http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/edi ... 81556.html

July 29, 2006, 9:37PM

ILLEGAL LABOR
A black and white view of browning of U.S. jobs
How a road trip uncovered the lie that natives won't do certain kinds
By JOHN H. PERRY


A COUPLE of weeks ago I drove to Alabama. I drove through Louisiana and Mississippi to get there. And an interesting thing happened on the way to Alabama.

I passed many, many road construction crews in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama working under the hot glare of the summer sun. I saw housing construction crews in some of the cities I drove through — Baton Rouge, Jackson and smaller towns — and in the college town of Auburn, Ala. I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Auburn. I ate at restaurants all along the way to and from Alabama.

Here's what I didn't see: Hispanic workers on those road and housing construction crews. All the crews were made up of black men and white men. All the maids I saw at the hotel were either black or white. The wait staff in the restaurants I ate at were black and white.

Why do I mention this?

For years we've heard the mantra that illegal (and predominately Hispanic) immigrants have been doing jobs that Americans won't do. Much of the time the implication has been that Americans were too lazy to work under the blazing sun doing construction work, or "too proud" to work as maids in hotels. Americans were too spoiled to do the really hard work needing to be done in our country. So illegal immigrants gladly snapped up the gut work that Americans wouldn't do.

I have always suspected that there was a bit of bull in this oft-repeated excuse for turning a blind eye to the flood of illegal aliens in our country. Without them, we were reminded over and over again, our fruits and vegetables would go unpicked, our roads and homes not built, our hotel beds unmade.

Americans were cowed into accepting two premises: that we were lazy and that illegal immigrants were hardworking.

Indeed, illegal immigrants are hardworking. No doubt about that. And they'll work hard for far less money than we native-born Americans will. True, too. But in that last statement is the crux of the matter.

If I'm an employer, it behooves me to have you believe that you — or people like you — don't want to do the hard work I'm looking for people to do. So I'm forced by your shiftlessness to hire poor, hardworking and illegal immigrants to do jobs you won't do. I can hire them for far less money than I have to pay you. I don't have to pay for health insurance for the illegal workers either, like I'd have to for you.

I win. The illegal immigrant workers win. You lose.

The bottom line is the bottom line. But in the process, I've got to convince you that you get the picture.

Whether it's illegal immigrant workers or outsourcing jobs to countries such as India, we Americans have been told time and time again that companies have to do what they have to do because we just aren't a reliable source of labor.

Unlike millions of Americans, I never really bought this. It always seemed like propaganda to me, designed to make us feel guilty and, more importantly, to make us accept the loss of our jobs to people in this country illegally, or not in this country at all, while employers utilizing illegal workers or outsourcing profited.

Going to Alabama was a real eye opener. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to see people who look like me (I am black) doing road construction, building houses or making beds in hotels.

My trip pulled the cover off the lie that Americans won't do certain jobs.

As I looked at the many black and white workers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, I thought, if these states can find native-born people to work these jobs, why can't Texas? Living in Houston for as long as I have, especially in the last 10 years or so, it is easy to believe that the only people who do those jobs are Hispanic who are, more than likely, illegally in the country.

I don't think the majority of people who oppose illegal immigration and the hiring of illegal immigrants in so many occupations are anti-Hispanic. People who oppose job outsourcing aren't necessarily anti-Indian or anti whatever ethnic group is working those outsourced jobs.

When you cut through all the emotional and heated rhetoric, you come to the real kernel of truth — there are only so many jobs and so many resources to go around. Our economy just cannot absorb every person that comes across our borders illegally looking for his or her slice of the American Pie.

There's just not enough pie to go around.

And as the pie gets smaller and we all have to struggle to get our little piece of it, people born in America become more and more resentful of those we are increasingly seeing as "outsiders."

The profits that illegal immigrant workers generate for many businesses have blinded those businesses to the damage they are doing to the American economy. And to the American sense of nationhood.

We are at a dangerous place in America today, and I fear that massive civil unrest will occur once Americans grasp just have much we have been duped (and have been taken advantage of).

I often feel like an "outsider" in restaurants and other venues, simply because the staff in these places speak mainly Spanish. I get the sense they are put out because I have difficulty communicating with them.

In Alabama, Mississippi and eastern Louisiana, I had no trouble communicating with the wait staff and others in the restaurants I stopped in. Everybody spoke clear, plain English.

It's ironic that I, a man who was reared in Pennsylvania during the height of the civil rights movement, should feel as comfortable as I did traveling through Mississippi and Alabama, states whose very names used to strike terror in the hearts of little "Negro" boys in 1950s and '60s. Yet, I did. The Deep South has changed dramatically — for the better.

As a black man, I have always been for diversity because I understand that diversity means people who look like me can be included in all aspects of our society. Diversity assumes difference in color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and political views.

But I don't think diversity means we give up the unifying power of a common language and culture. To give up our common language and culture (yes, I believe that people born and reared in the United States share, for the most part, a common culture even if there are some variations on how we live that common culture) is to invite the balkanization of our nation.

This is just one man's observation. But I think millions of Americans think and feel as I do.

Somebody — in power — better be listening.

Perry, of Houston, works with at-risk students in Alief Independent School District.