Inside the Life of the Migrants Next Door

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But Octavio knows he's one of the lucky ones. His spot at the garage spares him the insecurity of hustling for temporary jobs as a day worker. The UCLA study reported that even when laborers find work, 49% say they have been cheated out of at least some of their pay in the past two months. Octavio recently got a raise to $10 an hour and supplements his income by doing freelance car repairs after hours, but after paying his rent and sending more than $1,000 a month to his mother (who plans to build a bathroom with running water), he doesn't have much money left. His only furniture is a mattress and a milk crate. Cardboard does the job of window shades. Octavio speaks just a few words of English and says he lives in fear of his Anglo neighbors, who seem to be constantly scolding him on the street. He thinks they might be mistaking him for one of his housemates, who disrupted the quiet neighborhood with repeated attempts to do body- repair work on old cars in the driveway.

UNEASY NEIGHBORS

THE HAMPTONS HAVE LONG CULTIVATED A Climate of easygoing tolerance, and for years town leaders dealt with illegal immigration by simply looking the other way. But that too is changing, as the numbers grow larger and the complaints grow louder. Last November, in a crackdown that has been lauded by anti-immigration groups around the country, police began taking down information about the vehicles that came to the East Hampton railroad station to pick up day laborers. They traced the plates and sent letters to the IRS and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, saying that the cars' owners might be hiring illegal contractors and should be investigated. "Sure, it's unlikely that the feds would take action," says East Hampton village police chief Gerard Larsen Jr., "but put it this way: Would you want a letter from your local police department to the IRS saying that you're probably paying people off the books?"

Larsen sees the crackdown as a way of targeting the problem without going after the workers directly--an acceptable solution for the sensitive political ecosystem of the Hamptons. Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, who mainly oversees the more working-class communities west of the Hamptons, takes a more direct approach. Levy, a Democrat, has initiated sting operations on local contractors and helped towns bust lawbreaking landlords. His police also forcibly removed day laborers from a Farmingville 7-Eleven parking lot. Levy says the voters in his county appreciate his strong arm. "There's a tremendous disconnect between the public and these do-nothing politicians," he says. "You're seeing the beginnings of a citizens' uprising."