Thread: Today's Migrant Worker:Life in Shadows of Opulence

Today's migrant worker: life in shadows of opulence

By Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff December 3, 2008

Julian Aleman spends winters in Myrtle Beach or Boca Grande. He summers in Nantucket and Kennebunkport. And while his journeys might sound like a glitzy advertisement off the pages of a travel magazine, his lifestyle is not in the least about leisure.

While he follows the sun and the money, he's not the tanned tennis pro who travels from resort to resort or the beach bum who follows his whims. Aleman is a modern migrant worker, but rather than toiling in the fields of yore, this summer he worked at Nantucket Yacht Club as a dishwasher, cleaning the silver and stemware of the high-society set.

Resorts, hotels, and restaurants far and wide have hired him - and many others - to work on their lawns or in their kitchens.

Part of an emerging underground network that functions largely by word of mouth, Aleman is a simple worker who represents a complex problem: While he seems to have it great, his labor is often difficult and his life rootless. And while he uses his pay to support a family in the United States and Honduras, he is often accused of taking jobs from locals.

"Everybody's always confused about how I got here," the 41-year-old Honduran native said as he leaned back in his chair recently at a Nantucket restaurant. "They say, 'Julian has no car, no money.' I have only connections. I got a lot of friends everywhere, a lot of connections."

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that about 500,000 service workers - dishwashers, barbers, and others - were in Massachusetts in March. It does not track how many are here seasonally.

For Aleman, it's a life lived on the fringes of opulence. He often works 12-hour days near the ski slopes of Tahoe or the white beaches of Jupiter Island. His bedroom may have a panoramic view of Nantucket Harbor, but he shares the tiny space with two other immigrant workers.

"The area, the geography might sound attractive, but it's no vacation for them," said William Rodriguez, a Boston immigration lawyer. "It's long hours and dirty work and somebody's got to do it. Unfortunately, the people that usually end up doing it are people of color."

To Aleman, 41, the Nantucket dishwashing gig is not only the best job he has ever held, it is the culmination of years of hard work and some luck. He came to the United States illegally, at age 27, hopping a bus from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, into Mexico, hundreds of miles north. Then, he and a friend spent days traveling by foot through the Sonoran Desert into Arizona, he said.

That was 14 years ago.

This summer, Aleman earned $16 an hour as a dishwasher. He lived in a tiny, third-floor room on the yacht club grounds for free. The space was cramped, despite Aleman's few possessions, such as a bottle of fish oil tablets - his health insurance - and a few bright-colored polo shirts.

To get to this point of relative comfort has been a strange adventure, he said. A woman once charged him $300 to place him in a job at a restaurant in Knoxville, Tenn. He earned $250 a week but quit after working more than 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, only earning enough to break even. Quitting left him homeless, on the streets, and in tears, he said.

He has worked in restaurants from Los Angeles to Atlanta as a dishwasher. There was a stint in a soy bean processing plant in Georgia ($5.50 an hour) and at an International House of Pancakes in Tennessee ($7 an hour).

His big break came in 1997 when he got two jobs. One was a day job busing tables at the Park Vista Hotel and Convention Center in Gatlinburg, Tenn., and night-time work washing dishes at the Park Grill Steakhouse. He earned about $600 a week and beefed up his references.

He got a job at Jonathan's Landing Golf Club in Jupiter Beach and won $10,000 at a casino in Florida. He bought a cellphone (he had been using pay phones) and got jobs at the exclusive Gaspar Island Hotel and the private Boca Grande Club (where members "find life as you imagine it should be lived.")

When the Globe attempted to confirm his employment at various locations, only the Park Vista Hotel responded, saying in an e-mail that Aleman had worked there for a year. That might be because some immigrants work under the table. And some businesses do not want to acknowledge hiring immigrants at all because of political controversy over illegal immigration.

Some researchers and politicians say immigrants have taken jobs from American workers, and in particular, teenagers and college students.

"The question is why are we bringing a guy in from Honduras, paying him $17 an hour, and not giving that job to a kid from New Bedford or Fall River?" said Paul Harrington, an economist at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. "It's a failure of the system, plain and simple."

Steven Camarata, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., said many argue that such workers as Aleman take jobs Americans won't. He said it's more important to note that such networks are increasingly playing "a very significant role" in the national economy.

"You would think it wouldn't be that efficient. I mean what does he make when he goes to Boca and how far is it?" Camarata said. "But one of the benefits for our society is we get a guy who's willing to do this work. And the downside is that it creates job competition for the poorest of Americans."

On Columbus Day weekend in Nantucket, Aleman looked the part of a man of leisure, dressed in a polo shirt with the collar up, unwrinkled blue jeans, and white tennis shoes. He said he has his immigration papers in order and has been working in the United States legally since 2000, when he and many others from Honduras, Nicaragua, and countries in the Caribbean were granted amnesty after Hurricane Mitch.

Aleman left Nantucket for the season recently, taking a ferry to Hyannis, then boarding a Greyhound bus to Gatlinburg, which is the closest thing he has to a home, he said. His girlfriend and 3-month-old daughter live there. He had never seen his daughter, because of his Nantucket job, but said he often thinks about settling down with them.

For now, he is working part time as a dishwasher at the Edgewater Hotel, washing the dishes of conventioneers staying in downtown Gatlinburg. How long that will last is unclear.

Holding up his cellphone, he said he also recently learned from a friend that the pay at a resort in Alaska is "very, very good."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massac ... _opulence/

Jobs that people out of prison once worked.

Dixie

$16.00 an hour to wash dishes? ......was this position advertised to the general public in the Boston area...I can imagine that many, many citizens would happily wash dishes for $16.00 an hour particularly in this economy. By contrast...a pre-school teacher's assistant in my area gets paid only $12.00/hour...and must have a H.S. diploma, criminal background check and several hours of college credits in early childhood education. Go figure.

Some researchers and politicians say immigrants have taken jobs from American workers, and in particular, teenagers and college students.

"The question is why are we bringing a guy in from Honduras, paying him $17 an hour, and not giving that job to a kid from New Bedford or Fall River?" said Paul Harrington, an economist at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. "It's a failure of the system, plain and simple."

Good question. $17/hr is not cheap labor by any means. Why aren't Americans getting those jobs?

When the Globe attempted to confirm his employment at various locations, only the Park Vista Hotel responded, saying in an e-mail that Aleman had worked there for a year. That might be because some immigrants work under the table. And some businesses do not want to acknowledge hiring immigrants at all because of political controversy over illegal immigration.

Controversy? There's no controversy. It's a CRIME to hire illegal aliens, but they knowingly hire them anyway.

And they compalin that we are separating families. They do it by choice whether by this example or the guy who is here for years sending money b back to his family in another country

Oh, sorry, from the title I thought we were talking about someone living next door to Carlos Slim.

Free medical may not pay taxes free room and board and $17 an hour and unemployed Americans everywhere.

On Columbus Day weekend in Nantucket, Aleman looked the part of a man of leisure, dressed in a polo shirt with the collar up, unwrinkled blue jeans, and white tennis shoes. He said he has his immigration papers in order and has been working in the United States legally since 2000, when he and many others from Honduras, Nicaragua, and countries in the Caribbean were granted amnesty after Hurricane Mitch.

Did Hurricane Mitch blow those countries off the map or something!Besides that, this illegal invader wasn't even living in Honduras when Hurricane Mitch hit! He was squatting here illegally!!

What a freaking joke! Our government is worthless! This is the shit I pay taxes for!