IF YOU’VE BEEN READING ME FOR AWHILE, you probably know that I’m an entrepreneur. I have a family law practice specializing in father’s rights and I have a medical diagnostic company that tests people for obstructive sleep apnea. Neither of those businesses profit from, or makes use of illegal immigrants.
I have no actual “skin in the game” when it comes to employees being legal or illegal. I prefer the legal ones for some jobs and I prefer the illegal ones for other jobs.
My companies employ people and help them to put food on their table, make their rent or mortgage payments and aid in the raising of their children. Personally, I have in the past employed people who I have reason to believe are not here legally. Frankly, it is almost impossible in this town to do anything, without at some point, aiding, abet-ting, or employing an immigrant who is of questionable status.
The obvious usage of illegals comes when we hire someone to help dig up that back-yard, or paint the shed, who we have picked up at the day laborer market on 11th Street and Colorado Avenue, or outside the Home Depot. I daresay that few of the homeowners around me have avoided such a use, and if they have, it is only because they are hiring a “contractor” or “gardener” who in turn hires the illegals.
Which brings me to the less obvious employment of illegals when you go to a restaurant. I have no hard numbers on what the percentage of illegals in restaurants who are the busboys, cooks or kitchen staff are, but as someone who has worked for years in the restaurant industry and has met literally hundreds of cooks, dishwashers, prep cooks and bakers, I would suggest that half of the kitchen staff is illegal or was.
Just to show how pervasive the situation is, let me explain how many restaurants operate. Rather than having a full bakery in their kitchen with a baker and all that it entails to make breads, muffins, cakes and cookies along with the many wonderful desserts that are displayed, many of the top hotels and restaurants subcontract that out to professional bakeries like La Brea Bakery and others.
Should a subcontractor hire someone who is illegal, which in this state happens all the time, on all types of projects, that labor should be credited to the ultimate consumer. The reason I feel that it should be passed on is that the consumer is benefiting from lower labor costs of hiring illegals and that savings gets passed on up the chain of command to the final consumer.
Which is why, like most things, if you look hard enough and long enough, you can see that we are all hiring illegal immigrants, “aliens” if you will. They pick our lettuce, and pluck our plums.
They work in our factory farms that process that chicken from living creature and turn it into the tacos you buy at Taco Bell and you can see them in the Del Monte growing fields in Oxnard.
The Republican Right likes to paint them as marauding hordes desirous of destroying our lifestyle. Conservative politicians use them for rabble rousing to generate heat but not light on the issue of “jobs” so that people will get out the vote.
But really, it is not the “illegal alien” that has damaged our job corps. It is technology and market forces that have put some people out of work. This is nothing more than the law of Unintended Consequences at work.
It happens all the time, and we saw another fine example of it this past week. Congress and the President cannot agree on a decent immigration policy which satisfies the needs of the corporations for loads of cheap labor, so nothing gets done. As a consequence Microsoft cannot hire enough engineers from beyond our shores, and import them here on temporary visas, to keep the money here. So Microsoft just moves across the border to Canada, who has a much less restrictive policy on work visas. Now Canada gets to tax those employees and use the money to support their socialized medical network, and take the corporate taxes that Microsoft pays, to build roads and infrastructure.
The American who didn’t want to work in the fields is still out of a job, it will still be filled by a “transient worker” from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras or somewhere else, and a politician will be re-elected because he was “tough on immigration — fighting for our jobs.” Brilliant — just brilliant.
The truth is, we need and use illegal immigrants all the time, and we would be better served by not vilifying them, but recognizing the contributions and then working to keep Microsoft and its billions of dollars in Redmond.
DAVID PISARRA is a Family Law Attorney in the Santa Monica firm of Pisarra & Grist. He welcomes your questions and comments. He or (310) 664-9969.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 17, 2007. Read the original PDF.