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Working the system
Lack of work visas leaves hole for tourist workers
Editor’s Note: The person called David in this story asked that his real name not be revealed.

By SARA INÉS CALDERÓN
The Brownsville Herald

David didn’t come to the United States to find a job.

He was just going to visit his sister, but it was easier than he thought to find that first job in 2000 and work illegally under his tourist visa.

It got easier each time he’s visited — he’s come six times since — in finding a job and either forging documents or finding a sympathetic employer to make some money before going back to his native Chile.

It was never a conspiracy, he insisted. It was just the way things worked out.

“I went not to find work but to be with my sister who lives in the U.S.,” he said of his initial 2000 visit to Palm Beach, Fla.
While immigration reforms continue to dominate the nation’s political landscape, the country’s tourist visa system — which allows tourists to visit for pleasure or medical reasons — hasn’t gotten much attention.

David’s sister and brother-in-law also entered the country under tourist visas with their three children and have since settled there.

During summer vacations, he would come to the United States on break from his life as an electronic engineering student. His trips usually lasted two months, he said, and then he would go home to a coastal city in central Chile for another year of school.

“Basically, the possibility of working was good, and if I worked one month, I could pay for my whole trip and return to my country with a little money to pay for tuition and stuff,” he said. “If it was for pure economic reasons, I would have stayed.”

David exploits the U.S. visa system to his advantage in finding employment using faulty documents or working under the table.

That means David is in violation of federal immigration law and is subject to deportation, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. Additionally, tampering with government documentation — like David’s altering of Social Security cards and numbers — could have even more serious consequences if he’s caught, such as fines and prison, depending on the circumstance.

“All of us who live in the U.S. have to adhere to he laws mandated by Congress, and if this person is knowingly committing this type of criminal act, he’s in violation of criminal law,” said ICE spokesman Nina Pruneda. “No one is exempt from that.”

Part of the problem, immigration law experts said, is there are not enough resources to track the millions of tourist visa holders who enter the country every year. Another problem is that the work visa system just doesn’t work.

“It’s virtually impossible” to get a work visa, said Crystal Williams, deputy director for programs at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“There isn’t a viable means to a work permit,” she said, citing the quota system for work visas that provide for only 66,000 per year. “It’s a very complicated and difficult process, and we run out (of visas) before the year starts.”

Immigration — specifically illegal immigration — has become the hot-button issue in this year’s election, with both the House and the Senate drafting legislation that would hit illegal immigration in a variety of ways.

Certain groups of immigrants would lose the right to apply for asylum, local law enforcement officials would gain the right to enforce federal immigration laws, and 700 miles of fencing would go up along the border if some of the laws passed.

In the meantime, Williams said there are potentially hundreds of thousands of tourist visa holders who are working in the United States illegally.

“This is the part that everybody who is screaming about the broken system keeps overlooking,” Williams said. “It keeps happening because there is a need on both sides: on the U.S. side for workers and on the workers’ side for jobs. The two were meant to be together.”

The law will catch up with David eventually, ICE officials work with visa violators specifically, and ICE has mechanisms in place to identify them, Pruneda said. While David may not feel like he is doing anything wrong, she said he’s breaking the law, and it’s only a matter of time that he will be caught.

There’s another solution, Williams said. It’s called comprehensive immigration reform, and it means making the immigration system work with the economy’s demands. The work visa system needs to be changed from the current employer-sponsored system.

It needs to be simplified so more employers/potential employees can use it, there needs to be a way for violators to make amends and join the population, and Williams said, there need to be more visas so people don’t have to sneak around.

David is in Austin, and he’s not sneaking around. He said he is lucky to have found “someone that knows” him and his situation, so they don’t make him fill out paperwork at his job fixing electronics.

In six months, when his visa expires, he hopes to renew it for another six months, work on his English and learn about new technology. He said he loves Chile and hopes to go home and to open a business with his experiences here.

“I never thought that I committed a major crime because I did it with the intention to work, not to rob anything from the government, just to work,” David said.
Getting caught doesn’t scare him, he said, because he’s always been law-abiding, and if he gets caught, he’s got nothing to lose.

“I just wanted to work and be with my family,” he said. “I have nothing to tie me here.”

sicalderon@brownsvilleherald.com