Santa Barbara News-Press, March 23, 2009, Monday

Santa Barbara News-Press

March 23, 2009, Monday

Santa Barbara News-Press

Hard times alter debate over undocumented workers

KRISTIN COLLINS

Business owners once said they needed illegal workers because there weren't enough Americans willing to do dirty and lowly jobs. Now, unemployment is nearing 10 percent, and citizens are lining up for jobs they once would have rejected. Yet, some say, many employers still want illegal immigrants.

''They prefer immigrants, especially now,'' said James Lee, a Raleigh, N.C., electrician who hasn't found work since Thanksgiving. ''I don't think it's fair when there's so many of us in the shape we're in now.''

Lee, 47, said American workers can't compete against immigrants who are willing to work for low pay and under unreasonable conditions. And now that jobs are scarce -- nearly a quarter of construction workers nationwide are unemployed -- Lee is one of a growing chorus who say that illegal immigrants are leaving citizen workers with fewer options.

''It's just more people out there competing for what little work there is,'' said Franklin Tigner, a Louisburg, N.C., construction subcontractor recently searching for a job.

Some, however, argue that the equation is not so simple. Many business owners say that the vast supply of dependable labor that immigrants provided was responsible for much of the growth in industries such as construction and landscaping. Without immigrant labor, they say, their companies couldn't have created so many jobs.

Now, in a time of shrinking profits, some say those productive and loyal workers could mean the difference between survival and failure.

Bill Downey, a Durham, N.C., construction-company owner, said immigrants have been willing to work harder and more reliably than native workers -- and those are the types of workers that employers will keep as they try to remain solvent in a tight market. He said he doesn't employ illegal immigrants, but he acknowledged that many laborers are in the country illegally.

''When it comes down to the bottom line, more people are going to be interested in good workers than whether they're legal,'' Downey said. ''I've got a good worker, and I'm going to send him away? I don't see that happening.''

Some workers, immigrant and native alike, say that illegal immigrants have earned their place in the American economy, in good times and bad.

Antonio Rodriguez, who was working at a Raleigh construction site recently, said he will stay in the United States as long as he can. He said work here is getting harder to find, but it is still more plentiful than in his native Mexico City, where he would return to certain poverty.

''It's not our country; it's your country, I know,'' said Rodriguez, 51. ''But the problem in our country is we don't have jobs.''

He said many of the problems American workers complain about -- immigrants who work for less and don't stand up for their rights -- could be solved if undocumented people such as him had more legal protections. Without them, he said, he is forced to do whatever his employer asks or risk being fired.

''If they say your pay is going to be less than the white man, what do you say? OK,'' Rodriguez said. ''If they tell us to work in the snow, in the rain, whatever, we do it. No complaints, because it's so hard to find a job.''

Doug Woodward, an economics professor at the University of South Carolina, said native workers have less at stake than immigrants. Because of that, he said, they can't match immigrants' productivity.

''The Latino work force, they're hungry and eager to work as many hours as they can get,'' Woodward said. ''They'll start on the worst tasks and work themselves up to something better. There's such an incentive to hire them because it's the difference between being profitable and not being profitable.''

Tigner, the Louisburg subcontractor, said he understands why many construction contractors would rather hire illegal immigrants. He said he employed immigrant workers in the past -- and that he preferred them over most U.S. workers.

''They show up every day; they work from sunup to sundown,'' Tigner said. ''Us Americans, we're more mouthy. We get out there and say, 'I'm not going to do this until it's right.' We want vacations and all that good stuff. ... The Hispanic workers, they just come out there, and they do it.''

But others, such as Lee, balk at the stereotype that Hispanics work harder. ''They can't outwork me,'' Lee said. ''I was raised to work. I'm not a lazy person.''

Vernon Briggs, a labor-economics professor at Cornell University, said the picture for U.S. workers will only get worse if employers continue to have their pick of a vast supply of vulnerable immigrants.

Briggs said strict enforcement of immigration laws is the only salvation for the unemployed.

''We need to start putting some employers in jail,'' he said. ''No one wants to compete with people who will work the longest for the lowest pay, under the worst working conditions, and that's what the illegal immigrant is.''

(E-mail Kristin Collins at kristin.Collins(at)newsobserver.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)