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DeFede: Labor Secretary Orders St. Regis Review
Reporting Jim DeFede
BAL HARBOUR (CBS4) ―


In CBS4's exclusive I-Team investigation, Jim DeFede has been reporting for weeks about foreign workers brought in to work on a construction project instead of South Florida construction workers. Now, there are new details on how the workers were brought into the country and how the investigation has caught the attention of the Obama administration.

Hilda Solis, the newly confirmed Secretary of Labor in the Obama Adminstration, has asked for a review of how Mexican sheet metal workers were given visas to work on the St. Regis Hotel project in Bal Harbour.

"We are currently reviewing that situation," Solis said during a town hall meeting in Miami.

Solis, a former member of Congress who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate five days ago, also revealed for the first time the precise visas used by the CYVSA International to bring in their workers.

"They actually came in through what they call an E Visa," she said.

The company had applied for H2B Visas for the workers and had actually received approval from both the state of Florida and the U.S. Department of Labor for H2B Visas even though H2B Visas are only supposed to be issued if there are no American workers available to do the job. There are currently more than a thousand unemployed sheet metal workers in South Florida and they complained they were shut out of the project by state and federal bureaucrats that were more interested in helping employers than in protecting the rights of American workers.

"We know we that we are going to have to take a look at it and hopefully work closely with our cabinet secretary [Janet] Napolitano at Homeland Security to see how we better focus so that these things don't happen and that we avoid them [in the future]," she said. "There were before I came in to my position visas that were permitted under the Bush Administration that we will take a very, very close look at and a very keen eye go through. But rest assured we will take a strong view on that."

Solis also spoke about the challenges she faces in taking over a department that had been badly undermined by the Bush Administration.

"The challenge is putting life back into this agency that needs to be resuscitated," she said. "We need to attract good people to come back to the department. We need attorneys, we need investigators, and we need people who are going to restore integrity and respect in our work place."

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