These include engaging in sexual activities with commercial sex workers, having many sex partners, sharing needles after the injection of illegal drugs or substances taken for “therapeutic” reasons and abusing alcohol and drugs. 1 Compounding such risk factors are a number of other issues, such as disruptions in family lives, poverty, low levels of formal education and literacy rates, limited English proficiency and undocumented residency status. The limited literature that exists on HIV and Latino migrant men has focused primarily on migrants living in rural areas or small cities who are usually or primarily farm workers 2 - 4 or on those described solely as “migrant laborers.” 5 - 6 Limited information is available on the HIV-related risk behaviors of day laborers, the overwhelming majority of whom are Latino immigrants. It is estimated that there are approximately 117,600 day laborers on any given day in the United States either looking for day labor jobs or employed as day laborers. 7 Day workers seek jobs primarily through informal locations, such as standing in front of businesses, home improvement stores, gas stations and on busy streets only one in five seeks work at an official day laborers work center. 7Įthnographic studies conducted with Latino day laborers reveal that most day laborers report coming to the U.S. to support their families in their countries of origin.
Many are homeless or share housing with other men in order to save on housing costs.Ĩ - 9 Many borrowed money from friends or relatives to cover transit costs and as a result may spend their first few months after arrival repaying their debts. Often their primary attention and focus is on earning enough money to send home to their families and for this reason many hardships are endured. 7 found that most day laborers (83%) rely on their day labor work as their only source of income. Most are at or below the federal poverty level. also found rampant violations of day laborers' rights, including not being paid for their work, working under hazardous conditions and being subject to insults from employers. One study that focused exclusively on the HIV-related risk behaviors of Latino day laborers was conducted by Organista & Kubo. 10 They interviewed 102 workers in Northern California. They reported that knowledge of proper condom use was generally low among the men interviewed. However, higher condom use was reported by men who had multiple female sexual partners compared to those with only one sexual partner. None of the men in the study reported any sexual activities with other males during the previous 2 months. The limited information available on Latino day laborers' risk of HIV infection leaves other questions unanswered. For example, to what extent are day laborers solicited for sex by other men while they seek employment? Ehrlich et al. 11 asked their sample of 290 male Latino migrant day laborers if they had ever heard of men being offered money for sex at day labor sites.
Seventy-five percent reported that they had heard of men offering day laborers money for sex at work sites. Such solicitations could potentially place them at risk of HIV infection, especially if some day laborers feel compelled for economic reasons to accept the sexual solicitations from these men, even if this involves high-risk sexual activities.ĭid not ask the day laborers if they themselves had been approached for sex at day labor sites, nor what their responses had been. When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.Thus, there is a need to obtain more information about the extent to which Latino day laborers may be at risk for HIV infection through the sexual solicitations from other men while seeking day labor employment. Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers Other steps you can take to protect your children are: More information about the RTA Label and compatible services can be found here. Parental tools that are compatible with the RTA label will block access to this site. We use the "Restricted To Adults" (RTA) website label to better enable parental filtering. Protect your children from adult content and block access to this site by using parental controls. PARENTS, PLEASE BE ADVISED: If you are a parent, it is your responsibility to keep any age-restricted content from being displayed to your children or wards. Furthermore, you represent and warrant that you will not allow any minor access to this site or services. This website should only be accessed if you are at least 18 years old or of legal age to view such material in your local jurisdiction, whichever is greater. You are about to enter a website that contains explicit material (pornography).