As the sun pokes over the horizon, groups cluster along the sidewalk outside the Home Depot at Interstate 35 and St. Johns Avenue. When a white pickup slows in front of the men, the would-be laborers rush into the street to talk with the driver, who, after a few moments of animated discussion, selects two lucky workers.

The rest resume their sidewalk vigil at what many of them consider the city's most lucrative immigrant day labor spot.

"We are not well located," concedes Antonio Hernandez, a 30-year-old native of northern Mexico. "This is in the public way. . . . We just want a place where we can look for work and not bother the cars and people walking by."

Having been forced off the property in mid-summer by Home Depot, workers are asking the city to help establish a designated site next to the home improvement store that contractors can use as a one-stop shopping place for materials and laborers.

But the city has voiced concerns that such a site would undermine its official day labor center, which sits about two miles down I-35. And some St. Johns neighborhood residents complain that there have been reports of workers making derogatory comments to girls who walk past on their way to Webb Middle School on the other side of the interstate.

DeCandice Crozier, vice president of the St. Johns Neighborhood Association, said the clusters of day laborers also scare away people looking to buy a home in the neighborhood.

"That's not the kind of atmosphere or environment we want to show potential neighbors," she said.

Home Depots across the country have become a morning magnet for laborers looking to find jobs laying brick or sewage lines or just about anything that puts some money in their pockets. As a result, after complaints at some of its stores, the nation's largest home improvement store company has begun enforcing a long-standing policy that bars solicitation and loitering.

"If your customers tell you they're afraid to get out of their car and they're going to shop somewhere else, we have a nonsolicitation policy and we're going to begin enforcing the policy," said Don Harrison, a spokesman for the company.

"It's not a Home Depot problem; it's a community problem," he continued. "If the Home Depot disappeared tomorrow, this problem would still be in the communities."

But advocates for the workers say that Home Depot bears some responsibility for the situation.

"It's very market-driven," said Victoria Gavito, attorney with the Central Texas Immigrant Worker Rights Center. "You can ignore it, like Home Depot is doing, but that just pushes it into the community."

The workers and their advocates say they want the city to help establish a shelter from rain and sun, a water fountain and a bathroom. Day laborers say that having a site on Home Depot property will keep them off the sidewalks, and they noted that a door-to-door campaign yielded more than 150 postcards from residents supporting their cause.

The city, which has budgeted $253,140 for the First Workers Day Labor Center, by 51st Street and I-35, wants the workers to use that facility, which in 1999 replaced a day labor site downtown at Cesar Chavez and San Antonio Streets.

The city says the official day labor site is more secure than the sidewalk transactions at the Home Depot: For example, city workers write down the license plates of employers and work with the Police Department to apprehend contractors who don't pay workers.

But some workers say they find the bureaucracy of the place stifling. Workers are discouraged, for instance, from approaching contractors who pull into the center without being escorted by a city staff member, and they are not allowed to bring their rucksacks into the main waiting room (somebody once stole a roll of toilet paper, a worker said).

In the pre-dawn hours Thursday, maybe a hundred workers filed into the official center, a converted bus station that sits next to Foxxies, a nude modeling and couples club. All of them know the drill to a tee.

One by one, they are handed shuffled yellow tickets, numbered 1 through 150. Number 1 is prized, and 150 is more or less a bust (The city introduced the raffle to stop laborers from camping out overnight by the front door).

On any given day, about half the laborers -- 21,000 in the last fiscal year -- will find work, said David Barrera, the program supervisor. Pay is typically $8 an hour, though workers can negotiate with employers.

Mario Garza, a 42-year-old born in Laredo, grabs the 4:49 a.m. bus each day from Salvation Army to the center. When he gets a high number, he said, he grabs a bus to South Austin and tries to find work on Riverside Drive or he heads to the Home Depot.

At a news conference Thursday in front of City Hall, advocates and workers made their case.

"Austin has graced Home Depot with subsidies," said Cindy Layton, associate pastor of Hispanic Ministries of United Memorial Methodist Church. "I'm asking the City Council to call upon Home Depot, especially the St. Johns Home Depot, to be an even more responsible corporate citizen to the community it serves."