More on Home Depot Day Laborers

A few months ago I wrote an entry about my first experience seeing day laborers outside my local Home Depot. Today I got an email from PG directing my attention to a New York Times article on the growing controversy over how these laborers should be treated by Home Depot, their customers, and the government:

Morning after morning in city after city, contractors as well as homeowners needing an extra hand or two drive up to a Home Depot and hire laborers to paint walls, nail down roofing or trim branches, usually for $8 to $10 an hour. Not only has this caused friction between the stores and neighboring businesses and homeowners who do not want the men around, but it has also thrust the company into the nationwide debate about what to do about these workers, the majority of them illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

In Illinois, several Hispanic groups are angry with the company because 40 day laborers have been arrested in recent months, accused of criminal trespassing at a Home Depot in Cicero. One Hispanic shopper was arrested by mistake.

In California, a group called Save Our State has held protests at numerous Home Depots, asserting that the company has aided illegal immigration. But in Los Angeles, a city councilman has proposed requiring all new large home-improvement stores to build shelters that would provide day laborers with basic amenities like toilets and drinking water.

Like I said in my last post, this is an absolutely vexing political and moral problem, like many immigration issues. I don't really have a firm enough grasp to make intelligent commentary. Instead, I'll point out that not all home improvement stores are having the same problem:

Experts on day labor said they knew of only a handful of Lowe's stores - the No. 2 home improvement retailer - where workers congregate. Lowe's attracts far fewer day laborers, these experts said, because Home Depot is more popular with contractors.

A side benefit, perhaps, to the fact that Lowe's has targeted home improvement novices rather than professionals. There is a relatively new Lowe's in Atlanta's Edgewood shopping district, and I can't deny that I drive right past the Home Depot closest to my home in order to go to Lowe's. It is just so much more user-friendly to someone who walks in not necessarily knowing exactly what they want or need.