Thread: Businesses Face Cut in Immigrant Work Force

March 14, 2008
Businesses Face Cut in Immigrant Work Force
By KATIE ZEZIMA


William Zammer Jr., owner of restaurants on Cape Cod, will be forced to open for summer tourists a little later than usual.

HYANNIS, Mass. — For years, William Zammer Jr. has relied on 100 seasonal foreign employees to turn down beds, boil lobsters and serve cocktails at the restaurants, golf course and inn he owns on Cape Cod and in nearby Plymouth.

This summer, however, the foreign workers will not be returning, and Mr. Zammer, like other seasonal employers across the nation, is scrambling to find replacements.

“It’s a major crisis,â€

SOB SOB SOB What a crock

They could be placing ads in college newspapers starting in early January for the summer seasonal jobs...in fact most of these jobs were filled by college kids before the illegal aliens started showing up ...and that wasn't a coincidence ...these business owners hired labor contracting firms that specirficially were recruiting loads of illegal aliens and completly bypassing any efforts to recruit American citizens.

This has got to stop.

Who cuts the grass at the Kennedy compound?

Originally Posted by jimpasz

Who cuts the grass at the Kennedy compound?

Lucha Loco's Lawnmower Service?

I don't believe one word of the whole story except maybe the hispanic cacaus holding out for amnesty!! How about paying more money you cheap OOOOOOO

LegalLatina is right, these jobs were held by American college students until the cheaper labor source became available for greedy owners.

Do you know the foreign college students have to pay their way to the US and pay for health insurance while they are here? Business owners only need to provide dorms and a salary, what a racket!

I say hire Americans and pay them or close up shop. NO sympathy!

Black male unemployment is like 40%, why doesn't he hire them.

This is the second bleeding heart story I've read here within 5 minutes and both from the NY Times.

This ones for Jean another SOB



March 14, 2008


Love story crosses borders

By MIKE KILEN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

Linda met Aaron over the fryer at Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers in Des Moines in 1999. She was the boss, he the employee.

She didn't speak Spanish; he didn't speak English.

They communicated with their eyes, their voices, their smiles, as she showed him the ropes.

"I liked the way she was," Aaron said., "She was different from other people. She was more humble."

Linda was divorced with two children, and had worked her way up to general manager at Wendy's. Aaron was an undocumented immigrant, seeking a better life and more money for his family near Veracruz, Mexico.

They fell in love, which requires no words or green cards.

The two were married at her parent's house on Jan. 26, 2002, and became Aaron and Linda Ramirez. They had two boys, Tyler and Alex, in the next two years.

Yet Linda, 40, feared Aaron, 29, could disappear at any time, stopped by cops and deported. It wore on her.

So they visited Ann Naffier, a slight, energetic woman who helps immigrants obtain legal status as legal services director at American Friends Service Committee in Des Moines.

"A lot of people think getting married solves the legal issues," Naffier said. "Then, I tell them the problem. I have Kleenex on my desk for a reason. There are a lot of tears in this office."

Aaron and Linda faced a dilemma. Live in fear or suck it up and start the legalization process.

In 1996, immigration law changed. Those who had lived illegally in the United States for six months would face a three-year ban after they returned home and then tried to re-enter the United States legally. Those who had lived here illegally for a year or more would face a 10-year ban if they tried to re-enter the United States.

There is a way around the ban, Naffier told them.

More than 13,000 Mexicans who marry a U.S. citizen apply for a I-601 waiver each year. Roughly one in four is denied.

If precedent in Naffier's experience was a guide, Aaron would have to return to Mexico and wait, typically six months, to be approved.

Little did Aaron and Linda know they were gambling: Love may not require papers; the government does.



A lot of crying

The couple learned it's all about waiting. It took 15 months just to have a petition to review his case approved. Five more months passed before the could file the I-601 waiver.

By then, daughter Ashley had been born.

Eight more months passed before Aaron's November 2005 appointment in Juarez.

Linda steeled herself for what she believed would be a six-month separation. She saved money to overcome the loss of income from Aaron's new construction job roofing and erecting drywall.

"I wanted him to have everything," Linda said. The couple decided Tyler would join his father in Mexico and they separated with tears.

Six months passed, then nine, while he worked on his parents' small farm in Mexico and she toiled long hours at Wendy's and at home.

Still no word.

"I did a lot of crying," Linda said.

Linda decided Tyler, then 4, needed to come home. The boy had forgotten English and was cold to his mother.

