Thread: Johnson: 'Ill-LEE-gull' blame points to employers (Denver)

Johnson: 'Ill-LEE-gull' blame points to employers

May 25, 2005

pictureNow, we're talking. Or maybe you didn't see where the restaurant company the mayor co-owns is tightening its hiring rules to weed out any illegal immigrants they have on the payroll.

It is precisely the remedy to illegal immigration I advocated here last week, a stance that has kept my phone ringing and my ears burning every day since.

I never knew there were so many ways in this country to pronounce the word illegal. My favorite, by the way, is "ill-LEE-gull," which rolled out of the mouths of so many people, all of whom equated a foreigner's coming to America in search of a better life to something akin to, say, robbing banks.

I get the ill-LEE-gull part, folks. I also consider it something of a crime for an employer to pay said foreigners wages neither you nor I would accept to do work we wouldn't lower ourselves to do.

And we should at least get honest on that point: This is exactly what Wynkoop Holdings Inc. was doing.

Better yet, forget whatever wages they were paying.

None of us were knocking down Wynkoop's door to wash dishes, bus tables or fry hamburgers, only to see the job go to a man or woman with phony paperwork.

No, there would have been multiple protests in the streets or at least a couple of complaining letters stuck in idiot-columnists' mailboxes seeking to expose such a tragedy.

Wynkoop Holdings had some 107 employees on the books - 51 still on the payroll - with incorrect Social Security numbers, including still-hunted suspected cop-killer Raul Garcia-Gomez. The reason they did is because they needed them and him. And no one, the government included, cared a whit.

I'll say it again: Illegal immigration to America would end tomorrow if this nation's employers right now stopped hiring the undocumented.

That it hasn't stopped and will not in the foreseeable future is for the simple reason that combing ill-LEE-gulls from the nation's payrolls is, as Colorado Republican state legislators uttered innumerable times this past session, bad for business.

How bad?

According to the Social Security Administration's best estimates, illegal immigrants pump as much as $7 billion each year into its system. Medicare taxes collected from illegals are about $1.5 billion a year.

These are figures first reported by Eduardo Porter writing in The New York Times last month. Can you imagine what these entitlement programs would look like without ill-LEE-gulls? Neither can the federal government.

Now factor in state, local and sales taxes ill-LEE- gulls pay, never to see a cent of it later in life.

Well, we pay for their kids' education and whatnot, some say. I say we're getting a bargain.

This is especially true since the U.S. never has to send them a check when they retire. An ill-LEE-gull with a bad Social Security number can work 30 or 40 years and have absolutely nothing to show for it. He dies poor and medically uninsured. No hue and cry is raised.

And none of it, certainly, is raised by them. No, it is, simply, part of the cost of their seeking a better life.

So cheer, those of you who want every ill-LEE-gull simply gone, the move Wynkoop Holdings has made. I would, too, but believe it is a drop in the bucket.

The better question is who out there will follow suit?

I called Cindy Weindling, executive director of the Colorado Restaurant Association. If the Wynkoop had found 107 workers with bad Social Security numbers, I asked, how many others would turn up if every single one of your members did the exact same thing?

"I couldn't possibly have an answer to that," she said, as if I had just asked her to donate a limb for an experiment I was running.

She wouldn't even hazard an estimate.

"We're not required to do that," Ilene -Kamsler, president of the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association, said when asked the same question.

"We do encourage (our members) to do what Wynkoop is doing. It is an obligation they need to follow though with," she said.

I have stayed in multiple Colorado hotels. -C'mon, I do not need to be Inspector Clouseau to figure out which employees likely have suspect paperwork on file, I tell her.

"I can't tell you that is a fact, that you would have a field day (rounding up illegals) as you suspect," Ilene Kamsler said. "I think our members do a better job than that. We really hammer members on that. I hope they listen."

Trust me, Ilene, they don't.

The point is, I do not blame, begrudge or hate the undocumented, the ill-LEE-gull, for being here to do such work.

The reason is, I understand that most human beings will take an opportunity when it presents itself.

At the same time, it is not rational to blame the law-breaking opportunity seeker and to hold harmless those who hire him.

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-892-2763 or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...804234,00.html

These are figures first reported by Eduardo Porter writing in The New York Times last month. Can you imagine what these entitlement programs would look like without ill-LEE-gulls? Neither can the federal government.

The programs would be fine.
What Mr. Porter fails to mention, in true NY Times fashion, is the other costs to the American taxpayers for health care, education, depressed wages, etc.

These STATS need to be de-bunked and then sent out.

Bill Johnson, the writer, was a manager at the McDonald's at the Denver International Airport before he became a writer for the News. So he knows how many illegals he had working for him at McDonald's. Somebody ask him about this? Most of the employees at the Denver Int'l Airport McDonald's are African immigrants cause ICE BHS checked papers after 9-11 and cleaned them out....BUT I have no doubt ICE just took many they arrested and let them go or gave them VISA forms to fill out.

A friend of mine, yes an illegal, got a visa after 10 years or so of paying thousands to a LAWYER. He lives in Hawaii and works as a COOK! Yes, a simply cook can get a work visa? I guess it must be so.