Thread: VA: Many workers on Verizon project are in U.S. illegally

Many workers on Verizon project are in U.S. illegally
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By Tim McGlone
The Virginian-Pilot
© August 3, 2008

Brenda Smith and her husband became curious last winter about the workers who showed up in their neighborhood around Old Providence Road in Virginia Beach.

Without any notice to her, the largely Hispanic crew began digging trenches in her front yard and shoving orange tubing into the ground. She tried to ask them questions, but they didn't speak English.

Concerned about the growing number of illegal immigrants in Virginia, Smith decided to find out whether the men in her yard were here legally. She learned they were part of a $23 billion Verizon fiber-optic project intended to bring state-of-the-art television pictures and Internet connections to millions of homes - one at a time.

After several confrontations with project supervisors, she was told the ditch diggers were indeed here illegally. The Verizon subcontractor they were working for was removed from the job that day.

"I thought I had a right to inquire about who comes on my property," Smith said in an interview at her house.

For more than four years, Verizon has been installing its fiber optic, or Fios, network throughout the region and in a dozen other states. The company is attempting to gain a competitive edge against Cox Communications and other cable, Internet and phone-service providers.

A Virginian-Pilot investigation over the past six months has found that many workers on the Verizon project are in the country illegally, performing back-breaking work that most Americans simply won't do.

The use of illegal immigrant labor raises issues of liability and

neighborhood safety for the residents whose yards are being trampled as well as legal and tax issues for the companies that employ illegal workers. The workers themselves are often exploited too, being paid far less than the law requires or, in some cases, not at all.

Immigration advocates say the illegal workers provide economic support, both to the local community and for their families back home. Immigration reformists, on the other hand, want a crackdown on undocumented workers, but law enforcement officials say their resources are stretched thin.

Verizon and some of its subcontractors say they have taken steps to stop the use of illegal immigrant workers, including firing subcontractors found with undocumented workers. Their efforts, they say, are above and beyond what the law requires.

"Verizon is working hard to do the right thing," company spokesman Harry Mitchell said. "We don't condone the use of illegal immigrants."



Verizon's Fios project is a massive undertaking, stretching cable from home to home, community to community. By the end of 2010, the company plans to have Fios linked to 18 million homes and businesses. Verizon promises to deliver ultra-fast Internet service and the sharpest television picture for $43 to $145 a month.

The laying of the cable starts with a trench, dug about 28 inches deep and about 2 feet wide, one worker said. The project is perhaps most noticeable by the 6-foot-tall spools holding orange tubing, or conduit. After digging the ditches, the workers stand in line, tug-of-war style, and push the conduit into the holes. The actual Fios cable is later inserted through the tubing and connected at scattered utility boxes.

In recent months, The Pilot discovered a network of different subcontractors using illegal immigrants on the Verizon project. Some, working out of unmarked trucks, could not be identified and supervisors declined to answer questions.

In the Riverwalk subdivision in Chesapeake six months ago, as a reporter approached a group of workers sitting on someone's front lawn eating lunch, a supervisor stepped in and said the workers could not be interviewed.

The man, who would identify himself only as Greg, said he worked for Ox Communications in Georgia. He said that all his workers were legal and that they earned $100 to $120 a day. He referred questions to the lead contractor on the site.

That supervisor, who would only identify himself as Chippy, made a call on his cell phone and then said he could not talk.

Ox Communications could not be located in Georgia or Virginia. The Georgia secretary of state had no such corporate listing, and neither did the Virginia State Corporation Commission. Violators could face sanctions by the commission or a criminal charge in a local court for not registering with the SCC. Ken Schrad, commission spokesman, said he is unaware of the commission ever imposing such a penalty on any company.

The Pilot traced the workers from Riverwalk, where Verizon completed its Fios installation this spring, to the Savannah Suites hotel nearby on Battlefield Boulevard. Unmarked pickup s, flatbeds with giant spools of orange conduit and generators sat in the parking lot.

Several workers interviewed said they and their co-workers were all in the country illegally, working on the Verizon project.

Alfredo Perez-Nunez, a 32-year-old father of three girls from the southern Mexican city of Chiapas, sat on a luggage cart near the lobby and, reluctantly at first, told his story.

When asked how he got here, his initial response was, "By the grace of God." He was working in a farm field one day when a man pulled up in a car and offered him 20 times his wages if he would come to America to dig ditches. He jumped in the car and, roughly 1,800 miles later, was shoveling dirt and laying conduit for the Verizon project.

