Thread: ND:Builders says group wants to curb illegal hiring

Builders official says group wants to curb illegal hiring

FARGO (AP) - The executive director of the North Dakota Association of Builders says the group wants to make sure workers are in the country legally and that "everyone is playing fair."

Doreen Riedman said she tipped Jamestown police earlier this week about suspected illegal immigrants working at a Jamestown construction site.

Police Chief Dave Donegan said seven men were turned over to the Border Patrol on Wednesday night. He said most were from Mexico.

Fargo drywall businessman Roger Hauck met with the builders association board earlier this week, saying he had evidence that contractors around the state are using illegal aliens.

Riedman said the association's 2,300 members are being told to report suspected illegal workers to the state office in Bismarck.

The men detained Wednesday were in Jamestown as part of a crew doing drywall work.

"They were not speaking English - not that there's anything wrong with that," Riedman said. "But we were suspicious of it, and we aren't implicating them in any way, but we wanted the police to check it out.

"It was a large crew. There were a couple of pickups out in the parking lot with Minnesota license plates on them. We had heard a rumor that they were coming out of Minnesota somewhere," she said.

Steve Bergeson, of Fargo, vice president of construction for Goldmark Development, which is supervising the construction of Garden Hills Living Center in Jamestown, said the workers detained were "subcontractors to the subcontractors."

Bergeson would not identify either the Fargo or Minneapolis contractors involved.

"If Goldmark were to hire employees, we follow all INS (immigration) regulations," he said. "That doesnt apply to subcontractors - that is their responsibility. I wasn't aware that they had any illegal aliens."




Add Your Own Comments http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles ... 132642.txt

Go there to add comments!

Good for them. I wish they would do that here in South Florida but it won't happen. Afterall a builder had a $25,000 a plate fundraiser for President Bush while he was in Miami yesterday. All the big name condo builders have illegals working for them. Many times when they get injured on the job which is quite often you need a Spanish speaker if there is no one on scene speaks both. Also as someone has mentioned in the past, once they finish the concrete work they put a Mexican flag up. This makes me sick! Don't tell me when this happens the actual builder doesn't know that there are illegals working on their project.

This is what we need more of all over the country, citizen involvement, it would make a huge difference.

You got that right. I look at things from my point of view. As an immigrant myself I played by the rules and never got welfare or government benefits. I had medical insurance and did things just as the majority of legal immigrants. To see people being rewarded for breaking the immigration or any other law for that matter is unacceptable. That is why I report them. After all my daughter has seen us go through to be legal has decided that she wants to work for ICE. She actually had people she knows tell her that doing that is unfair as some of them were illegal. Her reply was it was unfair to me to see your parents break the law and get away with it while we had to suffer by playing by the rules.