Thread: Taking jobs from Americans

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Taking jobs from Americans
- Ruben Navarrette Jr., San Diego Union-Tribune
Tuesday, December 13, 2005


San Diego -- THE MINUTE I saw the harrowing video of the scaffold caught up in high winds and crashing into a Denver office building 12 stories above the ground -- with two terrified window washers hanging on for dear life -- I just knew that when the time came to get the men's statements, we'd need a translator who spoke Spanish.

Maybe it's because Denver is one of those U.S. cities with a substantial immigrant population, both legal and illegal. Or because this looked precisely like the type of job that immigrant-bashers insist that Americans are eager to do -- dirty, distasteful and sometimes dangerous.

Maybe it was because of what I saw one afternoon a couple of years ago outside the 72-story Bank of America Plaza building in Dallas. I noticed what seemed to be two Mexican immigrant men getting instructions from a third man through an interpreter. The two men were tied to a harness and had cleaning supplies. It was obvious that they were window washers, and that they were headed straight up.

As I walked away, I remember thinking that this was positive proof of two things -- that immigrants will do just about anything, and that I'm no immigrant. Washing windows while dangling 70 stories off the ground? Not me. No thanks. Not at any price.

Still, someone has to do those jobs. That's where immigrants come in. The fact that a lot of Americans won't go anywhere near this kind of work swings open the door of opportunity for people such as Oscar Gonzalez and Hector Estrada, the two men who were nearly killed on that scaffold in Denver.

In news reports, I couldn't find any mention of whether these two men are in the country legally, but it was pretty clear from their interviews with local television stations that they are foreign born.

It's also clear that Americans have become -- because of a work ethic that diminishes from one generation to the next -- much more dependent on people like this than our pride will allow us to admit.

That's part of the honest discussion over immigration that Americans need to be having -- where we talk candidly about how we got to this point and admit that this is a problem of our making.

Don't count on Congress to lead the way. Democrats believe the immigration issue will hurt Republicans, so they're just staying out of the way. Meanwhile, Republicans are split between those who want to beef up enforcement before broaching the thorny subject of guest workers and those who want to deal with all the issues at once.

The House will debate this week an enforcement-only bill proposed by Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. This isn't a good sign. It would be a disaster if, after all the hand-wringing over immigration reform, we were left with yet another bill that talked about new fences and dispatching more border guards. There's nothing wrong with those things, but if that's all we do, we won't have done much to stop illegal immigration. We must do something about the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already here and the employers who thumb their noses at the law.

It's still not clear whether Bob Popp Building Services -- the company news media identified as being at the center of the near tragic window-washing incident -- is one of those employers and whether the workers it hired are here illegally. The company is cooperating with federal workplace safety investigators. Gonzalez and Estrada insist that they were not warned about the possibility of high winds that day, and that their calls for help were ignored by their supervisor. (The 911 call came from someone in the building.) The workers told a Denver newspaper that they were offered raises if they would sign a form agreeing not to talk about the incident.

The company says "these are false allegations." But it is looking for replacements. Gonzalez and Estrada quit.

There may be an opportunity for those who like to complain that immigrants -- legal and illegal -- take jobs away from Americans. Work conditions can be life-threatening, but the pay is decent: $11.50 an hour. Not everyone at once. Don't crowd. The line forms to the right.

A few years ago I attempted to broker a deal to bring in a team of Ukrainian mining mechanical engineers when there was a rise in demand in the coal industry.
The Ukrainians were to have come legally. One thing that I found out about in the process was an American coal mining mechanical engineer working in Ukraine.


I was told that in order for the group to work underground they would need to be fully fluent in English not because of getting operational orders, because of OSHA. Although the group of engineers had experience and or advanced degrees they did not have the required English skills.


What the Ukrainins can do is work above ground outside of the coal mines for repair firms and second hand equipment dealers. A mine pays higher wages than do equipment dealers and during a tight time the American mining mechanical engineers frequently get hired away. The Ukrainian team were very interested in exporting used equipment which might be treated as scrap iron here.


In the case of the window crew in Denver the safety measures there were all fouled up. The hiring of a monolingual work crew was just the tip of the iceberg of their problems. The contractor was doing a hack job and endangered the lives of his workers. If the lines had been set up right the job would have been much safer.


The company Bob Popp commited a crime by hiring an incompetent supervisor and had they adequate compensation could have brought in better supervisor and legal bilingual or American workers.

There may be an opportunity for those who like to complain that immigrants -- legal and illegal -- take jobs away from Americans. Work conditions can be life-threatening, but the pay is decent: $11.50 an hour. Not everyone at once. Don't crowd. The line forms to the right.

How gullible does this writer think his readers are? If this company was forced to hire legal citzens, as they should be, that hourly rate would double, perhaps even triple.... and he KNOWS it! Where would the money come from to double that pay rate? Easy...a small portion of the grossly inflated profits they have been raking in by skirting the law.