When workers toil but don't get paid, tragedy can result

Most illegal immigrants never file complaints, partly because they are unaware of their rights, but mostly because they fear deportation. The result is a rag-tag work force, increasingly frustrated with what they see as exploitative employers, an unsympathetic majority population, and a non-responsive government.

"These workers feel like they have no recourse," Yapias said. "Sometimes, they feel like they have to take the law into their own hands."

Because undocumented workers are hired orally, employers have no legal obligation to cover work-related injuries, common on construction sites, factories, and farms. During summer months, the Mexican Consulate sees three to four workers a week injured on the job. The injuries range from severed fingers to broken bones to the recent paralysis of an Ogden farm worker.

"Workers who seek only to earn a living end up in the shadows of American life — fearful, often abused and exploited," President Bush said in a speech last year. ". . . Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing workers to enter our country and fill jobs Americans are not filling."

As a solution, Bush has proposed a temporary guest worker program, sharply criticized by some Republicans but widely embraced by Hispanic leaders, who say it would end the exploitation of undocumented workers. Immigration reform could come before Congress by year's end.

On any given day, large numbers of Latino men gather on the corner of 200 South and 500 West in Salt Lake City, just outside the Salt Lake Community homeless shelter.

Today, a chilly September morning, about 50 stand on the corner, waiting. Some sleep in the shelter, others in the street. But most are men like Jesus Hernandez — they have families at home to feed.

Today, the streets are wet with rain, and the sky is gray and heavy, promising more. The men, dressed in hooded sweatshirts, tattered jeans and thick work boots, mill about, tossing crumbs to pigeons, swapping stories and jokes.

A battered white truck pulls up, its bed full of muddy shovels and other concrete tools covered by a green tarp. A crowd swarms around the cab.

"Need workers?" they ask.

The man in the truck needs only three. He picks them out and they quickly agree on a day's wages and climb in the cab. The others, hands in their pockets, heads down, turn away as the truck drives off.

One of them is a skinny 22-year-old, also named Jesus. He says he's been in the United States nine months and sleeps in the street.

"I come here every day, even if it's cold," he said.

While he is usually paid, he says he's been cheated out of wages, like most every other man on this corner.