Perez-Nunez, like his co-workers in the trenches, didn't bother with getting a work visa to get into America. He sneaked in the way millions of Hispanics do every year - across the Southwest border - each searching for a piece of the American pie to send home to their families.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said he was earning $10 an hour and, depending on the weather, worked from 7 a.m. to dark. He said that he had been here about four months and that it was his first venture to America. Back home, he earned $5 a day toiling in the fields.

He described his job as hard work, "monotonous and boring."

"Americans," he said, "don't want the work."

He said he does not know who he works for, only that he is paid in cash at the end of each week.

Unhappy with the work, he said he would be returning home soon. He dearly misses his family. Although the ride to America was free, he said, he would have to pay $243 to get home.

"There are a lot of Mexicans here, but there's not as much work as you'd think," he said. "They bring up more people than is necessary. Thank God it's going well for me."

In one room, where the door was propped open, two men were drinking Coronas, listening to music and cooking. Stacks of tortillas sat on the counter, next to empty egg cartons and a can of strawberry Nesquik.

One man was skimming fat from a pot on the stove. When asked what he was cooking, he said "vaca," or beef. They declined to give their names. When asked where their boss was, the man cooking said Atlanta.

In early July, The Pilot traced more Verizon ditch diggers to the Sun Suites hotel in Chesapeake's Greenbrier area.

In one room, where the door was propped open, the same man who was cooking beef at the Savannah Suites agreed to talk to The Pilot.

Wearing a T-shirt that said "Spring Break Cancun," he said his name was Jose Robles, he was 23 years old, and he came here from Queretaro in Central Mexico about a year ago. He said that he makes $10 an hour on the Verizon project and that his boss, whom he would not identify, is from Mississippi.

His boss moved Robles and six other workers out of the Savannah Suites to maintain a lower profile.

"The boss likes us to be quiet," Robles said. "He doesn't want us to make a lot of noise."

Unlike Perez-Nunez, Robles said he came here for the adventure and has been enjoying himself.

"I just wanted to see the United States," he said through an interpreter.

But, it's a lonely life, he said. His boss frowns on the workers going out at night, so they stay in their rooms, cooking and listening to music, and make occasional treks to Wal-Mart using their boss's pickup.

Robles had been digging ditches in the Lake Christopher neighborhood in Virginia Beach but said his crew moves around often. He said he thought his boss would take them to Georgia for work and then Mississippi.

Coming here illegally was his only option, he said.

"If you don't have family here, it takes four or five or six years to get a visa," he said.

Getting a work visa is difficult. The federal government caps the type of work visa Robles would need, called an H-2B visa, at 66,000 a year. They are quickly gobbled up by the construction, seafood, meat and poultry, hospitality, landscaping and maintenance industries. Last week, the government announced that it has already reached its H-2B cap for the first half of 2009. That cap inevitably leads to illegal immigration. Various government and nonprofit groups estimate that between 250,000 and 300,000 undocumented immigrants live in Virginia.

Catching them is the priority of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the resources are slim and agents must abide by constitutional rules.

"We've got stacks and stacks of work-site complaints," said Mike Netherland, assistant special agent in charge of the Norfolk ICE office.

Oftentimes he gets calls from residents asking that agents arrest Hispanic workers simply because they don't speak English.

"There's got to be more than simply that," Netherland said, "because that would be profiling."

As with any case, agents need evidence of illegal activity before making an arrest or raiding a work site.

Still, immigration agents have been arresting more illegal immigrants every month. Today, immigration offenses top all other crimes prosecuted in federal courts in Virginia and across the country, having outpaced drug offenses.

But immigrant advocacy groups say the undocumented workers contribute greatly to the economy.

According to the nonprofit Commonwealth Institute, Virginia's undocumented workers earned between $2.99 billion and $3.59 billion last year, and half of those workers paid $260 million to $311 million in federal and state taxes. The other half, presumably paid off the books, paid no taxes.

A World Bank study found that the average worker in Mexico earns $7,870 a year, but in America would make more than $19,000 a year.

"The difference is so great that the risk of death and deportation from crossing the border appears reasonable compared to the risk of a family's starving in Mexico," wrote Kevin Fandl in Notre Dame Law School's Journal of Legislation. Fandl is an adjunct professor at American University's Washington College of Law and an associate legal adviser for ICE.

Virginia's economy depends on its large work force of documented and undocumented immigrant workers, said Tim Freilich, legal director for the Charlottesville-based Legal Aid Justice Center's Immigrant Advocacy Program.

The group has represented dozens of Verizon project immigrant workers who have been stiffed by their employers. In late June, 45 of those workers picketed Verizon's Washington office, calling for the company to "take responsibility for the abuse and exploitation of the trench diggers," according to a news release.

