Tino hammers together forms that hold the wet cement that, when it hardens, becomes a driveway or patio or foundation pad for a new home.

He is paid $9 an hour, with no overtime or benefits. If he is sick or injured and can't work, he isn't paid.

Speaking through an interpreter, he describes lunch: "Have a taco or a sandwich in one hand -- and work with the other [hand]."

Tino is in Central Florida illegally. He sneaked into the country from Mexico to make a living as one of the 25,000 or more undocumented migrants -- primarily Mexicans -- experts say are working in residential construction in the region. Chances are good that someone like Tino has worked on just about every new house built in greater Orlando during recent years.

"If only the legals did the work in this county and state, we wouldn't get much done," said Julian, another illegal migrant.

Poorly supervised and trained, often rushed on the job and struggling with a language gap, these migrants are a key part of the work force responsible for a wave of sloppily built new homes, a yearlong investigation by the Orlando Sentinel and WESH-NewsChannel 2 has found.

The undocumented migrants in this story spoke on the condition that their full names were not used. They fear being deported.

Although they are the people who actually build the houses, they do not work for the builders. They are hired by subcontractors, to do masonry or carpentry or drywall under the builder's supervision. The builders say it's the subs' obligation to ensure that their employees are here legally.

That's why when Alex Hannigan, president of the Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando, was asked his estimate of how many illegal migrants work in the industry, he replied that perhaps 20 percent of them are.

He couldn't come up with a solid number because, like most builders, he has little interaction with the hired hands. A small custom builder, his payroll consists of office help and a supervisor or two to watch the subs.

"I don't check everybody who is on the roof or in the building," Hannigan said of the crews that build his houses. "You just can't control that type of thing, and we don't try to."

But it also is difficult for subcontractors to confirm the immigration status of their workers, said Carl Engelmeier, who owns an Orlando roofing company. Engelmeier said he will not hire anyone without a drivers license, Social Security card and, if a migrant, a resident-alien card.

Yet two years ago, he hired a crew of seven Mexicans who each provided documentation -- all of it fake.

He said he did not find out until an immigration agent appeared at his office, asking about the crew. He never saw the crew again, Engelmeier said.

"It just kind of blew my mind," he said.

No experience needed

Experience or ability rarely is a consideration in hiring, the migrants said. A strong back and a willingness to work long and hard are the prime requirements. Anything else is taught on site.

"You just do as you are told," said Julian, who began building houses in Florida 10 years ago.

Typically, migrants have little formal education -- most haven't finished high school -- or construction training other than what they learned in Mexico, working at their home or on the family farm.

They usually start off as laborers, carrying mortar or block or cleaning up, for $7 an hour. By watching, asking questions and learning on their own, they say they can latch on to better-paying, more-important jobs, such as framing, hanging drywall or laying block. They typically top out at about $15 an hour.

Frequently, they are paid in cash, the money handed out on Friday afternoons. They get no overtime or benefits, the migrants said.

Often, they do not know the name of the company employing them. Instead, they know the first or last name of their crew chief, who invariably is bilingual and acts as their interpreter.

Many used to harvest crops, most commonly citrus in Central Florida. Ironically, they face many of the same obstacles in construction that they did in picking: low wages; few, if any, benefits; and an unforgiving work environment.

They are afraid to complain or seek better pay because they are constantly told they are one phone call to the Border Patrol away from being sent back to Mexico, said Fernando Cuevas, a carpenters-union organizer and former farmworker who deals frequently with undocumented workers.

For instance, Roberto, a migrant carpenter, dismissed a 3-inch gash on the left side of his face as not worth discussing. He said it happened on the job, but he would not divulge who his employer was or how or why he was hurt.

"It's just a scratch," Roberto said through an interpreter. He said he did not seek medical attention for the scabbed-over cut because he was afraid he would get in trouble.

He said he makes $9 an hour and is not paid overtime, regardless of how many hours he works. Like many construction workers, he frequently is on the job Monday through Saturday.

The lack of overtime pay, Cuevas said, is common throughout the nonunion world of home construction.

Union jobs, which represent little more than 1percent of all carpentry work in Central and North Florida, mandate that employers pay workers extra for overtime and offer sick and vacation benefits. Unions also offer nighttime and weekend classes that teach carpentry techniques and other advanced construction skills.

But the Mexicans can't band together and push for better pay, education and working conditions because they have no legal standing here.

"It's a messy situation. They don't want benefits. They want the money so they can send it home," said Walt McGuire, a business agent for the Carpenters and Lathers Local Union No.1765 in south Orlando.

Hispanic construction workers earn about two-thirds the median salary of a non-Hispanic white construction worker nationally, $420 a week versus $623, according to a wage analysis done by the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington. In Orlando, Hispanics fare a little better, earning a median of $10.66 an hour compared with $14.15 for non-Hispanics, the Pew center said.

