st. paul

From 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. at least five days a week, Tong Lee dons a white smock, hairnet and gloves to clean floors, wash machines and stack crates. For hours at a time, he works mechanically like a well-oiled machine in the cold, refrigerated air of the food facility: sweep, dustpan, garbage, sweep, dustpan, garbage.

When Lee, 24, is done with his third-shift job as a sanitarian at the Holiday Stationstores' Brooklyn Center production facility, he goes home to St. Paul and catches a few hours' sleep before heading to his second job as a janitor.

He makes $9 an hour.

For immigrants -- especially members of the Twin Cities' Hmong community like Lee -- the recent economic downturn has hit especially hard: They often work two or three minimum-wage jobs to make ends meet. The language barrier and the burden of supporting extended families makes it harder to take time off and train for better-paying jobs.

"Five or six men living in one apartment: I never saw that in my life," said Yao Lo, who has been a job counselor with the Lao Family Community of Minnesota in St. Paul for 27 years. "But now, people are like that, because they lost their house, they lost their job. People cry coming to Lao Family almost every week."

He cited the doubled cost of rice, spiking gas and utilities prices, and losses in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis as major factors behind the Hmong people's current financial struggles. Their continued grappling with cultural and language issues only exacerbates the problems, Lo said.

Although he is always looking for a better-paying job, Tong Lee said he has accepted the basic reality of his situation, which is severely limited by the little English he knows.

"Yes of course I would like to change, but everything is complicated," he said through a translator. "The language barrier: I can't go anywhere."

Luckily enough, three of his four coworkers speak Hmong at his current job, and not a word of English is spoken for the entire shift.

But with the percentage of job openings requiring either a post-secondary degree or related work experience on the rise, immigrant workers are finding themselves boxed in from all sides: In the short-run, they need an immediate source of income to pay off mortgage and car payments, credit card debt and day-to-day food costs. But in the long-run, working less and taking additional training and ESL classes would be the smarter investment.

Chupheng Lee, vice president of Lao Family Community -- a group that works to empower the Hmong community and other minorities -- said the choices open to immigrant workers are few and far between.

"[When] we came here, we were already 20, 30: You cannot go to school for another 10 or 20 years, you're going to have to go to work," he said. "It's really affecting the Hmong community ... they don't have the skills to move job to job. They rely upon the one job they found, and because this situation in the United States right now, most of the manufacturing job is not stable."

Like Tong Lee, many members of the Hmong community struggling financially often work at least two jobs -- sometimes three -- in manufacturing, shipping and receiving, industrial or warehouse work. He gets home from work in the warehouse by 7 a.m., and after four hours of sleep, wakes up for his second job. Before heading back to the food facility by 10 p.m., he is usually able to take another two-hour nap.

Back in Brooklyn Center, the only hint of color in the whitewashed, fluorescent-lit building is the bright yellow of the Rubbermaid garbage bin he rolls along behind him everywhere he cleans. As he swept up discarded ends of meat amid the wafting smells of salami, ham and turkey, Lee thought about his future.

It was simple: "I just keep working," he said.

Bigger burdens

For Tong Lee, the oldest of nine children, providing for his parents is not an extra burden, but an implicit duty in the Hmong culture. For him, working two jobs is about maximizing his productivity with the skills he has and the opportunities he can reach.

"It's hard to work like that, but then imagine that you're just wasting half of your day doing nothing," he said.

Even so, his two jobs produce a pre-tax monthly income of about $1,800.

He lives with and supports his 22-year-old brother -- who will finish high school by next June -- and when his parents' Social Security or public assistance funds run short, which seems to happen fairly regularly, he helps them out. Of his eight siblings, only the youngest, a 2-year-old, was born in the United States.

"If I didn't work, they would be hungry," he said.

Sean Watkins, assistant employment manager at the Centre for Asians and Pacific Islanders in Minneapolis, said the bar has been raised even in jobs with minimal requirements. His agency works with 3,500 immigrants and refugees each year, almost 60 percent of whom are Hmong.

"You have more employers who are doing online applications, so now we're moving past the refugee and immigrant who is learning the English language by reading and writing: now you're adding the technology piece of it," he said. "If they want 10 people to open up a box, they're going to make sure they got the best 10 people."

Said Watkins: "Again, who's on the outside looking in?"

A Catch-22

But changing times and higher prices result in broken hopes and dreams, regardless of employment status: $4 a gallon gas poses a real trade-off between fuel in the car and food on the table, especially when hourly pay is less than $10.

Tong Lee carpools to work with a relative in a scuffed-up black Honda Civic, leaving his St. Paul apartment at 9:20 p.m. each night. The small amount of disposable income he used to have left after paying for car insurance, phone bills, utilities and rent, as well as supporting his family, now continues to shrink as gas prices rise.

In the Hmong community, most families hunkered down for tougher times and kept up with debt payments and the cost of living by pulling on their bank savings, Chupheng Lee said. But the irony of Tong Lee's Catch-22 is that, even when the economy rolls around to an expansion, the roadblocks to empowerment facing him and other immigrants will still remain. Even if more jobs are created in the near future, immigrant workers will be at the mercy of the same low-paying industries and ever-changing business cycles.

Despite the cultural and economic hurdles facing the Hmong people seeking work in a shrinking job market, celebration and community are still a strong part of their lives. The Hmong Freedom Celebration and 28th Annual International Sports Tournament, one of two major events sponsored by Lao Family Community, starts Saturday. For two days, thousands of Hmong families from Minnesota and nearby states will convene to compete in sports and celebrate their heritage. The event also features booths with information on local nonprofits geared toward helping individuals find jobs, take ESL classes and obtain medical insurance and healthcare.

Although he used to go regularly with his family, Tong Lee said he will go to the games this year only if he cannot log some weekend hours at the Holiday Stationstores warehouse. And besides, his late-shift job dictates his sleep schedule: On Saturday and Sunday when the festival takes place, he will be catching up on some well-deserved sleep before his workweek starts again on Monday night.

Patrick Lee • 612-673-7452