The legal aid center and other advocacy groups have been successful in their lawsuits, recouping more than $170,000 in unpaid salary and overtime pay for the workers, even for illegal immigrants, from subcontractors here and in the D.C. area. A judge in Washington ruled in one case that the workers have a constitutional right to fair wages even if they are in the country illegally.

A judge ordered Virginia Beach-based Mega Telecommunications to pay $5,000 to five day laborers who worked for the company on the Verizon project in Northern Virginia in 2005. The phone at Mega's office has since been disconnected.

A Verizon spokeswoman responded the day of the picket and said the company would investigate subcontractor abuses but that it was not the company's responsibility to pay the workers.

All the workers in Hampton Roads interviewed by The Pilot said they believed they were being paid fairly. They said they were treated well by their employers, even receiving free medical care when necessary.

Freilich confirmed that illegal immigrants continue to find work on the Verizon project, hidden under multiple layers of contractors and subcontractors. He said it's unfortunate that the government has targeted only the subcontractors for abuse, and not the large corporations.

"Who takes the fall for that? The mom-and-pop shop," he said.

Some of the contractors who were sued said they had no choice but to hire illegal workers. No one else would do the work.

Subcontractor Anthony Maxwell of Maryland described in court papers his frustrations with trying to find legal workers.

"I tried to recruit employees but to no avail," Maxwell wrote in court papers. "The only choice I had available to me were mainly Latino day workers."

However, a group of workers he hired in 2005, who he says showed him work visas, turned out to be in the United States illegally with phony papers. Police raided his home, where some of them were staying, and jailed them pending deportation, he said in his papers.

Maxwell ended up being sued by some former workers. A judge ordered him to pay more than $40,000 in back wages. He was subsequently fired from the Verizon project.

"I have a word of caution," he wrote in the papers, "to be very careful when hiring Latino workers."



Smith, from Old Providence Road in Virginia Beach, said she has two main concerns about the illegal workers.

"Suppose one of them fell," she said. "Who's going to carry the liability?"

There's also the fear of criminal activity. In one highly publicized case, a 23-year-old illegal immigrant working on the Verizon project was charged with murder in the pick-ax stabbing death of his roommate at a Newport News motel. Anunciacion Santos Turcios pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced in June to 15 years in prison.

But by and large, anecdotal evidence shows that Verizon ditch-diggers stay out of trouble. Immigration authorities, local police and defense attorneys told The Pilot that they cannot recall any other Verizon workers having been involved in major criminal activity.

That didn't appease Smith, who watches her granddaughters during the day.

"We were getting a little nervous about them," she said.

Like others in the region, she began to have concerns about immigration issues after Alfredo Ramos, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, killed two teenage girls in a drunken-driving crash last year in Virginia Beach.

Smith said she learned that Verizon can wash its hands of the illegal workers because it does not directly employ them. In some cases, the employer of the foreign-born ditch diggers is three layers of contractors removed from Verizon.

That was the case with B&B Cable, a family-owned business in Fauquier County caught with 14 illegal workers last year. State Police discovered the workers in the back of a van stopped on Interstate 264 in Virginia Beach. Stamped on the van's side was the name and logo of Verizon contractor Ivy H. Smith.

B&B was hired by Fiber Technology Construction Inc., of Canton, Ga., which in turn was hired by Ivy H. Smith. Ivy H. Smith held the prime contract from Verizon for the fiber-optic project in some Hampton Roads neighborhoods.

Robert "Butch" Buttery Sr.; his wife, Betty Jean Buttery; and his son Robert Buttery Jr. were sentenced to federal prison terms after pleading guilty to hiring, transporting and housing the illegal workers. The family admitted bringing undocumented workers to Hampton Roads from Northern Virginia and later finding illegal workers here for the ditch-digging jobs.

A judge also ordered them to pay $250,000, a fraction of the $1.7 million B&B Cable took in from Fiber Technology for less than three years on the Verizon project and other work. The Butterys admitted in court that they also paid no Social Security or Medicare taxes. Betty Buttery gambled away $558,000 of the company's funds, more than the total salaries paid to the workers in a 2-1/2-year period, according to a federal prosecutor in the case.

"It's a very large economic crime," the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Metcalfe, said in court the day of Robert Buttery Sr.'s sentencing. "It's a very serious problem that we have."

Robert Buttery Sr.'s attorney, George Yates, called his client the "smallest of the smallest cog in a very large operation."



Verizon union workers say they used to perform the work now being done by immigrant labor.

