Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 3, 1993 TAG: 9302030276
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEAN LUJAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
ILLEGAL ALIENS SHOULD BE LEGAL FOR JOBS
ZOE BAIRD - and the new president's reputation - were ambushed by the immigration law. Who would have thought it? After all, the law against employing illegal aliens was directed presumably at small-business owners to protect the wages and jobs of the American worker and to ensure against exploitation of the immigrant worker. It was never intended to trap the class that wrote it.What is particularly unfortunate about Baird's situation is the fact that this particular law is wrong - and she had to apologize for breaking it and swear to enforce it. There was no discussion about changing it.
The law is wrong because it makes a lawbreaker out of an employer who has a job that must be done and that no U.S. worker wants to do, and who, in desperation, gives that job to an unauthorized immigrant worker. Although Zoe Baird, because of her considerable wealth, may have had other alternatives for solving her employment problem, most people who get trapped by this law do not.
There are not enough U.S. workers willing to live-in and perform child care or elderly care or care for the disabled. There also are not enough U.S. workers willing to wash dishes and mop floors. The U.S. Labor Department routinely certifies that fact when it approves applications submitted to it by employers seeking to obtain immigrant visas for these workers. Zoe Baird obtained that certification on behalf of the Peruvian couple in her employ. I have obtained that certification on behalf of dishwashers in my employ.
One would think that, having ascertained that no U.S. workers would be displaced or adversely affected and that the employer needs someone to perform that job, the United States would allow the alien to take the job. Instead, the employer must wait years before she can lawfully employ that person. The children will be in graduate school and the business will be long closed before immigrant visas are issued.
This scenario is true for all so-called unskilled laborers under the 1986 Immigration Control and Reform Act. Unfortunately, there is not a big lobby for unskilled laborers in Washington. So little support is there for this group that only at the last minute, when revising the law in 1990, did Congress agree to include a provision for 10,000 visa numbers for unskilled laborers - out of approximately 750,000 immigrant visas issued per year!
As Zoe Baird painfully learned, there generally is not a lot of sympathy for couples looking for live-in child care because it is seen as the child care alternative of the wealthy. It is not generally understood that this law also applies to families seeking care for an elderly or disabled member who may have no other choice but live-in help. It also applies to thousands of small businesses that depend on unskilled laborers - to wash dishes and mop floors - and do not have the options Zoe Baird had. There is no sympathy for our predicament either.
Perhaps there is no sympathy because most Americans know that the wages paid for these jobs are low and the job is hard. I pay the cleaning person at my bakery $6.50 per hour, and he works very hard for his pay. What good U.S. worker would want such a job? (This job paid $16,000 last year, three paid holidays, three paid sick days and two weeks paid vacation. We pay 50 percent of health insurance for those employees who wish to enroll. The business cannot afford to pay more.)
It is my sense that most Americans look at the homeless on the streets and see potential employees for these unskilled positions. I can attest to the fact that this is not a solution. We are a small business operating in the inner city. The rare U.S. applicant for these menial jobs in our neighborhood is almost always on drugs, alcoholic or just out of jail looking to go back in. I have hired my share - with little success. The addictions are stronger than both of us. I have a business to run, and it is not a rehabilitation center; we are struggling to survive. I need honest, reliable, reasonably hard-working employees.
For the time being, many small-business owners in Washington have been able to overcome the shortage of workers without breaking the law, because the Immigration and Naturalization Service has given temporary employment authorization to most Salvadorans in the area. But presumably that will end - and we will have to fire these workers, or Congress will have to enact another amnesty to benefit the Salvadorans.
Doesn't it make more sense to change the law so that, once employers have shown that U.S. workers are not available, an immigrant visa can be obtained for a prospective employee, including the unskilled dishwasher as well as the live-in housekeeper - right away? Thereby the government can ensure that U.S. wage laws are complied with and employees are not exploited. If the public is unwilling to increase legal immigration to accomplish that, then Congress and the administration should have the political will to move the dishwashers and live-in housekeepers to the front of the line and tell others to wait - our small businesses and working mothers need the help.
Jean Lujan, owner of Heller's Bakery and the restaurant Avignone Freres in Washington, is a former immigration attorney at the Department of Justice and Immigration and Naturalization Service.
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