(Illegal) Aliens Among Us

When I drive by the group of Hispanics gathered by the road, it looks to me like a depression era snapshot come to life. A working class, invisible, undocumented and ingrained, mill about waiting for scraps of work. I live near an infamous town on Long Island where the gathering of illegal workers (mostly Mexican, but 100% Hispanic) causes tension in the community. They loiter in parking lots, usually convenience stores like 7-11, and people are afraid of them because they look menacing. I've worked construction jobs off and on for more than 20 years and to be honest they look intimidating to me too. That's not to say that it is because of their race. Not true. Anytime you have a large gathering of men dressed in dirty jeans and t-shirts looking tanned, gristly and strong, it's intimidating, especially for families with children. They are deterred from shopping at those convenience stores because of the crowd.

Granted, the workers must spend enough money in the 7-11's they gather around to make it worth it or the owners of those establishments would have made them move years ago. So it's not the loss of business to the establishment that bothers people. It is the perceived danger. Locally, I have not heard of one story in the newspaper or otherwise where the illegal aliens harmed anyone, even each other. There seem to be no fights, they are generally peaceful and stay to themselves. Of course these groups are huge. They swarm the construction vehicles that pull into the parking lot looking for a day's work. I worked with a friend of mine installing fences for a while. The shop was down the road from two of these 7-11s in either direction. When we didn't need to pick up helpers for the day we avoided those particular 7-11s because they would bother us and crowd us. Even though it was convenient to go to one of those two places on the way out to the jobs to pick up our coffee and cigarettes we went out of our way to avoid them.

There is also the problem with housing. These people are generally men who come here for the construction season (which because of the booming housing market has been lasting almost all year) and send money back home to their relatives south of the border. They try to save money when here by packing themselves into rental houses. There will be tens of men living in one small house. While this is technically illegal there has been little crackdown. The residential areas around these towns have gone downhill because of this. The perception (rightly so) is that it is a low income, low class area. Again, not because of the nationality of the men but because of the conditions they live in. Generally the houses are unkempt and in disrepair. There are many strange people milling about and they change renters frequently. Sometimes there are women and children are living in these cramped conditions as well. Lately I heard of a few cases where landlords are charged for housing more unrelated people in a house than is allowed by the town. Essays in local newspapers show these crowded conditions where many families or 20 or more men are living in one small house. This is an attempt by the town to solve the problem indirectly.

The upside is that some of these people make it here in America. They are as industrious and smart as everyone else in the world. Just because some are uneducated laborers that doesn't mean every one of them is too. There are those who see opportunity in the work they do. When I worked as a fence installer, a rival company was owned and run by former day laborers who learned the trade and then bought their own equipment and went out on their own. Landscaping is another trade where this phenomenon happens. Painters, framers and roofers all have turned from illegal unskilled laborers to business owners in a few years. These guys are the success stories and their businesses are generally documented and pay taxes. Sadly, an overwhelming percentage of the laborers never make it above their station.

So why is there this problem in the first place? I don't have the official socio-economic answers. All I have is my observations and experience. When I was about fifteen I worked my first construction job at a commercial landscaping company. The paving company my mother worked at as an office manager did business with them. Little did I know at the time but when the guy who owned the company asked my mother how hard she wanted him to work me, she replied, "Hard enough that he wants to go to college." Needless to say that a man's perverse side takes over in a situation like that and he gladly agreed. His foreman was a tyrant (no doubt tipped off by my mother's comment) and I was glad when I was on jobs that kept me far from him. Being that I was very young I had no real skills and had to do what anyone else in that situation would do. I worked as unskilled labor. That meant lots of raking of dirt preparing it for seed and moving rubbish around like heavy logs and stones to clear medians and vast roadside areas for the county.

My coworkers were almost all Mexican and Central American. I didn't understand them. I couldn't speak their language but somehow we communicated. By gestures and simple words we understood what the other was saying. I felt like the minority then. Even though the employers were of my race and language I was "forced" because of my youth and circumstance to work with those who others saw as necessary evils. Like most contractors at the time in the mid-eighties my company hired a group of Hispanics who mostly returned day after day and season after season for regular work. It was also the twenty years ago so I think the problem, although growing was not out of control yet. A couple of the guys took to me and they helped and taught me the job. Some of the senior guys covered for me when I was too weak to lift or too tired to keep up.

