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Posted on 04/21/2005 3:04:26 PM PDT by Prince Charles
Door slams on foreign landscape workers
April 21, 2005
BY ART GOLAB Staff Reporter
Hundreds of Mexican workers who used to come legally to the Chicago area every spring to do landscaping work have been denied seasonal work visas, leaving landscapers scrambling to find employees to mow and maintain lawns.
One Lake Bluff company applied for more than 150 visas and got none. Those slots make up half the company's seasonal work force, many of them regulars who have come up in the spring for several years.
"They are family members and friends of our current workers who count on this work each year," said Stacy Betz, human resources manager for Mariani Landscaping. "We've trained them and invested in them and they're fantastic individuals."
At least 600 and possibly up to 1,000 visas for landscaping positions in Illinois were denied this year, according to Patricia Cassady, executive director of the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association. One reason is that only 66,000 H-2B visas for temporary, seasonal non-agricultural workers are issued nationwide each year.
And in recent years, more employers such as hotels, restaurants, ski areas, construction companies, amusement parks, carnivals and even minor league baseball teams have become aware of the program and use it.
Early cutoff
This season, the government started taking applications in October and announced the cutoff had been reached by Jan. 3. Illinois got shortchanged because seasonal work starts earlier down south, said Cassady.
Federal legislation that would grandfather in workers who had obtained visas in previous years was approved in a preliminary Senate vote Monday, with both Illinois senators voting yes. But even if it passes Congress it may come too late for this season.
"We've already replaced most of the workers we had hoped to bring up," said Tracey Lester, who with her husband, Ron, owns Architerra in northwest suburban Indian Creek. Architerra had asked for 12 positions, 90 percent of its work force, and got none.
One of Lester's employees, Gerardo Acosta, had hoped to sponsor his cousin Miguel Lomas this year for the first time. "He was looking for a job to support himself and his family," said Acosta, a U.S. citizen. He said other Architerra employees on the visa program liked knowing that they had a job every year. "With the money, they could give their families a better life."
Lester liked the visa program because it provided her with legal workers who had undergone extensive background checks and were willing to work for the wages she can pay, which she says are higher than many landscapers employing undocumented workers.
"With this program you know what you're getting. You're bringing in good people, you're not rolling the dice."
And to politicians who oppose increasing the H-2B cap, Lester has one question: "Who's doing your lawn?"
I believe that is one of the reasons why I carry homeowners insurance.
Oh no, the landscapers may be forced to hire unemployed Americans!
Your insurance company will fight like the devil to keep their half million bucks if they have any way out .... such as you hiring and unlicensed and uninsured contractor.
Hard to argue with anything you've said. But what about new Freepers and occasional lurkers? If we don't take these crapweasels on, how will these people see the right side of the illegal alien issues? I believe we need to stay active, no matter how annoying we find the FOQNAs.
You find an unlicensed contractor who'll repair the roof for $2000 and hire him. The next winter the roof leaks and wipes out the ceiling in the living room.
Your IA asks for the paperwork from the roof repair. Ooops, yup a big OOPS!
... an unlicensed worker and they are injured on the job, you will be liable ... And your insurance company will probably NOT cover any of these expenses. ... www.mainstreetzephyrhills.org/ Special%20Hurricane%20Report.htm -
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML ... You may be liable for all unpaid taxes. • Your homeowner’s insurance may not cover work done by an unlicensed contractor. ... www.ci.kirkland.wa.us/depart/fire_bldg/ bldg/pdfs-building/owner_contractor.pdf -
Builders' Exchange of the Central Coast, Inc. - Serving the Tri ...... Few unlicensed contractors have bonding or insurance. ... You can even be held liable for an unlicensed contractor’s illegal acts. ... www.montereybx.com/consumerinfo/usingcontractors.html -
Cover yer butt!
That's a different issue. Whenever I hire a contractor, I am concerned about references. Whether he has a reputation for quality work is important -- much more so than who his workers are. My Salvadoran landscaper does excellent work -- so much so that half the homeowners on our street now use him, and the other half wish he had time to take on more customers. AND, when Hurricane Isabel slammed into Annapolis two years ago, and I had to have A LOT of yard work done, my homeowners insurer raised no questions about his work or his rates.
Did you read what I posted?
... an unlicensed worker and they are injured on the job, you will be liable
I'm done here.
For one thing I know old Teach, the pirate, didn't sign any gol-darned manifests!
Neither did George Washington, nor George Mason!
Did you know that plantations on the Potomac River generally had what are known as deep water port facilities. The channel drops off quite smartly a few feet from shore. More than a few "immigrants" from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and other places arrived in Virginia at various spots along the Potomac (which is, of course, part of the Chesapeake). In only a few cases did any of them have a recorded arrival.
