Fairhope investigates foreign workers
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
By PAUL KNIGHT
Staff Reporter
FAIRHOPE -- Police have started a preliminary inquiry into the backgrounds and legal status of the foreign workers living in the housing next to Fairhope High School, according to Capt. Steve Griffis, the city's assistant police chief.

Griffis said Mayor Tim Kant asked him Friday to certify whether all the workers are in the country legally and if any have prior criminal records. "The mayor is looking out for the people and all the school kids," Griffis said Tuesday. "If there's some concern, then by all means, we're going to get him an answer."

Griffis said that he is contacting different federal agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, to determine which agency issued work visas to the Grand Hotel workers.

"As far as I know, the Marriott has done everything they're supposed to do. I'm not going to jump the gun," Griffis said. "They're afforded the same rights as U.S. citizens, probably even more so."

The Grand Hotel -- officially named the Grand Hotel Marriott Resort, Golf Club & Spa -- employs about 700 workers, 30 percent of whom are international workers recruited by the hotel or hired through second-party labor companies, according to David Clark, the Grand's general manager.

Hotel officials have said that foreign workers were first recruited about five years ago, to address a dwindling regional work force. The housing near Fairhope High solved the problem of finding affordable housing for the workers, officials said.

Developers Ray Hix and Haymes Snedeker, who also serves as Fairhope municipal judge, built the housing in Fairhope. Hix's firm also renovated a defunct orphanage in Mobile for foreign workers at the Battle House and Riverview Plaza Hotel in Mobile. Both hotels are managed by PCH Hotels and Resorts, the same company that manages the Grand Hotel.

Cpl. Craig Sawyer, spokesman for the Fairhope Police Department, said any information the hotel releases on its workers is voluntary, and the business is under no legal obligation to do so.

"One of the big obstacles that we're facing is that we have the ability to check if they have a criminal background in the States," Sawyer said, "but if they've been convicted of something overseas, we have no way of knowing."

Bill Lang, public relations director for PCH Hotels and Resorts, the company that manages the Grand Hotel, released this statement to the Press-Register: "We certainly plan on being very cooperative with you and the city of Fairhope. We are checking with our attorneys to see what information we can release without violating the rights of our workers."

Local residents, community leaders, city and school have officials have spoken against the worker housing since plans for the project were revealed in April.

The major concern has been the close proximity of the housing to Fairhope High and the future site of Fairhope Middle School. Residents and school officials have voiced fear that schoolchildren could be put at risk.

Officials at the hotel have maintained that the workers living in the housing were all screened for criminal backgrounds. Furthermore, officials said, many of the workers were recruited, interviewed and hired by hotel staff. But the recent arrest of one hotel worker has heightened those concerns.

Euclyn Ellis, a 21-year-old Jamaican living in the worker housing near Fairhope High, was arrested June 28. Hotel officials said that before the arrest, Ellis was working at the hotel through a second-party labor company and was not recruited by the hotel.

Ellis was charged with second-degree sodomy involving a 13-year-old girl. Though the alleged incident occurred on hotel grounds, Clark said that Ellis was not on duty at the time. Ellis remained in the Baldwin County Corrections Center on Tuesday afternoon, according to the jail log.

Mayor Kant said he asked for the inquiry because schools will be re-opening soon.

"We've just been told they have these background checks," Kant said. "I don't want anymore surprises."

Kant said that he asked police to start the inquiry with workers living next to Fairhope High, but eventually verify with Homeland Security how many foreign workers from other businesses are living in the city's police jurisdiction.

Guest workers are subject to virtually no background checks before entering the country with student work visas, according to Robert Ratliff, an immigration lawyer in Mobile.

Ratliff, who said he lives near the worker housing in Fairhope, has not been involved with the Grand Hotel workers, but has handled other guest-worker cases.

In June, Ratliff filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of two students from Moldova, in Eastern Europe, who reported poor living and working conditions at their job in Daphne with Wendy's, the fast-food restaurant.

Ratliff said he is also meeting with a group of Jamaicans residing in Malbis, working for another fast-food chain, living in a house with 12 people in what he described as "horrific" conditions.

Ratliff said that the U.S. State Department issues visas for guest workers, but that the only real requirement to obtain one of the permits to live in this country is money and a student status.

Foreign workers are often recruited by and supplied to U.S. companies by international labor companies, to which the workers pay up to $3,000 for a work visa. "It would be unusual for the Grand Hotel or any employer to personally recruit all their foreign workers," Ratliff said.

The other requirement, a student status, is lax as well, Ratliff said. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Act, a foreign worker can be classified as a student if he or she is coming to the country "for the purpose of study or of performing skilled or unskilled labor or as a representative of foreign press, radio, film, or other foreign information media coming to engage in such vocation."

Ratliff added that unless workers applying for the visa show up on a State Department terrorist watch list, there is little screening.

"There is no real way to check," Ratliff said. "If there's a sex offender, you don't know."

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