I remember one time falling asleep in the cab of the work truck we were packed into on the way home from a particularly rough and hard job. When we got back to the shop this one big guy I'd worked with all day woke me up gently saying something in Spanish. The only word I understood was "Junior." He and the rest of the Spanish crew called me "Junior" after that. To these guys I was just some kid, stuck there by the boss to do some work and not to be treated too roughly, by them at least. They understood. They showed mercy when the foreman didn't. My mother's little plan almost backfired. I loved the job. The harshness of the dirt and the sun only added to my concept of bonding and brotherhood between myself and those alien people. Despite the fact that I was supposed to not like being "stuck" working with the Spanish guys. I really loved it and I learned that you can bond and respect with those who you don't understand. They embraced me and I have had an affinity for these Hispanic day laborers ever since. When others bitched and complained I tried, although weakly, to defend their position based on economic necessity.

At the time I didn't know how the whole thing worked but they explained it to me. Those guys worked hard all season and saved all their money. In the winter when there was no work they went back to their countries and lived mostly off the money they made. They were living comparatively well to their neighbors who didn't dare make the trek up to American every year to do the hard labor. It was a reward for those who chanced it. Little did we know at the time that economics and opportunity were coming together and that in the next twenty years a political storm would build.

Over the years I encountered many of the silent class. They tried to stay under the radar but when a thing such as this gets this big it's too hard to ignore. It got too good for both us and them. We got used to the fact that we didn't have to do the laborious jobs. Our children didn't have to go out and mow lawns, carry buckets or haul wood every summer day to make money. They could do other things while the illegal immigrants were more than happy to make untaxed cash for a day's work. No matter what, they work hard. You have to respect the ethic that created this problem. We have too much of a good thing and we want it to go back underground so we don't have to look at it everyday.

America's skin, its boarder, is full of open wounds. The seeping illegals are bleeding through and coagulating on our street corners. But like a cut or scrape its danger is in the wound worsening and infecting the rest of the body. In its most dangerous form the illegals are not Spanish immigrants but Fundamentalist terrorists looking to harm us not leech from us. In the cities where the children of those who came here do not find the education or health benefits of other American children, there is a danger that what was once relatively harmless becomes a national crisis of guns, drugs and crime.

For the most part the crimes have been committed against the community of Hispanics. There are many Americans who do not want these people around in their shops, their neighborhoods. That's understandable. But some, disillusioned, turn to violence. In a case on Long Island, a couple of young men lured a Mexican worker to a basement on the pretense of a day's work and beat him. In another, a young American man burned down a house that had Hispanic Workers living in it. I won't say our streets have become a battleground but that can easily happen as the numbers swell and the workers impose more on our residential neighborhoods. Parts of towns on Long Island have been ghettoized as places that "they" live. Some, interestingly very close to our wealthiest neighborhoods.

It seems that the working class who support the wealthy with gardeners and maids and cooks and nurses aides need a place to live and they like to live within commuting distance of their jobs. I remember well a family who had employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny. She lived miles away in the borough of Brooklyn and worked on Long Island. The woman left her own husband and children to come and spend weekdays and nights taking care of another family. It was so sad to me as a kid. I saw that as almost unfair that someone should loose their time with their own children to take care of someone else's. The concept gave me my first look into the separation of class and the sacrifice that the underclass needs to make. Was it fair? Probably not. But was it inherently immoral? Not at all. The woman had to work and this was the work she knew how to do. At least her children were clothed and fed.

With the establishing of this class of workers many areas succumb to the slum landlord approach. Fit as many workers in one house as possible to maximize rent. More and more of these workers need to live close to the suburban middle class that they service. Especially on Long Island where the sprawl has reached all the way out to the eastern tips. In the wealthy and well-known town of Southampton has a population of Hispanics that gather in their 7-11 parking lot and live in their own neighborhood tracts. The East End of Long Island cannot support its growth and sustenance on its own. Even the once exclusive Hamptons have surrendered to a very middle class problem.

The problem is the old saw of America being the land of opportunity. For a new class of immigrants who come here in waves, this country presents a place where there is work to be done and money to be made for a better life. Some can establish themselves and become integral parts of this society. Other are transient, migrating back and forth over the border as much as they can. Others are squatters, coming here once and never leaving, disappearing into the United States to escape from the real oppression, which is their home. It seems simple osmosis causes this border problem. If there is a reason for the illegal immigrants to risk life and limb to get here then they will come over. Where there is too much crowding and not enough work in their own countries there are wide-open spaces and ample work. They can't help but be drawn here. It's a simple scientific principle.

There is an even more tragic side to all this. According to the U.S. Boarder Patrol, about 2,000 people dies between 1998 and 2004 trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican boarder. The Sonora Desert that stretches from Mexico to Arizona is a corridor that is said to be the deadliest passage. The people of the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation in Arizona that is on this pathway of death find many Mexicans dead there every season. Often the immigrants die of thirst and heat exhaustion hours from the border on a trek that takes many days to make.

