Thread: Contractors: Stop the illegal insanity

www.bostonherald.com - Local News Section

Outraged by blatant public hiring of immigrant day laborers, many of them illegal aliens, Bay State contractors are demanding stepped-up enforcement against companies whose unscrupulous tactics are fueling an underground construction market of lax standards and cut-throat profiteering.

All in a day’s work irate pols demand immigration reform immigrants flock to Hub’s roadside hiring sites. Towns take aim at illegal restaurant help. Hiring sites a divisive issue for towns. For day laborers, a job is a job.

“Contractors trying to do a legitimate business are just getting killed,” said Chris Shannon, business manager of Carpenters Union Local 67 in Dorchester. “Working guys’ wages are dropping through the floor. Someone has got to stop this.”

Union officials and contractors flooded the Herald with calls and e-mails yesterday following a story detailing the daily hiring of day laborers who seek work at unregulated street-corner sites across the state.

Laborers at sites monitored by the Herald admitted a large percentage of the workers are undocumented and too frightened of an immigration crackdown to demand fair wages and safe working conditions.

Workers gathered at one Somerville street corner were shipped to job sites in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, often to work in potentially hazardous trades such as house painting, plastering and construction, the Herald found.

The persistence of day laborer sites, which have been operating in communities statewide for years, have become the most visible battleground in the nation’s heated debate over immigration reform.

Some officials argue that cracking down on the sites would be a knee-jerk response to a problem that can only be addressed with sweeping changes in immigration policy. Others are calling for quicker regulatory changes to curtail abuses while such changes remain in congressional limbo.

One owner of a landscaping company in Milford said yesterday that state and federal authorities have utterly lost the reins on corner-cutting start-ups that have left him powerless to compete.

“I’m bumping into companies so blatantly not doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” said the landscaper, who asked for anonymity. “They do everything in cash and avoid all insurance and taxes. I’ll come in with a (bid) that’s three times what they are charging.”

Why is this guy wanting to be "anonymous?" He should be screaming about this! I do freelance art for a living and this government came after me when I left one $400 job off my income tax--so to think some people are blatantly breaking the law and driving honest people out of business is absolutely infuriating. And Bush's every word is pro illegal

Not sure why he would want to be anonymous? One of the radio stations in Boston is giving free advertising to companies that call in and say they do not hire illegals, Michael Graham gives them a free plug so his listeners can give him business. Great incentive to be pro-american don't you think He is also offering companies that call in that do hire illegals the same offer however he has had no takers to give the name of their company. Wonder why? LOL