"We didn't give any of this work away," said Charles Buttiglieri of the Communications Workers of America, the union representing about 7,000 Verizon workers in Virginia. "All of it was covered by our folks."

Buttiglieri was referring to the old days, prior to 2000, when Verizon was called Bell Atlantic. Since then, as union ranks thinned and costs rose, Verizon turned to contractors.

He said he and other union members raised the issue of illegal immigrant labor before the State Corporation Commission, in the context of deteriorating customer service, during Verizon's attempt to seek deregulation.

"In Virginia, it seems to be a hotter issue than it is in Maryland," he said. "It seems you've got a whole helluva lot more of that taking place in Virginia than in other areas."

John Wills, secretary/treasurer of CWA Local 2202 in Virginia Beach, said he has received calls from residents complaining about the foreign workers.

He tells callers, " 'It's work that we lost decades ago.' "

Verizon has several prime contractors handling the Fios project. Three handling the Hampton Roads area are Ivy H. Smith, based in Greensboro, N.C.; MasTec, based in Coral Gables, Fla.; and S&N Communications, based in Kernersville, N.C.

They, in turn, hire subcontractors to perform the ditch-digging and to run the conduit underground. Neither Verizon nor its contractors who responded would provide the names of subcontractors.

"Our overarching goal is one of respect," Mitchell, the Verizon spokesman, said. "It's respect for the communities we're operating in, respect for the residents and respect for the workers."

In recent months, Verizon has required its contractors to have a third-party verification process under which subcontractors must maintain valid papers for all workers.

As a result, a number of subcontractors disappeared, Mitchell said.

"In that respect, I think the program has been successful," he said.

He said the use of illegal immigrants on the Fios project is now "few and far between " but assured that whenever an illegal worker is found, he is removed from the job.

S&N Communications, which is working on the Verizon project along the Cedar Road corridor in Chesapeake, said it has instituted new policies to address the use of illegal workers by its subcontractors.

Robert Rigney, a Norfolk lawyer who represents Ivy H. Smith, said the company imposed a similar checking system after the 14 illegal B&B Cable workers were arrested last year. Calls to a MasTec spokesman were not returned.

"Our contract with any of our subcontractors clearly states that you must follow all state and federal laws," said Allen Powell, president of S&N. He said his company uses about 100 different subcontractors.

He called his company's policy unprecedented and above and beyond what the federal government requires. The federal government provides private industry with a voluntary identity check service called E-verify. The system is mandatory for federal contractors.

A database provided to The Virginian-Pilot by the Department of Homeland Security showed that S&N and Verizon are listed among the 68,000 companies that, as of May, have signed up for E-verify.

Ivy H. Smith, MasTec, Ox Communications and other subcontractors involved in the project were not in the database.

Powell said his company also has hired a law firm to audit the subcontractors and certify that their workers are legal. But he acknowledged that it is difficult to keep illegal workers from slipping through the cracks.

"How do you know who's really in the field?" he said.

"Let's face it," Powell said. "We've got an immigration problem. But I didn't do it. They're here, and the government knows they're here.

"I can't fix it for them."

Economic impact
According to the nonprofit Commonwealth Institute, Virginia’s undocumented workers earned between $2.99 billion and $3.59 billion last year, and half of those workers paid $260 million to $311 million in federal and state taxes. The other half, presumably paid off the books, paid no taxes.



http://hamptonroads.com/2008/08/many-wo ... -illegally

A Virginian-Pilot investigation over the past six months has found that many workers on the Verizon project are in the country illegally, performing back-breaking work that most Americans simply won't do.

Nice bit of opinion added to what is supposed to be reporting. I don't know about other areas of the country but in Oregon, Americans don't even get the opportunity to apply for jobs. Illegals are routinely given preference over legal Americans.

I'll be on the lookout for Verizon crews here and will raise a huge stink!

Americans will of course do these jobs if they are paid decently.

But I'm pleased that this lady got involved and was able to get the Verizon sub employing illegals off the job. A good lesson for us.

Dup this is Posted on thread at

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-88923.html

A World Bank study found that the average worker in Mexico earns $7,870 a year, but in America would make more than $19,000 a year.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said he was earning $10 an hour

I kmow man ypomg ,em that have and would digg ditches for 10 per hour

John Wills, secretary/treasurer of CWA Local 2202 in Virginia Beach, said he has received calls from residents complaining about the foreign workers.

He tells callers, " 'It's work that we lost decades ago.' "

What decade would that be????
or do the mean somewhere around or starting after year 2000
or more likely 2005