There are also opportunists among those seeking opportunity. In a recent tragedy a tractor-trailer full of Mexicans crossing the border was found at a truck stop in Texas. Inside nineteen had died of the heat exhaustion while being locked in the trailer on their journey across the border. Apparently the driver noticed a taillight was out and stopped his truck to inspect it. When he saw the condition of the people inside he got nervous, unhitched the trailer and abandoned it. This is the type of risk many are willing to take to cross into America to work and build a better life. It's a really old story. Other immigrants have died crossing the border on foot, unprepared for the intense desert heat. More have died in railway cars trying the same trick as the tractor-trailer victims. I envision the dying poor who took the berth section on ships crossing the Atlantic. Those who made it across were lucky but the risks were great and the promise of reward even greater. There are few Americans who can imagine the desperation it takes to stow away in a dangerous, dark and hot trailer for a journey to an unknown country where you do not know the language on the hint of a whisper of a chance for a better life.

Too much has been made of the problem and nothing has been done to produce a solution. We have propositions on Long Island to build safe shelters with bathroom services for these workers to gather but others say it condones their illegal activity. President Bush in a rare show of clarity suggested we give many of the illegal immigrants legal status.

"Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans are not filling," President Bush said in 2004. (Although this has been considered by some his election year pandering to the Latino vote.)

Nevertheless, this statement shows how deep the immigrant problem has become ingrained into the national consciousness. We recognize two problems that even President Bush can see. The first problem is that we have millions of undocumented workers already here in the United States and the other is that they are providing a vital service in our economy by filling jobs American's are not willing to do.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, in 2004, there was an average of 5.5% unemployment rate with 8.1 million people unemployed. According to the American Immigrant Law Foundation (AILF) there are an estimated 8 to 10 million undocumented workers in the United States right now with about 58% of them from Mexico, 20% from Central America and the other 20% or so from other countries. In 1996 the average unemployment rate was 5.6% and 7.2 million workers were unemployed. In that year it was estimated that there were about 5 million undocumented workers. Over the last ten years the immigration problem has done nothing but increase and become more volatile while the unemployment rate in America has not changed much at all.

According to a study by Dr. Donald Huddle, a Rice University economics professor, in 1996 the estimated net cost to American tax payers for illegal aliens was about $20 billion dollars annually. Since the population has roughly doubled since then, the costs can have said to go up by twice that amount. Of course in a study produced by the Center For American Progress the cost over five years to deport the current population of illegal immigrants effectively would be about $206 Billion. That exceeds the current budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) broken down annually. ($41 Billion annually for the deportation initiative verses $34.2 Billion annually for the DHS)

In 1985, the year I took on my first construction job and befriended a new culture, the average unemployment rate was at 7.2% and 8.3 million workers were unemployed. The best estimates for undocumented workers in the United States in that year (1985) is about 3 million persons, 55% being from Mexico, according to U.S. Census reports which did not specifically count illegal aliens. In the past twenty years, the total civilian labor force (employed and unemployed) went from 115.5 million in 1985 to 147.4 million in 2004.

Since 1986 we've lowered the unemployment rate for Americans, increased the civilian workforce, and taken on more illegal immigrants to do our labor jobs. In that respect the immigrants are not necessarily taking away jobs from Americans. So that's not the root of the problem. In our effort to stem the tide of illegal aliens the number of Boarder Patrol officers maintaining the U.S.-Mexican border has tripled in the years between 1986 and 2002.

The types of jobs that these people take are generally filled by Americans who would not enter the workforce with certified training or skill. For the most part their skills are learned on the job. A strong back and muscles are more important than finesse. Also the ability to withstand extremes in weather and still keep a somewhat even pace. Those are skills that are not learned. People don't go through years of training and then find that their job has been taken away by someone who is not American like often happens in the computer field. Also, given the choice when economics doesn't come into play at such a disadvantage I think most contractors would choose a citizen over an illegal when the choice is presented. I worked in many shops where there were plenty of Americans to work and not an illegal worker in sight. But when the work got stretched and there was no one else to hire (at least on a temporary basis) we'd go pick up some workers for the day to help out. It is a simple concept of supply and demand, more than anything else.

The real problem is that for too many years we looked the other way and now we have this swell of illegal immigrants coming here to work and now we are crying foul. There are those who claim that the immigrants overwhelm our communities by overcrowding our schools when they don't pay taxes and use our healthcare systems like our hospitals. For so long they filled a niche, gladly I might add. No one complained when cheap labor helped in keeping prices down. And it seems to me that people still do not want to give that up. The general consensus is that it's fine, as long as it's not in "my backyard."