Thread: Cynicism in Roanoke Virginia

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Hispanic workers and advocates say proposed legislation would change the ways many companies conduct business.

Beth Macy

From landscaping operations to restaurants and construction subcontractors, legitimate companies in Roanoke are increasingly hiring illegal workers in a kind of don't-ask/don't-tell way.
Employers are willing to take the risk because Hispanics "are more reliable, and they do twice as much work as the Americans they used to hire did," said Christiansburg's Liz Schack, a longtime translator and quasi-social worker for Hispanics in the region.

At least for the time being. As the national debate over the 12 million illegal immigrants continues to rage, area employers, Hispanic workers and advocates say proposed legislation would mean big changes in the way many companies conduct business.

While it's technically illegal to hire someone who doesn't have a valid Social Security card or employment visa, that hasn't kept 96 percent of illegal-immigrant men in the United States from getting jobs.

In Roanoke, many pay taxes, get a regular paycheck every week or two and even file tax returns, according to several area employers and workers interviewed for this story. Jeffrey Passel, a Pew Hispanic Center researcher, estimates that 55 percent to 70 percent of illegal immigrants in the nation pay payroll taxes. That's in contrast to the typical image of an illegal immigrant who's paid in cash and working under the table for a small-scale farm or suburban construction site.
Efforts to close giant loophole

It's worked that way since the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, a law that made it illegal to hire unauthorized workers -- but was never enforced against employers. The law's wording gave companies a loophole they could drive a bulldozer through: Immigration authorities had to prove an employer "knowingly" hired illegal workers.

As long as the immigrants' documents were a reasonable facsimile of the real thing, the employer was in the clear.
President Bush has proposed expanding the Basic Pilot program, a now-voluntary initiative that allows employers to verify workers' eligibility by checking the personal information provided by new hires against federal databases.

The U.S. House of Representatives, as part of its attempt to revamp immigration laws, has proposed a mandatory version of Basic Pilot that would employ an automated phone service, with cost estimates of $11.7 billion per year.

But implementing such a program would take years, according to Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian public-policy foundation in Washington, D.C.

"The Pilot program has had its share of problems already," Griswold said. "It's not led to a whole lot of apprehensions. And even if you catch 1,000 illegal workers, that's about the number that are coming in every day, so you haven't made any real progress."

Nationwide, one in four roofers is an illegal immigrant, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. For construction workers, that number is one in seven.
"If we were able to seal the border and kick out every undocumented worker, it would be a disaster for important industries in Roanoke and throughout the country," Griswold added. "Without Hispanics, there are industries that literally can't find enough workers to meet the needs of their customers."

Employers weigh in

The Roanoke Times talked to several area employers who echoed those concerns. Years ago, McNeil Roofing President John Williams recalls telling the former owner of the company: "What are we going to do for employees in 15 years when there's nobody to hire?"
The American roofers he employed were increasingly unreliable: Employees lost their driver's licenses because of driving under the influence convictions, didn't show up for work and frequently couldn't pass drug tests. "The ones who did show up were not very good," Williams said.

A year and a half ago, he approached an employee at a Roanoke Mexican restaurant and asked: Do you have a friend who might want to work for us? Word spread among Hispanics, who now make up one-third of Williams' crew. With a surging Roanoke Valley Hispanic population that community leaders estimate to be as large as 16,000, Williams had no problem finding workers.
"Last week, we had nine of them outside waiting to put in their applications," said Williams, who has started taking Spanish classes.
"To our knowledge, every person we hire has permission to work in the country," he said. "I'd like to think the guys we have are pretty clean; they don't seem to be worried about immigration coming in."
Asked about proposals to mandate a foolproof verification system, Williams said: "When the government comes out with new rules, we'll have to automatically switch to them. But right now, it's talk, talk, talk. ... And I sit back and watch and think: What are you going to do to screw me up?
"It's small business that's going to suffer the worst."

At Mohawk Industries in Rockbridge County, human resources director David Speight makes sure the Hispanic workers he hires have legitimate documentation by contracting with a third-party business to check all Social Security numbers, names and dates of birth against Social Security Administration databases. The first time Mohawk used the verification service, half of the 50 Hispanic-employees' numbers came back as not matching.
When confronted about their faux documentation, the Hispanic workers quit. "One guy was so desperate for work, he actually came back to me a little while later with a different name and a different Social Security number," Speight recalled, adding that he was turned away. "But that tells you how badly they want to work."

The 75 Hispanics Mohawk currently employs "have been a godsend to our company, and we'd like to hire more of them," Speight said, adding that most carpool to the carpet-manufacturing plant from Roanoke.

Fake documentation

In Roanoke, illegal immigrants and those who employ them say that most are paying taxes -- including Medicaid and Social Security. One Roanoke factory owner tallied up the money his illegal workers contribute to Medicare and Social Security, two programs they'll never qualify for unless the laws change.

