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Jobs are there for immigrant workers

By PATRICIA V. RIVERA
The News Journal
05/08/2006


In the heart of Sussex County's largest concentration of undocumented immigrants, Georgetown Police Chief William Topping deals with residents who use multiple identities to avoid arrest. He frowns on it but understands the role that undocumented immigrants play in the state's economy.

"I tell everyone I talk to, whether they like hearing it or not, that if illegal immigrants had to leave, many industries would be badly hit and it may take a while for them to recover," Topping said. "I know I wouldn't want to work at Perdue and do the jobs immigrants do."

Undocumented immigrants have become the backbone of several segments of the economy in Sussex County and, slowly, across the state. They hold jobs in construction, the poultry industry and at restaurants and hotels.

Federal immigration reform passed in 1986 did little to solve the problem of undocumented workers. Instead, it created a thriving black market in fraudulent documents and false identities.

No one knows how many undocumented workers toil in Delaware. Figures range from the U.S. Census Bureau's count of between 13,500 and 17,500, to the Pew Hispanic Center's estimate of about 35,000.

Despite their impact on the economy, Delaware's Department of Labor does not have statistics on the immigrants and where they work. "This is not part of any survey that we conduct or any databases that we maintain," said Ed Simon, director of the Office of Occupational and Labor Market Information.

Employers feel uneasy even talking about any relation they may have with undocumented immigrant workers or the fact that such laborers exist in large numbers. Experts call the relationship between immigrants and employers a marriage of convenience.

Carol Everhart, executive director of the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce, said the resorts have come to rely on the help from Eastern European students who fill jobs waiting on tourists. They have special visas to work here during the summer.

Latin American immigrants don't play such a large role, she said at first. Then she thought about the kitchen help at restaurants, maids at hotels and construction workers.

"I guess, as I think about it, we do have more of them, even though they may not be as visible to the public," she said. "They're not illegal, though. The businesses here don't hire illegal immigrants."

Immigration officials said most employers adhere to the letter of the law and require proof of residence or permission to work. The documents, however, aren't always legitimate.

"You never get to choose whose identity you'll assume," said Marcos, a 39-year-old construction laborer from Guatemala who didn't want his last name used for fear of arrest. "You don't worry too much about it, either. Employers just want a Social Security number that matches the name on the driver's license."

The jobs are there

Immigrant advocates argue that the large numbers of undocumented immigrants wouldn't come to Delaware or the United States if jobs weren't plentiful.

Immigrants from Latin America have built good reputations, said Sister Madeline Welch, a Wilmington immigration lawyer and founder of Immigrants Council of Delaware. "Everyone says they're the best workers and businesses need their help."

Nationally, undocumented immigrants make up around 5 percent of the U.S. work force, according to the nonprofit Pew Hispanic Center.

Brian McGlinchey, Delaware's governmental affairs director for the Laborers' International Union, said the union supports putting undocumented workers on a path to citizenship.

"Organized labor welcomes immigrants and is comprised of immigrants," he said. "We want to have the opportunity to bring them into the union to increase their skills and earnings."

Undocumented workers don't receive compensation for injuries on the job, McGlinchey said, and they receive only a fraction of the prevailing wage.

"In our industry we're competing literally against guys who are being picked up off street corners," he said. As they have elsewhere, day laborers have started to wait along street corners in Delaware cities, including the Hilltop neighborhood of Wilmington.

Under a U.S. House proposal known as HR 4437, people who hire undocumented workers -- even on a street corner in Hilltop -- could be fined as much as $7,500 for a first offense. That bill energized the nation's Hispanic population and led to opposition marches, walkouts and boycotts across the country.

The Rev. Rene Knight of the United Methodist Church in Georgetown moved quickly to mobilize and educate individuals and businesses about the legislation's potential impact.

"This bill could hurt not just the immigrants but anyone who comes in contact with them, starting with their employers," he said.

The Delmarva poultry industry could take a huge hit. The state's three largest poultry processing plants wrote to lawmakers urging them to reject the proposal. They submitted translated copies of those letters to Spanish-language papers.

Michael W. Tirrell, a vice president at the Selbyville-based poultry company Mountaire Farms Inc., wrote that although his company "employs only documented workers," it needs "a timely, effective verification system and a reasonable guest worker program to help us."

Allen Family Foods, a Seaford-based poultry processor with 3,000 employees, published a letter with a similar tone, noting that the bill does nothing to address the lack of workers in the United States.

"If not for the foreign workers, agriculture and food processing industries ... could not operate," the company said.

Chicken could cost more

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, called that reasoning a myth.

Companies with no access to cheap labor find ways to stay open. In Europe, he said, poultry companies are more automated because unskilled laborers are harder to find. "The chicken breast may cost a little more, but it can be done."

Or companies could raise their pay and choose from a large pool of American workers who would do the same work for more money, he said.

In a study released last month, the Washington-based Center for American Progress reported that while enough unemployed native workers exist to replace undocumented workers, there is a severe mismatch between their skills.

"We find that if the undocumented were removed from the labor force, there would be a shortfall of nearly 2.5 million low-skill workers," wrote the author, economics professor David Jaeger of the College of William & Mary. "This would be a major shock to the economy, and the industries that employ large numbers of undocumented workers would potentially face shortages of workers."

Rather than reducing its reliance on immigrant workers, Jaeger concluded, the nation may need to expand the numbers to keep pace with the demands of the economy.

But some Americans feel immigrants are a threat to their jobs. A survey released last month by the Pew Hispanic Center found that nearly a quarter of black respondents said they had lost a job to an immigrant or knew someone who had. Less than a fifth of white respondents said that. The study didn't distinguish between undocumented and legal immigrants.

More than one in three black Americans surveyed said they felt that immigrants take away jobs Americans want, compared with one in four whites.

But the survey also found black Americans more supportive than whites of permitting undocumented immigrants to attend schools and receive social services.

Stiffer penalties

The House proposal, ushered through by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., would increase the criminal penalty for illegal entry from a misdemeanor to a felony. Unlike Senate bills that expand guest worker and visa programs to accommodate undocumented workers, the House bill increases the penalty for a pattern of hiring undocumented workers from $3,000 to $50,000.

The Center for American Progress put the cost associated with arresting, detaining, prosecuting and removing the country's 11 million unauthorized residents at $206 billion to $230 billion over five years -- even though no congressional leader is proposing mass deportations.

That might not be necessary, said Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies, because many may be induced to leave by the sheer threat of enforcement. "Making it as hard as possible for them to have a normal life here," he said, could speed the process.

Since joining the Georgetown police force 10 years ago, Topping has worked hard to convince undocumented immigrants that the police department is not an immigration office and that police couldn't deport people.

And he wouldn't be comfortable backing up immigration agents on a regular basis.

He hired a victim services coordinator and several Spanish-speaking officers to reach out to immigrants.

"We need to deal with the reality," he said, "and that's that they're not going away."

Contact Patricia V. Rivera at 856-7373 or privera@delawareonline.com.

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While many points in this article anger me, what I find it particularly reprehensible is the "look the other way" stance taken by Georgetown Police Chief William Topping.

Hey Topping, any luck apprehending the Perdue employee (and/or his wife) that murdered a fellow employee last December? Nah, didn't think so...