He clung to his father and wondered why Dad couldn't come. He raised such a fuss, the airplane was delayed 15 minutes.

But their ordeal got worse. On Aug. 31, 2006, Aaron's waiver was denied. He would be banned for 10 years.

Define 'hardship'

The three-page letter from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was direct. Aaron had maintained an unlawful presence for more than six years and the waiver didn't meet the strict "extreme hardship" standard.

Hardship to children isn't considered, only extreme hardship to the U.S. spouse or other family member.

It didn't matter that Linda had filled credit cards for application fees and was alone raising the children.

"While separation and financial concerns can cause hardship, the record reflects that the applicant has failed to show that the qualifying relative would suffer extreme hardship over and above the normal economic and social disruptions involved in the removal of a family member."

Linda was crushed.

Naffier blamed a new director in the Juarez consulate who was issuing more denials. But the ban on Aaron also highlighted the folly of the system, she said. Before the 1996 law change, waivers were routine. An immigrant could marry a U.S. citizen, pay $1,000, and become legal.

"It's bureaucratic," Naffier said. "It's all luck. It depends on what office is doing it, in what country and who is there that day. It's not a science. So when a spouse goes overseas, you don't know if they are coming back."

Linda filed an appeal, contacted Iowa legislators and re-filed a waiver.

"I'm working at Wendy's but this is now my job," Linda said. "I have to do this. I have to take care of all the children. No matter how long I wait, it's my job."

She had one more thing to do: Go crazy.

It wasn't a long trip to crazy.

She was depressed and sought a psychiatrist as 2006 turned to 2007.

"It felt like he was dead," she said. "But he was alive."

She was forced to apply for food stamps for the first time. She was prescribed anti-depressants.

She wrote to Immigration Services - a plea of extreme hardship, three pages of pure sadness.

"I have trouble eating; sitting at the table for a meal is hard (because) it makes it so real that our family isn't together. ... Do you know what it's like to hurt so bad inside that you can't get your breath, that you think your heart is going to rip in two?

"Imagine your wife or your husband on one side of a fence and they can't come through the gate. They are just across the fence, waiting for someone to open the gate and let them in, every day you are all waiting. Tell me that's not hardship."

The plea wasn't a ploy. But lawyers know the worse it sounds, the better.

"You're talking kids without parents, and that's not extreme hardship?" said Jim Benzoni, a Des Moines immigration lawyer. "No, they have to show that mom is psychotic. It perverts the system."

Benzoni said he recently received waiver denials, rare in years past, and is often forced to show psychological damage to a spouse.

"They were smoking dope when they wrote this law," Benzoni said. "Congress did this to be mean."

Up for interpretation

But Marilu Cabrera, spokeswoman for Immigration Services in Chicago, said the law is clear. "Entering a country illegally may have some serious consequences later in life."

Why should undocumented immigrants expect an easy ride to legalization after breaking the law?

"I'm breaking the law every time I am speeding or jaywalking," Naffier responded. "There is a difference in the level of illegality. Aaron Ramirez had no crimes. He lived an exemplary life. He tried to make a better life, got married, had children and came to us to become legal. What is wrong with that?"

Cabrera said it's up for interpretation by the consulate officials.

"It's unfair," Linda said. "People without kids were coming back before him. Everybody needs the same standards."

Linda and Aaron waited six more months. It was August 2007, more than four years since Aaron had found Naffier and almost two since the couple had been together.

"Sooner or later, I was thinking, I would get the papers and all this suffering would come to an end," Aaron said.

Finally, in November, Aaron was granted an appointment in the consulate in Juarez. An exuberant Linda traveled to Mexico. But they were told to file a new I-601, return home and secure another appointment via computer.

Then it happened.

Luck.

Aaron got a new appointment on Nov. 29, and the waiver was granted. In the dark of that night, Linda and newly legal Aaron embraced and returned to their small, tidy home in north Des Moines. When the children awoke, they ran to their father. The wait was over.

"I've learned a lot about myself," Linda said. "I learned I can do a lot by myself. I learned that I love him and did everything for him. I did everything to get him back and I'd do it again." She threw away the anti-depressants and paid off the credit cards.

In January, the reunited couple joined hands at Red Lobster on their sixth wedding anniversary, trying to forget that it took five of those years to finally celebrate.

Reporter Mike Kilen can be reached at (515) 284-8361 or mkilen@dmreg.com

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