"If you put them [houses] up quick and cheap, and you have a very mobile work force that is willing to work by the day or project, that's very desirable for the employer," said Robert Suro, Pew Hispanic Center director.

'You don't want to mess up'

Fear of deportation is a very real part of every illegal migrant's life, even though the threat is not as great as they imagine.

"You don't want to mess up," Antonio said through an interpreter.

About 20 Mexicans a month are caught and deported from Central Florida. Federal and state authorities are not actively seeking Mexicans here illegally, but they will send them home if their true status is discovered during something as common as a routine traffic stop.

As a result, undocumented Mexicans shy from strangers and stay among friends and family.

"It's comfort and security. They know their neighbor is not going to attack them or turn them in," Cuevas said.

A dilapidated village of old trailers and plywood shacks in west Orange County offers a prime example. About 200 migrants live there, at least two dozen from the same region of Mexico, a state in the southern highlands called Michoacán.

Gaspar, a 49-year-old carpenter, was one of the first from Michoacán to arrive in the west Orange County park, pulling in during the 1970s to harvest oranges. Like many pickers, he switched to construction during the 1980s after three hard freezes killed many of the trees, leading growers to sell their groves to developers who cleared the land and built subdivisions.

He said he likes construction because the pay is better and steadier. He told his family back in Michoacán, and word spread through the impoverished countryside, where a year's sharecropping can net a family $300. Gaspar let them know he could make that much in a week.

"It's all word of mouth," Cuevas said of the migration to Central Florida. "They go where they get accepted, no questions asked."

Brothers, cousins and friends -- as many as 30 from the region -- have ended up in Central Florida. Most have stayed at one time or another in the same enclave as Gaspar, who lives alone in a one-bedroom shanty, his leather tool belt hung on a nail hammered into a wood stud.

The accommodations are Spartan, no air conditioning or heat, the electricity routed about his tiny home with extension cords. He pays $120 a week, which is the going rate.

A man of few words, Gaspar smiles and shrugs when asked whether he likes his home and living in Central Florida. It's not the area that attracts Gaspar so much as the work.

Social Security cards are key

One of the keys to getting a job is producing some sort of identification that gives the holder at least the appearance of being a legal resident.

The most common is a fake Social Security card. Phony or stolen Social Security cards used to cost as little as $30, although the price has gone up to $100 or more since the Sept.11, 2001, attacks, migrants say.

Nationally, so many workers have phony cards that when the Social Security Administration reviewed records for 2000, it found that almost $6billion in employee contributions could not be matched to individual workers.

Last year, administration officials tried to contact 950,000 employers and employees to try to resolve these discrepancies, but few responded.

Social Security spokesman Mark Hinkle cited numerous reasons for names and Social Security numbers not matching, including clerical errors and misspellings. But many immigration experts say the major cause is fake or stolen Social Security numbers used by workers in industries that rely on migrant labor, including restaurants, agriculture and construction.

The money that can't be assigned to an employee is placed into a general fund, Hinkle said.

Another card that aids migrants is known as a matricula, a document issued by Mexican consulates in many American cities. A matricula does not verify that a person is in the country legally, only that the holder is a native of Mexico. But it can be useful in renting an apartment or setting up a bank account, which give the trappings of legitimacy.

Luz Bueno, the Mexican consul in Orlando, said her office has issued more than 15,600 matriculas during the past year. "We do not ask" if people seeking the cards are in the country legally, Bueno said. "For us, it is not important."

Mickey Valdez, patrol agent in charge of the U.S. Border Patrol in Orlando, said he fields calls "daily" complaining about undocumented workers in the construction industry.

But he rarely follows up, he said, because his four agents and two support staffers are more concerned since the attacks of Sept. 11 with catching potentially violent criminals and terrorists. His office covers eight Central Florida counties.

On average, 42 illegal migrants are arrested and deported each month in Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Lake and Brevard counties, said Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Usually, 20 are Mexicans.

Gonzalez would not say how or why her agency picks up the migrants or where they work.

"We don't discuss our investigative techniques," she said.

Bueno speculated that most deportations are the result of migrants being arrested for traffic violations or some other infraction, not because the authorities are targeting them.

Tirso Moreno, general coordinator of the Farmworkers Association of Florida Inc. in Apopka, estimates that as many as 30,000 migrants are working construction, mostly in residential. At least half are undocumented, he said, adding, "It could be a lot more."

Mexicans who have slipped into Central Florida contend the percentage of undocumented migrants building new houses is closer to 80percent of the total work force.

Regardless of the number, there's little doubt they have become the backbone of Central Florida's home-building industry.

"These guys are working fools," Cuevas said. "They just go at it."

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