneducated person would be able to legally immigrate to the United States you are living in fantasy land. Does that give them the right to come here illegally? No, of course not. But can you blame them for trying? If you are living in poverty with no hope of a better life of course you will come here. It all comes down to economics and education. I am sure that there are no university educated Mexicans coming to the US illegally. The Day Worker Center serves a need and is an asset to the community, a far better alternative to the Home Depot model.

And so the poor, uneducated US citizens are just supposed to move over and welcome them as they compete for the same jobs, resources, and welfare? And the US taxpayer is supposed to just sit by and be happy about the costs?