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?"
Huh, you backstabber(tancredo) supporters sure do throw around the racism word alot.
You're beginning to babble again...
I guess the lazy libs will have to get out and push the mower themselves.
Aren't you running late for that La Raza meeting?
Well you should know since you are, IMO, an expert in such endeavors.
Poor, poor Czar. Someone doesnt agree with Czar and its all upset. Poor, poor Czar.
My husband worked for a landscaping company during the summers in college. My son has friends in their early twenties who have their own landscaping businesses. 'Seems like there could be a whole lot of Americans working those jobs.
America is totally made up of immigrants including the so-called Natives who walked across the Bering Strait.
I come from a long line of veterans and my son goes to parochial school and he has seen the 'projects' where I put it lightly, american citizens, refuse to work but EXPECT a free house, free food and free drugs.
Besides, this article was about WORKER VISAS, NOT HIRING ILLEGALS
Better call the moderator.
Landscaping companies need people who will be available from early April through OCtober, when the leaves are raked. School kids cannot meet those requirements. An employer can hire a few for the heavy mowing months of June and July, but they also need people to spread mulch, spray, prune, dig and plant. And they need those people in the months when the schoolkids aren't available...spring and fall.
Tell those kids to do what I did and go work at a movie theatre or bookstore. Plenty of retailers hire kids for the summer, at least in New York/Florida/Illinois/Western Washington. Probably true in the rest of the country as well.
Excuse me, but Mrs. Shawnlaw was referring to the unemployable folks from the PJs, NOT BLACK PEOPLE IN GENERAL. Most middle/upper class black folk I have met are in the same situation as middle/upper class white people I have met vis a vis those jobs. Speaking as someone who has lived most of his adult life in the urban northeast, you will NOT get the native born American underclass in the projects or section 8's to do Schlep work.
I mow my own lawn (non-motorized push mower)and shovel my own snow (backsaver shovel). It isn't that hard. My one neighbor spends more time with his labor-saving power equipment than I do on my yard.
The big strapping teenage football player next door does not do lawns, says it makes him sneeze. He doesn't do snow either. So the neighbors hire it out.
The football guy drives or rides to school. He could walk there in 9 minutes.
How lazy can people get?
So what's the problem? They hired Americans.
Fernando Ortiz was a ‘landscape engineer’ on Long Island who had demanded to be able to vote, on the basis that he had been paying state and federal taxes for ten years. Actually, he had been stopped from casting a ballot by a poll watcher who had suspected his citizenship status, and (illegally, as it turned out) demanded proof of his identity and legal qualification to vote. Ortiz had won a multi-million dollar settlement against the Republican Party of New York in the subsequent “racial profiling and ethnic intimidation” civil suit, but he did not stop there.
Instead, with massive support from the ACLU and various Hispanic “immigrants rights” foundations, he had pressed his demand to vote all the way to the Supreme Court…and he won. The Supreme Court, in its famous 5-4 decision, ruled that negligence in securing America’s borders against illegal immigration on the part of the federal government, could not be held against “undocumented workers who played by the rules and paid their taxes,” once they were established in America—legally or not. The State of New York had sleep-walked through an aimless and desultory case for denying the vote—and citizenship—to “undocumented workers.”
Following Ortiz v. New York, a stunned America woke up to discover that there were not only an amazing twenty two million illegal aliens hiding in plain sight across the land, but that eight million of them immediately qualified to vote. In a nation split 50-50 down party and ideological lines, these eight million new voters were recognized to be the certain majority-makers in future elections, and both parties immediately set record lows for cravenness in pandering to their “needs.” Chief among their “needs” were liberal new family reunification laws, and these instant citizens—illegal aliens last year—began bringing the remainders of their families to the USA. Legally.
Over night, wavering Democrat states became locks, and swing states with large Hispanic populations went solidly “blue.” The result was the recent election which had brought Gobernador Deleon to power in Nuevo Mexico, and had also brought radical Democrats to power in the White House and both houses of congress.
Thus had come the political tsunami which swept all before it, a tidal wave triggered by an undocumented lawn maintenance worker named Fernando Ortiz.
Not on my dime.
Look at the maylasian chinese wars. Look at the balkans.
I see you have been here less than six months. Not an auspicious beginning. This is a conservative site, in case you haven't noticed.
I guess Missouri doesn't have much of an illegal alien problem, judging by the tone of your posts.
I would venture that of the 38 homes on my hillside hollow land ...that probably 40% of the landscapers use illegals.
Not mine btw.
It's just something I notice more than I used to.
Then confine your own comments to worker visas instead of attempting to lecture us about everything but worker visas.
Here in southern California it's far worse, has to be close to 100% from my own experience and what I have observed. I'm sure there are some legals in this mix but not many.
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