Thread: The Face of Growth Utah.

Salt Lake Tribune News Paper article this morning.
This practice is backed by Senator Bob Bennett of Utah. I have sent him an e-mail and have turned Ivory Homes into We Hire Illegals.com.
They have admited to hiring illegals. ICE has been notified. We will see if they shut them down. They need to shut them down and deport now and fine Ivory Homes for each illegal they are using. This is an admitance of guilt from Senator Bob Bennett.

The face of growth: Immigrant workers in booming St. George
The laborers are backbone of construction boom, but talk of illegal hiring kept on 'down low'
By Jennifer W. Sanchez
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 09/03/2007 01:20:53 AM MDT


Click photo to enlargeA calendar for a St. George market hangs as Jose, of... (Jim Urquhart/The Salt Lake Tribune )«123»Related
Labor stories
Sep 3:
For workers, life in U.S. uncertainIf he could find qualified construction workers, subcontractor Jason Phillips says he would hire five employees immediately because he can't keep up with all of his projects.
His workers earn an average salary of $18 per hour, but says "it's very hard to find good help here." So Phillips depends on his mostly Latino work crew. As far as he's concerned, all his employees have the "proper documentation" to legally work here. But he acknowledges that he's not certain.
Phillips says subcontractors here, from roofers to painters, are desperate for laborers, but largely steer clear of any discussions about undocumented workers. "It's always been on the down low. People don't talk about it," he says. "You know a lot of them are illegals, but [employers] just turn their backs."
That's the way the construction business runs here in the nation's fastest growing metro area. Employers heavily depend on Latino workers, and lawmakers and local leaders maintain that the area's ongoing construction boom could not have happened without them.
Sen. Bob Bennett said as much earlier this summer, pointing to St. George as a prime example of the immigration dilemma as the push for reform heated up - then ultimately fizzled - on Capitol Hill.
The economy of Washington County, and elsewhere, is heavily dependent on undocumented workers from Mexico and other Latin American
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countries, Bennett said. If the government forcibly removed those workers, "you would throw the United States into a serious economic recession."
At the same time, Washington County is also home to a handful of the state's largest and most active anti-illegal immigration groups - which routinely lambaste Utah politicians and business owners who call immigrant workers critical to the area's growth.
Count business owner Jonathan Koski among the groups' supporters. If undocumented workers were hauled out of St. George, he argues that the only thing it would do is force businesses to hire legal employees and to pay better wages. He also says immigration raids are "long overdue" in the area.
"We are not dependent on illegal help; there are tons of people who will do the job," he maintains.


A changing labor force: Subcontractor Phillips recalls that when he moved to St. George in 1990 and started in construction, he worked with mostly white laborers.
Nowadays, construction sites of homes, schools and stores are filled with Latino workers speaking mostly Spanish. They build wooden frames, apply stucco, pour concrete and install lawns.
Scott Hirschi, the director of Washington County's economic development council, has some 45 years of experience on construction sites in the area. He says he has seen a "dramatic change" on such sites in the past decade with the increase of Latino workers.
Hirschi, business owners and other local officials generally agree that the region would not have grown as it has without immigrant labor. But they also point out that they can't assume that just because people are Latino and speak Spanish, they are undocumented workers.
"It's obvious there are a lot of Latinos . . . working in the construction industry, but how many here are here illegally? I don't know. No one knows that," Hirschi says.
Some 15 percent of Washington County's jobs are in the construction field, according to the Utah Department of Workforce Services. But Hirschi estimates that at least a third of the county's jobs are at least indirectly tied to construction. He points to the rise in home improvement and furniture stores, as well as title and insurance firms, and banks and mortgage brokers.
With a growth spurt of 40 percent, St. George was recently named by the Census Bureau as the fastest-growing U.S. metro area between 2000 and 2006. In roughly that same span - from 2000 to 2005- single-family home permits nearly tripled, from about 1,200 to 3,500 a year.
Lecia Parks Langston, a state economist based in Washington County, says the area's population growth has driven the construction surge. She also says the tight labor market in the past few years helped increased the average wage - though salaries would have seen a bigger hike without immigrant labor. There was an 8 percent average wage increase in the county in 2006.
Still, local officials say there's no way to know how much the area actually depends on undocumented workers because no one knows how many live in Washington County.
What is known: The county's Latino population increased more than 800 percent between 1990 and 2005 - from 862 Hispanics to roughly 8,000, according to the U.S. Census. In 2000, about 45 percent of them worked in maintenance, construction or production, Langston says.
Of the Latinos in the county today, a "low-end" estimate is that about 35 percent are undocumented immigrants, says Pam Perlich, an urban-planning professor and demographer at the University of Utah.
Washington County Commissioner Jim Eardley has estimated that there are some 12,000 undocumented workers in the area. Some undocumented Latino construction workers believe between 65 and 80 percent of their peers don't have proper U.S. documentation to work here.
Phyllis Sears founded the Citizens Council on Illegal Immigration, an anti-immigration group, almost three years ago and has lived in the area for a decade. She says a "tsunami" of undocumented workers has moved to the area because businesses keep hiring them.
"What did they do before they got here?" she asks. "Those hard-working illegals are much more desirable than American workers for whom contractors have to pay . . . a living wage."


