Illegal People!

Saw the story about a plumbing company that was using illegal immigrants as their main workforce and that the owners made a lot of money by paying low wages and jamming 20 workers into a hotel room.

That’s the big secret, I guess.

Business owners all across the country have taken advantage of cheap labor, on the backs of people who are willing to work.

Then those same business owners complain about the influx of illegal people (which really irritates me as people aren’t illegal).

I have a lot of experience working around men who struggle to speak English and struggle even more to understand the safety rules.

The entire group of workers start to whistle when I show up on a site. Their little code to let one another know that the safety dude is lurking.

The company’s that I work with have followed the proper channels to bring the workers in.

They’ve paid money to bring translators in to train the employees.

They like working with the employees because they show up every day and will work all day and night.

It appears that the plumbing company mentioned didn’t do any of those things, and that certainly should be stopped, but what has happened around here is that ICE is showing up and grabbing up any and all of the workers they can get their hands on.

It’s hampered a few of the contractors that I work directly with.

“We trained those guys and now they’re gone,” is something I recently heard.

It’s a long-standing problem that no one wants to solve.

The terrorizing of those who have entered legally isn’t right.

Google anything about people being pepper sprayed or ripped out of their vehicles.

Others are being sent away…

…after building a life and paying taxes, and just working.

Have they stole our jobs?

Hardly.

They aren’t on Medicare either, and they aren’t buying up all the half-million dollar homes.

What they are is a pawn in a political game.

And that’s a shame because they’re working hard, being underpaid, and now are being profiled and terrorized.

People aren’t illegal.