Day-to-day struggle

I read this story in The Chicago Tribune and was shocked to realize what a toll this tough economy is taking on the less visible, but imminently vital, illegal laborers of our country. Even more surprisingly, some desperate American citizens are also showing up to get hired at traditionally illegal day-labor pickup spots. The article follows the heartbreaking story of one illegal immigrant, Alfonso Aguilar, who can no longer find daily work in Chicago to support his wife and four sons back in Mexico - and his story illuminates the bigger picture. Illegal immigrants who once clung to no-questions-asked labor in exchange for cash are finding themselves out of luck because so many Americans no longer have cash to give, after the economy crashed last year. Men like Aguilar line up every day at a Home Depot parking lot, one of Chicago's four once-thriving day-labor markets. But more and more often they are leaving empty handed, to survive only in homeless shelters and on food donated by local churches. And when the housing market collapsed, that also meant less laborers were needed for things like painting and construction. About 2,000 laborers are trying to hire themselves out each day, most of them Latino, and some from Eastern Europe, Korea and Mongolia. But all these laborers are seeing their once daily work dwindle down to weekly, and even monthly. From eating out of dumpsters to being unable to send a dime to their families back home, immigrant day-laborers are truly taking the grunt of this economic downturn - and this article does a great job of showing how.