They’ve come to fry fast food, scrub dishes, landscape yards and put roofs on homes.

Some came straight from Mexico or other Latin American countries. Others have been living in the United States for years, but have only recently found their way to the Lawrence area. Some have visas, but many don’t.

The Hispanic population in Douglas County grew at a rate more than double that of the overall population between 1990 and 2000. And observers say that in the past five years, the numbers have continued to soar – a trend that’s transforming the job market and reverberating through nearly every part of life in Lawrence.

At the local McDonald’s restaurants, for example, an estimated 30 percent to 40 percent of employees are Hispanic.

“I speak Spanish nearly every day. I have one to four cases per week. I used to see one per year,” said Shelley Bock, a local attorney who translates for Spanish speakers in court. “They are part of our community now.”

Mexican Nationals like Laura and Angel Alvarez, who own the Tortas Jalisco Mexican restaurant, 534 Frontier, are among a growing number of immigrants who have succeeded north of the border with a lot of hard work.

They are people like Carlos Fraga, 36, a roofer who was wearing a “USA” baseball cap the other night at a “Know Your Rights” forum for Spanish speakers at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church. Fraga first came to Lawrence about eight years ago.

“I lived in Kansas City, Kan. I lived in Manhattan. But I like Lawrence,” he said. “There’s more nice people.”

‘Amigos’

For some local businesses, finding migrant Latino workers is as simple as picking up the newspaper and making a phone call.

“We have so many Chinese newspapers,” Kitty Dong, an employee of Jin Shan Buffet at 23rd and Harper Streets, said earlier this year. “If we need amigos, we get them from the newspaper.”

Builder David Reynolds, president of Apple Tree Homes, said some of his subcontractors used Latin-American workers – most commonly for stucco, landscaping and roofing jobs. The workers first started coming to the area in the 1970s, he said, and the numbers accelerated in the last 15 to 20 years, now accounting for 50 percent or more of jobs in the field, he said.

“In general, these are reasonably good-paying jobs, way above minimum wage, and Americans could be working in them and getting skills, but they turn it down,” he said. “And we wonder why so many immigrants come to the United States – because they’re doing jobs Americans don’t want.”

Johnny Granados, a 23-year-old undocumented worker from Mexico, said he worked Mondays through Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. hanging drywall. He gets paid by the square foot, he said, and sometimes earns up to $150 per day, the equivalent of a week’s pay in Mexico.

“There’s more security, less violence. There’s easier opportunities for work,” said Granados, who was picking up lunch for co-workers recently at Tortas Jalisco, a Mexican restaurant near Sixth Street and Kasold Drive.

Attracted by family

Many Latinos who come to Lawrence do so because they have friends or family members in Topeka or Kansas City.

They are scattered throughout the area, but often can be found living in apartment complexes southeast of 23rd and Iowa Streets that, decades ago, were considered luxury apartments for college students. Several Latino workers were displaced during the fire last month at Boardwalk Apartments in the 500 block of Fireside Drive.

“Usually, the men come first, and they kind of explore the area,” said Raymundo Eli Rojas, 30, a recent Kansas University law school graduate who last year helped found a group to support local migrant workers. “You see these groups of men living together, and you see them at the supermarket together buying groceries. If they see the community is good, they bring their family here with them.”

Legal vs. illegal

Angel Alvarez, one of the owners of Tortas Jalisco restaurant, often visits with workers who stop by his restaurant for a taste of authentic Mexican food. He said he didn’t know what percentage of workers were here with the proper documentation.

“It’s hard to tell because it’s something that nobody talks about,” he said. “You ask them, and they say, ‘I have papers.'”

It’s a crime for businesses to knowingly hire workers who are here illegally. But officials say it’s easy for workers to get hired using false documentation, and that businesses can’t be held responsible unless there’s evidence they knew the documents were false.

Lawrence resident Carlos Fraga serves as a music stand for his daughter Evelyn, 11, Friday evening as she practices her trombone in their living room. Fraga, who came to Lawrence eight years ago from San Luis Potosi, Mexico works as a roofer and lives with his daughter and wife, Luci Morales.

“There’s a big black market in Social Security numbers and false driver’s licenses and false this and false that, that people use to get employment,” said Jim Cross, a spokesman for U.S. Atty. Eric Melgren.

Attorney Bock estimated that between 10 percent and 20 percent of workers in the area were here legally. Many others have been smuggled into the country, often by making a dangerous border crossing through the Arizona desert that kills hundreds of people each year.

Advocate group

About 25 people gathered earlier this week in the basement of St. John Church for a meeting organized by KU law graduate Rojas and other members of his group, known as “Migrant Worker Solidarity of Douglas County.”

The event was to teach people about the basic rights they have under the U.S. Constitution and under labor laws, whether they’re here with proper visas or not.

Speakers included Bock and Brandon Brown, an investigator with the U.S. Department of Labor, who told workers they were entitled to minimum wage and overtime pay.

He repeatedly urged audience members to keep detailed notes about how many hours they work.

Rojas said his group formed about a year ago after complaints began circulating in the Spanish-speaking community that workers at an Asian restaurant – Rojas wouldn’t identify the restaurant for this article – were being mistreated. He said it was common nationwide for employers to take advantage of migrant workers – for example, by arranging to provide them with housing and taking rent money out of their paychecks.

“That just leads to abuses, because what else are you going to take out of the pay?” Rojas asked. “You’re going to take money out for being late, for doing the job wrong, which is illegal.”

Rojas often stops in the alleyways behind restaurants to talk informally with workers and let them know about his organization. He said he hadn’t heard many cases of clear-cut labor abuses in Lawrence – in part, he suspects, because word gets around in a town this size.

“If you are abusing workers, you have to keep it pretty quiet,” he said.