A 2005 survey of day laborers found more than 117,600 people typically gather at more than 500 hiring sites, most looking for jobs in construction, landscaping, and home repairs.

The workers are mostly undocumented—primarily from Latina—frequently underpaid, and often subject to dangerous working conditions. (According to the study, 73 percent were placed in hazardous working conditions: digging ditches, working with chemicals, or on roofs or scaffolding, and 20 percent had suffered injuries requiring medical attention during the previous year.14 Is there anything wrong with offering day labor to poor people? To immigrants? To undocumented immigrants? If so, how should such work get done?