Thread: Painters/Drywallers Affected by Illegal Labor

Originally Posted by TheOstrich

Thank you everyone for your replies and tips.

GregAGreatAmerican: What do you mean by "Track Houses?" I understood the rest of what you were saying, but not that part.]

Greg, have you noticed more illegals working on the residential side, or the commercial side? Just curious.

Have a good one,

Ostrich

Track house, cookie cutter houses mostly around here they are low cost fast built (mass built ) 90 day house, with the drywall phase being only seven days. To sum them up they are JUNK.
Framed out of wet wood in a day. out of square, widows cheap and 95% done buy illegals and thieves.
track houses are also a package deal. (the suppliers) they give them a break if the builders buy all the building products at same time from same place, which also cuts my company out
it drives the cost of the project down to bare min. which opens the door for the thief and criminal hirers.

The union around here has most of the comical work tied up (above 4 floors) which keeps the illegals out of it. but those guys are on there way out any way,
If you get lucky and have been invited to bid on some up coming projects .your bidding against three large companies here and the illegals are not taken in to the picture in the comm. side.
in the last year three or four drywall companies have been shut down temporarily on sit for the illegals, but Ice and locals do nothing but make the arrest and a week later the illegals they are right back out there or its just different people signing the right paper with no one checking up to see proof of jack.


The criminals around here are hired buy guys making a buck and come in crews of five on the hang and five on the finish and they stay residential. Its the only place this can be hide and not be to largely viewed or busted. Taxes are avoided and cash is paid.

The drywall (pay} for illegals is set at below 5.00 dollars to hang per board and below 8.00 to finish by board. Which is going rate just about the industry for low ball wages and all make money at it .including the America that is doing the actually stealing in the first place,




It all comes down to


ANY AMERICAN CAN RUN THE CRIMINAL OUT, ALL THEY HAVE TO DO,
IS DO IT!!!!

SO DO IT!!!

yes. i believe i emailed the wehirealiens group about my idea but never recieved a response.

The problem with their site is that while us normal folk can suspect a person to be illegal we cannot prove it. not even hiring someone at a day labor center is proof enough, critics will come back stating that some day laborers are legal residents who have been unemployed and are trying to make some money quickly to pay bills.

A site that would praise the volunteering of companies to be checked in on and scrutinized should help bolster the competitive advantage of those companies against those who are hiring illegal aliens.

"track house" = "tract house" i.e. a suburban real estate tract of land
"comical work" ="commercial work" i.e. a building which is usually larger than a "track house"
See what I mean about construction guys!! (haha)

I'm a union carpenter--not necessarily harder working than non-union, but we work on projects where a screwup can be more costly--such as scratching a thousand dollar door, or dropping something heavy on a passerby at the shopping mall, or pouring your footings wrong when the five hundred dollar per hour cranes have come in to set your steel and the ironworkers are about ready to explode in a riot because they have been delayed. A lot more headaches. Big lawsuits.

In Seattle in 1999 there was an INS or ICE bust of a job site--not just Latinos, we also have had druggie rejects from Canada coming down and taking jobs, too. Moving back south in 2002 I thought ICE would respond to other complaints.

No way!! Setember 11, 2001 changed all of that. But now ICE is finally getting around to taking action against employers, so there is hope. In the meantime construction, contractor, or builder boards can do enforcement actions, if the outfit is not licensed. Try to make sure (Please do your homework!! Look for signs of an illegitimate contractor.) and then figure the State authorities may take a couple of days to get to the job. They do respond to complaints, but if a non-registered guy just pops in for few hours or a day, you will just be wasting their time and your tax money.

Construction is full of corruption. Even before the illegal alien crisis, I was witnessing mass tax cheating, unmeployment insurance cheating, incompetent workers being protected by their buddies, crazy superintendents, aloof and snobbish architects. On my latest job I am working with a California transplant druggie, who is always asking for my pain pills and whose son is on Meth. It is no wonder to me that the buying public is getting fed up with such obnoxious behavior and is vainly searching for a better workforce. This is a sad chain of events.

Believe it or not there are some genuinely nice Americans who would also work construction jobs---except in the past there has been downright hostility to such people. I'm not talking about queers, either. There are people who are well-organized,law abiding, healthy, robust and honest who would welcome a chance to make better money than their dead end job imay be paying. Yet, the social trend has been against them. It seems like everyone now expects someone in the building trades to be a low-life: electricians excepted, and some of them are, too. This is what is sad in America. It seems to be at the worst on the Coasts.

So to rid American industries of illegal aliens. most sectors need changing. Construction needs an overhaul so that its' craftsmen once again, as a whole, become dependable, hard working and honest and budget conscious. Otherwise, forget it.

Originally Posted by dragons5

yes. i believe i emailed the wehirealiens group about my idea but never recieved a response.

The problem with their site is that while us normal folk can suspect a person to be illegal we cannot prove it. not even hiring someone at a day labor center is proof enough, critics will come back stating that some day laborers are legal residents who have been unemployed and are trying to make some money quickly to pay bills.

A site that would praise the volunteering of companies to be checked in on and scrutinized should help bolster the competitive advantage of those companies against those who are hiring illegal aliens out ..... .

See I have the hardest time with the (we cant tell bull) i can tell… I have been interviewing men, women students of both sexes for many years.
people that are in this country legal don’t stand at home depot and wait for work (1) legal people speak English (2) unless we took in 12 million Spanish speaking legal aliens from down south in the last 10 years
we in America only have a small percentage of unemployed legal aliens in this country (most legal that pass the test don’t come to do drywall the Hispanic legal unemployed is less then 1 percent of the entire unemployed population.
.
Honestly If you see a van in the stat of Ohio pull up on a job site and more then 4 Hispanics get out of it to go to work they are illegals, the driver my have a driver license but it ain’t real.
year after year we aid ss# after ss# to our list, name after mane to our list of fraud employees (do not hire list ). the funny part is we have an average of 1nce a month the mane Jose Garcia. all with a different number but all with the same green card it is funny but not really,
we started photos of each man this year to help the cops. It pisses me off bad when someone who does the job for a living cant be trusted to call Ice or any other enforcement officers to take theses guys out.

Illegal immigrants working in construction are rampant in my state(NC). These builders should be disciplined for hiring them. Fifteen years ago the new homes were mostly framed by Americans but not anymore.

Originally Posted by TheOstrich

I know a gentleman in the painting/drywall industry who is getting hammered by illegal competitors. Some of you may be in this trade, or in construction/home improvement. Any advice that I can give to him to stay one step ahead of the companies using illegals?

His company is the only one I'm aware of in my community that still uses legal labor for painting/drywall. Do your communities have Americans doing painting/drywall?

Ostrich

Tell him to advertise loud and clear to all customers and future employees!

AMERICAN WORK DONE BY AMERICAN WORKERS!!!

I go out of my way to find a company that hires only Americans but it is often hard to tell who they are!
I bet he would increase his business and also find some outstanding employees with that simple statement!
I know, if I were needing his services, that statement would seal the deal for me, even if he cost more..and I mean that sincerely!