"With Social Security and Medicare alone, each one of my people pays $4,680 a year. If you multiply that by a low estimate of 5 million illegal workers, well, that won't even fit on my calculator -- and that's not counting the federal and state taxes they're paying," said the businessman, who asked that his name and the name of his company not be used as protection against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid.

The immigration arm of the federal government may view underground workers as criminals, but the Internal Revenue Service makes it easy for them to be taxpaying members of the community.
The process is complicated, though well-known to those who depend on it. A simple application for an individual tax identification number, or ITIN, can be picked up anywhere from the bank to the local IRS office -- and, yes, it's available in Spanish.
Niovis Cedillo, a 21-year-old restaurant manager from Honduras, got her ITIN shortly after sneaking into the country in 2000; her mother, already in Roanoke for four years at the time, had Temporary Protected Status, an option offered to many Hondurans in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
In order to claim dependents on tax-return forms, Cedillo's mother garnered ITINs for her children; the nine-digit number was entered on the tax form in lieu of the Social Security number.

Later, when Cedillo went to work herself, she got hired the way most illegal workers get hired: by showing phony Social Security and permanent residence cards, easily obtainable on the black market for $100 to $150.

"You use your fake number at first, and Social Security sends a letter to your employer saying the number doesn't match," she explained.
Employees continue using the fake number, usually with the employer's blessing. But come tax-return time, employees use ITINs in place of the Social Security numbers on their tax-return forms. "I pay at least $500 in taxes every month," she said.

The government doesn't track such offenses because Homeland Security and the IRS don't share data owing to federal restrictions on sharing tax information and limited Homeland Security resources. And immigration-change proposals don't mention stopping the fraudulent use of ITINs.

"Everybody uses them," the plant owner said of ITINs. An immigration lawyer advised him to review the fake documents, then have the employee sign a paper saying he or she is legally permitted to work.
"You hand the cards back [to the employee], and you keep the paper," the businessman said. "From that point, it's between ICE and the worker."
Not long ago, he added, his friends criticized him about his all-Hispanic work force. "So I decided one day, I was going to hire 10 Americans, white or black, from the temp agency, and they sent them over."

By the end of the week, all 10 had walked out or quit, saying job conditions were too harsh.

Hispanic workers "make the same as the Americans, but think about it: You only need one of them where you needed two of the Americans."

'Under the table' prevalent, too

Area Hispanic workers and advocates describe varying degrees of under-the-table employment. There's the small-time roofer who offers customers a deal if they write two checks -- one to the company for payment of legitimate, taxable labor expenses, and the other to "Cash" for the illegal workers on his crew.

Some less scrupulous employers pay workers $200 a week and throw in free housing as part of the deal, cramming in eight to 10 people a house, said Cuban-born Surmy Rojas, who hosts a Spanish-media public-affairs television show in Roanoke.

"For a lot of immigrants, that's still better than whatever they had before," Rojas said. "They're humble people who believe they should be thankful for what they have, so they don't complain."
Some bosses pay a lump-sum check to a foreman, or someone else on the crew who is legal, and then that worker pays the remaining illegal crew members in cash, according to Schack, the translator. Cedillo said many of her friends working in construction are paid the same way.

Though many workers describe being fearful of "La Migra," in reality they also know that as long as they work hard, pay taxes and stay out of trouble, immigration officials won't come after them.

Jay Turner, whose family-operated J.M. Turner & Co. dates back 70 years in Roanoke, said the hiring of Hispanic construction workers has evolved gradually in the region. "We used to do all our own concrete work, but we don't do any of it anymore," he said.

Now, like most major contractors, Turner hires cement subcontractors, most of whom show up with all-Hispanic work crews. "They can do it better, for less money and with fewer people, than we can," Turner said.
Asked if the workers are legal, he added, "It's a question we've not asked, so I don't know."

All that matters, in other words, is that the guy they're writing the checks to is.
At R.L. Price Construction, 60 percent to 70 percent of the work is completed via subcontractors.
"Not all of them use Hispanics, but a growing number of them do," owner Bob Price said.

"It's just pretty well accepted now that when you want to get a project done, you use Hispanics."
Speight of Mohawk Industries agrees. Although anti-immigration activists have said Hispanic labor drives overall down wages, Speight argues they're paid the same as anyone else, with a starting hourly wage at Mohawk of $10.63 plus full benefits.

To pay $15 or $20 an hour -- wages that would attract more Americans to the jobs -- would require hefty price increases, he said.

"The consumer won't pay for a more expensive product," he said. "Wal-Mart's proved that."
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"The consumer won't pay for a more expensive product," he said.

I don't buy that for one minute....if a company promoted their products as American made by certified American workers, they would find a huge audience of consumers that would go for it. I would!

I got here and stopped.

hasn't kept 96 percent of illegal-immigrant men in the United States from getting jobs.

Since nobody knows how many illegals are in the US, how does Ms. Macy know 96% of them are working?