April 6, 2006
The Reader

Undocumented workers do have rights, said Nebraska Appleseed's Darcy Tromanhauser, who works with immigration integration and civic participation issues.

But undocumented workers do not voice complaints or organize without the fear of retaliation from their company. Dangerous conditions and injuries go unreported.

"The immigration system is preventing them from being full participants in society, and that goes against democratic principles," Tromanhauser said.

Many of these relatives live in countries slowly recovering from centuries of exploitative rule.

Migrating at a rate of 500,000 per year during periods of steady employment, an estimated 12 million undocumented people live in the United States, up from an estimated 8.4 million in 2000, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Six million of these people make up five percent of the United States workforce. Of this population, 58 percent are Mexican, 20 percent are from Central America and the remaining 20 percent are from other countries. More than $50 billion in remittances were sent home to Central and Latin American countries last year from the United States alone.

American business enjoys the fruits of this significant but invisible labor force. However, few Americans consider immigration a top national priority -- only 9 percent in an oft-cited December 2005 Wall Street Journal poll. An argument supported by both the president and businesses is that America needs undocumented workers to do jobs that Americans won't. Others see that without citizenship, undocumented workers are being exploited. But few recognize that America has itself to blame for foreign economic policies that have failed to reverse poverty and poor living conditions abroad, thus driving immigration.

Now hiring
In comparison with documented immigrants, undocumented workers represent 26 percent of the total foreign-born population in America. Two-thirds of the undocumented population live in just six states: California (27 percent), Texas (13 percent), New York (8 percent), Florida (7 percent), Illinois (6 percent) and New Jersey (4 percent). Nebraska is considered a second-wave state in this regard, but the Urban Institute estimated that there were 25,000-50,000 undocumented workers living here in 2002. Omaha Latino leaders say that number is now closer to 50,000.

Ella Ochoa first came to Nebraska with her family as a migrant farmworker. She founded the Nebraska Association of Farmworkers in 1979, based in North Platte, Neb.

"I would say that for every three or four families that are here legally and documented, there's one that's not," Ochoa said.

One cannot analyze the undocumented workers' significance without addressing the question: Where are they working?

"Any place where the workers are paid way low and the treatment of workers is very poor," said Julie Eisenberg, research director of the Washington D.C.-based Research Associates of America. Eisenberg spoke at Omaha's Coalition for Better Jobs Public Forum on Nebraska Beef in February.

Jobs with poor conditions like meatpacking, she said, do not appeal to the masses of Americans looking for work. Immigrants can't afford to be selective when it comes to jobs, she said.

"Why would you kill cattle for $8 an hour when you have the chance of getting hurt?" Eisenberg said. "You can work at McDonald's -- for way less -- but you're not going to end up maimed."

There are more than 1.1 million people in metro Omaha, including 645,000 workers, according to the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce. Armando Pliego, of Omaha Together One Community, said he thought there were about 17,000 undocumented workers in Omaha. This amounts to about four percent of the Omaha area's laborers and about 30 percent of the entire state's undocumented population.

Nationally, the Pew Hispanic Center reports more than one million unauthorized workers in manufacturing and about the same number in the service industry. More than 700,000 work in restaurants, while 600,000 work in construction. Nebraska meatpacking is the number one vocation for undocumented workers, with construction not far behind.

Cleaning, landscaping and painting companies in Nebraska also employ a significant amount of undocumented persons, said OTOC leader Sergio Sosa. If you don't think you know any, look around, he said.

"If you go to a new construction development up in west Omaha, you'll see who is building the house there, who is putting the roof there, who is doing the landscape," Sosa said. He said these workers are building our roads, and even our most beloved structures like The Qwest Center.

Because a majority of undocumented workers are Latino, Sosa stresses, communities are also being built. "Go to the churches on Sundays -- they are filling up with Latinos. Go see 24th Street -- it was dead before the Latinos arrived as immigrants."

Much of Nebraska's farmland is harvested by undocumented workers, Ochoa said, "because they can hide better in rural areas," and also because the work is extremely hard and the pay is extremely low. She said sugar beet, potato or soybean workers in Nebraska might make $4,500-$6,500 a year -- at most. But even in other labor sectors where the pay is regulated and supposed to be at least minimum wage, Ochoa said those with illegal status are more susceptible to exploitation.

"As an undocumented worker you are always scared -- you're not going to speak out. If they're only making $3 or $4 an hour, they're not going to demand $5.15 even though that is the law."

Reversing a town's decline
Great Plains Research produced a 2003 study by University of Nebraska-Lincoln economists Orn Bodvarsson and Hendrick Van den Berg that examined the 1990 opening of the Lexington IBP meatpacking plant and how the inflow of immigrant workers affected the city's economy.

Bodvarsson said the traditional supply-demand economic model overlooks an important factor when it comes to immigrant labor. Traditional labor studies show that an increase in the labor supply forces wages down, which is not good for native-born workers. But this doesn't take into account the immigrants' contribution to commerce, he said.

"These immigrants are also consumers," Bodvarsson said. "They buy houses, cars and groceries." Their purchases increase the demand for retail labor and housing, which makes homeowners wealthier when house prices increase, he said.

The only direct competition between native-born Americans and immigrants for a fixed number of jobs is in the area of unskilled labor, Van den Berg said. Evidence shows wages in unskilled fields are five to 10 percent lower today than they would have been without the influx of immigration in the last decade, but this is the only conclusive proof of native jobs directly suffering from immigrant labor, he said.