Coping with demand: Within a year of opening its St. George office, Ivory Homes has become the area's No. 1 home builder.
Clark Ivory, Ivory Homes' CEO, says he realizes immigrant labor is vital to development and construction, and he believes his subcontractors abide by his company's rule to hire only legal workers. About 90 percent of each home built by Ivory Homes is performed by subcontractors, he says.
"We have a policy to do complete background checks and not to hire illegals, period," Ivory says. "But at the same time, we know really good workers who have been coming here for a long time who cannot get their visas and permits."
Many business owners say they do their best to verify a worker's U.S. immigration status - it's against the Southern Utah Home Builders Association policies to hire undocumented workers. But at least one anti-illegal immigrant activist charges that many construction-related businesses are hiring undocumented workers and paying them in cash - forcing other businesses, such as his, to shut down.
Business owner Koski started his company, Prime Roofing, about 10 years ago and once employed seven workers. Now, he's a one-man roofer, who will most likely close his business soon because he refuses to hire undocumented workers.
Why? For Koski, it boils down to costs. His roofing price is $2.65 per square foot compared to other company bids that come in at under $2 - which can mean between a $1,500 to a $4,000 difference on a project. Koski says it's expensive to pay for workers' compensation, health insurance and federal payroll taxes.
"I can't afford to keep anybody," he complains. "I can't continue to compete with these businesses that keep hiring illegals."
Carol Sapp, executive officer of the Southern Utah Home Builders Association, has heard similar complaints from the ranks of her 900-member group. Some companies have the additional problem of not being able to validate green cards, even using the federal government system.
Sapp also says she supports immigration enforcement in the area, but notes her organization - like the St. George Chamber of Commerce - has not taken an official stand on immigration reform because group members are split.
But some Utah businesses and organizations - such as Ivory Homes and the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce - support immigration reform that includes a guest-worker program and journeyed to Washington, D.C., to lobby for a reform bill in May.
Ivory Homes, the state's largest home builder, has put together a six-page document about the company's views on immigration reform, which it shared with its employees and subcontractors. It calls for a "realistic guest-worker program" and adopting a reliable employee-verification program.
Clark Ivory, who went to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the reform bill, says lawmakers fail to see the magnitude of the issue.
"For reasons of partisanship and perhaps fear of the extremists . . . our U.S. Senate failed to work together to arrive at a middle-of-the-road compromise," he says. "It is unfortunate that even our own senators have not been in a leadership role on this issue."


Seeking dollars and 'hope': Geovani, a 23-year-old undocumented worker from Guatemala, was earning $8 an hour as a cook at a Caesars Palace restaurant in Las Vegas when he heard that he could make more money working in construction in St. George. He moved here in June to build rock walls in a new housing development for $10 an hour.
It's no secret: Immigrants know that if they can make it to Utah with its booming economy, they can get a good-paying job in construction, restaurants, hotels or ski resorts. Once here, at least some construction laborers note that their employers ask few questions about their immigration status, pay them decent wages and generally treat them well.
These undocumented workers also say the U.S. immigration system is impossible to navigate, and they know they are breaking the law by living here - many get by with fake U.S. documents - but all they want to do is work.
There is little chance of them getting legal U.S. status anyway.
Reza Athari, an immigration lawyer based in Las Vegas, opened a St. George office six years ago. Week after week, he meets with undocumented construction and ranch workers looking for a way to get documentation, as well as employers trying to help their employees. He says they come to his office "with a lot of hope," but there's not much he can do. There are few options in applying for legal status, Athari says, noting that their best bet is having a U.S. relative or a medical issue.
Elder, a Guatemalan native who moved to Utah three years ago, used to make $120 a month as a rancher in Mexico; now he makes more than $1,600 monthly working in construction in the state.
But he wonders if he could get paid still more or get benefits if he had the proper U.S. documents. He also tries not to think about what would happen if he was in a major accident or suffered heat exhaustion on the job because temperatures in St. George in July can reach more than 120 degrees.
"It's rough," Elder says, "but what are we supposed to do?"

great article Paige

Do you have a link?

Sorry, here is the link.

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_6790080

Moving to news section, please post news articles in the news section.