It was an awful long time AFTER the American Revolution before anyone thought to impose much in the way of regulation on those folks. After all, we are hardly talking about a canal in Europe. This is America, and until recent times folks took their liberties seriously.
Did you read my reply at #117? I don't have time to look up references for you. I was just signalling to Travis that he seemed to be thinking about our famine Irish ancestors who arrived in Baltimore from Liverpool, on passenger ships, with ship manifests etc.
I believe that it was not until 1820 that federal law required ship passenger lists to be completed and filed. Before that records are sporadic, I agree.
You are welcome to go after them, I don't find it useful since they have a hidden agenda and don't debate honestly. I'd rather just point out their questionable loyalty to new freepers.
I think our buddy Travis is thinking more of the way immigrants were transported and processed in the 1920s, not the 1840s!
Fair enough...
Things were very casual in those days. They were pretty casual in the 1700s, and actually they were still pretty casual in the first half of the 1800s.
I think you have to get close to the Civil War to find much real regulation in this country.
OK... so this company has invested in the Mexicans they employ, and the Mexicans WERE here on work visas. Which would make them temporary legal migrants.
So, if they were such VALUED employees, then WHY didn't that company, or ANY OTHER, invest the time and money, in helping their Mexican employees become naturalized citizens?
Put Irish coffin ships immigration in to Google, and educate yourself. These are just the top few articles cited.
Irish Immigrants in America during the 19th Century
... with conditions so terrible, that they were referred to as Coffin Ships. ...
It was estimated that 80% of all infants born to Irish immigrants in New ...
www.kinsella.org/history/histira.htm - 10k - Cached - Similar pages
Immigrants to Canada in Nineteenth Century - Ships - Emigration ...
... Voyage in 1847 on an Irish "Coffin Ship" as recorded by Robert Whyte (off ...
Immigrant Ship Information (if you know the name of the ship and want more ...
www.dcs.uwaterloo.ca/~marj/genealogy/thevoyage.html - 45k - Apr 20, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages
Sligo - the Irish Famine Connection
... which witnessed the departure of so many famine ships during the Irish Famine.
... and it became known as the embarkation point for the 'coffin ships', ...
www.moytura.com/sligo1.htm - 50k - Cached - Similar pages
Irish Emigration
... On one of these "coffin ships," as they came to be known, 20% of the passengers
sailing ... By 1847, there were 37000 Irish immigrants in Boston alone, ...
www.gober.net/victorian/reports/irish2.html - 18k - Cached - Similar pages
The History Place - Irish Potato Famine
... Coffin Ships. During the Famine period, an estimated half-million Irish were
... Congress reacted to the surge of Irish immigration by tightening the ...
www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/coffin.htm - 15k - Cached - Similar pages
Irish Cultural Society of the Garden City Area
... many took the "coffin ships" to Canada and the United States, ... Little Ellen
Keane, four years old, was the first of the immigrant Irish to die. ...
www.irish-society.org/ Hedgemaster%20Archives/grosse-ile.htm - 8k - Cached - Similar pages
The Potato Then & Now: The Irish Potato Famine
... For this reason, the ships that carried Irish immigrants to the New World
became known as "coffin ships". Unfortunately immigrants to the New World soon ...
collections.ic.gc.ca/potato/history/ireland.asp - 14k - Apr 20, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages
Immigration
... Wave after wave of them came in what came to be called "coffin ships". ...
For more information about Irish Immigration and the plight of these people ...
www.sunflower.com/~caitlin/Immigration.html - 7k - Cached - Similar pages
Links for Learners: The Famine That Brought The Irish to America ...
... and Irish timelines for the mid-1840’s; patterns and effects of immigration
... Times article on “Coffin Ships” from September 3, 1995. B. Immigration ...
www.americancatholic.org/ Messenger/Nov1997/links_for_learners.asp - 41k - Cached - Similar pages
THE FORCE OF HOPE: Irish Immigration History
Notice, too, that Congress tightened requirements for American ships carrying passengers ~ that would apply to anyone. Odds are the standards priced American registry ships right out of the business!
And that, of course, presumes that any such regulations were enforced, or obeyed!
Until the 20th century you could book passage on a ship departing LeHavre for Baltimore with a destination at any number of towns on the shore of Chesapeake Bay and a little boat would come out to meet your ship to take you off where you wished to stop.
Canadians didn't all land at Montreal either.
Remember, travel in the days of sail and early steam really wasn't like flying and people took reasonable steps to avoid much travel on the roads!
Good Post, I agree with you.
Oh really? I'm sure between India and China we could find fifty million or so who'd meet that description. Shall we let them all in, or is it only the South Americans who get special treatment?
Who will ENFORCE it ??
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