Another factor worth examining is Nebraska's population trends and age demographics in relation to its workforce. From 1990-2004, the Omaha metro labor force grew by 80,000 people. During that time, Nebraska's minority population grew by nearly 50 percent, from 7.4 percent of the total population in 1990 to more than 14 percent in 2004.

Latinos became the largest minority in the country in 2000, reaching 12.5 percent of the total population. The Latino migrants coming to the United States are young -- most under age 35. With the aging baby boomer population in America, the native 18-34 worker demographic is on the decline. But that same demographic is increasing in the Latino population.

According to 2000 census reports, Nebraska's Latino population was 5.5 percent and is now estimated to be approaching 7 percent. Of that population, Latinos count for 14 percent of Nebraska's children under 5 and only count for one percent of persons above age 65.

"Illegal immigrants tend to be young and largely of working age -- around 20 years old," Van den Berg said. "It's often been said that immigrants can solve this problem of an aging workforce."

Many of them work under false documents where taxes are deducted from their paychecks. However, undocumented immigrants don't claim the tax refunds. The Urban Institute reported that the estimated contribution to Social Security in 1990 by the undocumented population was $7 billion.

The question is not whether undocumented workers contribute to local economies, but whether what they take is more than what they give, such as using social services like healthcare without contributing to them. Amy Gottlieb, director of immigrant rights at the American Friends Service Committee in Newark, N.J., said many undocumented immigrants are afraid to use public services and develop "underground" systems of getting medical care. They definitely aren't using welfare, she said, as they have no means to apply for it. But to deny the costs of immigration would be false, Gottlieb said.

The cost borne by our school systems is undeniable, she said, as it is costs money to provide the bilingual education necessary for immigrant children who do not speak English.

Labor, but no fruits
"The Hispanic workforce is a good workforce," said Patrick Nilson. But this workforce is not always treated well, he said.

Worker exploitation is Nilson's primary concern as organizing director for the Carpenter's District Council, a carpenter's union that represents 10,500 workers in Nebraska and Kansas, as well as parts of Iowa and Missouri.

"We don't ask for documents," he said. "We just try to make sure they're being treated fairly."

Nilson said contractors often file these workers under 1099 tax forms or as independents, relieving employers of the burdens of paying insurance, pensions or worker's compensation. Contractors often pay the workers in cash, Nilson said, and rarely do they pay them their work's worth.

"It's not just the wages, it's the entire way they are being treated," he said of undocumented workers. There have been instances where a roofer has fallen off a roof and was badly injured, he said. Because the worker was undocumented and didn't speak English, the contractor dropped him off at the hospital and left.

"If they are here working they deserve to be treated fairly," Nilson said. "Slavery was abolished a long time ago and I don't approve of it today, either."

Gottlieb says Americans need to see the broader picture. "Immigrants are not just a labor source," she said. "It's clearly an important piece but it can't be the only piece. These are human beings."

"The Washington debate has boiled down to an economic debate because that is their reality," she added, because the government wants to ensure a labor force that works for it. But Gottlieb said undocumented workers' contributions to American culture and communities need to be weighed against their costs. Immigrants bring a lot more to the table than a punch card, she said, such as experience, family, culture and a history.

And while Congress prepares immigration legislation, most employers have kept publicly mum.

"I think we know that under the table they are talking," Sosa said of employers who use undocumented labor. "And they are clear [about] what they want. They are seeing how valuable it is for them to have Latino workers. Because of the kind of work that they do, and the kind of low wages that they get paid, it is in their benefit to have guest workers or immigrants who will do this work.


"Under the table [employers] are behind the current laws, asking for guest workers; they are pushing for that. On the other hand, above the table, they cannot say it publicly."

Guest worker legislation like that being pushed by President Bush would give workers legal working status, but only temporarily. Employers would still be able to take advantage of this worker pool that isn't protected by the rights of citizenship.

"Their [immigrants'] status is always going to trump everything else," Eisenberg said.

Undocumented workers do have rights, said Nebraska Appleseed's Darcy Tromanhauser, who works with immigration integration and civic participation issues.

"It's actually the case that many rights belong to anyone here -- our laws apply these rights equally to people in most cases," she said. "But the reality is people are afraid to act on those rights."

But undocumented workers do not voice complaints or organize without the fear of retaliation from their company. Dangerous conditions and injuries go unreported.

"The immigration system is preventing them from being full participants in society, and that goes against democratic principles," Tromanhauser said.

'I am American'
The immigration debate has proved a double-edged sword, with complicated issues on both sides.

"It is not just prejudice, though it is part that. I think it is about fear -- and fear from both sides. Fear of losing control of their institutions, their business, their community," Sosa said. "Fear of being close to someone who does not speak their language. Fear of the number that is growing, fear of the look of the new immigrant. They look short, you know. Not white ... a lot of people think 'how can that person build that building? How can that person become a CEO?'

"Let me tell you a story," he said. "When I was in Guatemala and I saw the first gringo, I run away. I was afraid, because that person came into my neighborhood, and he was really, really tall. He was white, and I thought 'Man, someone from the United States came here' -- the superpower country. And my image was that they have cars, they have food, they have money, they have everything and so I think that they are smart. They have good education and I don't, you know? Immigrants give up our power because of that image."

Sosa said he wishes Americans would ask their grandparents for their stories of how their families came to this country. They came for the same reasons, he said, only the systems have changed.

"I am American, too," he said. "And anybody can come up with their own interpretation of what 'I am American, too' means: I am American, I am South American, I am Central American, I am whatever American, but I am American, too."