Posted on 09/07/2006 9:06:20 AM PDT by Dane
Colorado's new immigration laws are starting to cause a stir among businessmen in the valley. For contractor Mark Gould one bill in particular could mean the loss of about a quarter of his workforce.
Since House Bill 1343 took effect Aug. 7, Gould is now required to certify that he has no illegal workers on his payroll. The law applies to contractors working on projects for cities, counties, school districts and other governmental agencies.
According to the law, new workers must be checked through a Pilot Program, which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security. The program links employers to an online database that checks names against Social Security numbers to determine if the number is valid.
"We've been told (the database) is only 80 percent correct," Gould said.
Gould Construction employs about 100 people, many of them unskilled laborers, many of them Hispanic immigrants. About half his contracts are with local governments.
Although Gould said his company checks people's documents as a condition of employment to make sure they are legal immigrants, it's a matter of simple math to realize that many of them are probably living in this country illegally.
According to Denver's Bell Policy Center, in 2004 there were 435,000 foreign born immigrants in the state. Gould estimates there are about 250,000 who are here illegally.
"As you walk down the street one of every two immigrants is illegal," he said. "This is not rocket science."
He has already seen the fallout from the bill.
Currently the company has 10 openings, and only three people have applied. Hispanics are not applying, Gould said.
"If you listen to (congressman and anti-illegal immigration advocate) Tom Tancredo, he wants to send 250,000 people back home. Congressman Tancredo says employers are employing illegals when there are legal workers standing in line," Gould said.
If Tancredo, R-Colo., has his way - and HB 1343 could go a long way to making that happen - businesses like Gould's, hotels in Aspen and Vail, landscapers around the valley and others would be hard put to find employees.
Gould pays $14 an hour as starting pay. At that rate, a worker who puts in the usual 50 hour week and who makes time-and-a-half in overtime will get $770 a week. That's good pay for unskilled labor, but still Gould would be hamstrung without Hispanics applying for those positions.
American kids are finishing high school and going on to skilled jobs.
"Kids are trained on computers, they don't want to dig a ditch," Gould said.
"What's going to happen to our economy if those workers go home? It would mean the loss of about a quarter of the excavators, laborers, masons, concrete workers, landscapers, roofers, drywallers and insulators in the valley," he said.
"So far business has been silent, they're assuming no politician would hurt the economy to make their constituency happy, but that's just what they've done."
Gould, representing the Colorado Contractor's Association, was part of a round-table discussion with Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs Monday, Aug. 28. The secretary was there to gather comments about President Bush's proposal for comprehensive immigration reform, including a guest worker program.
Businesses are also keeping their heads down and not speaking out about the new immigration laws because they're fearful they'll attract the attention of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), Gould said.
Another Glenwood Springs contractor and former state representative, Gregg Rippy, agrees HB 1343 is flawed, although it will have less effect on his business. Rippy's government contracts account for about 35 percent of his business.
What the law is likely to do is drive contractors away from government projects and exclusively into the private sector, he said.
"You look at the level of work in the valley and why would you bid a city job when there is plenty of private work," he said.
That will also mean higher bids from contractors bidding on government contracts and higher construction costs. Contractors who do bid on government jobs will build in the cost of going through the process mandated by HB 1343.
Colorado should have waited for federal legislation to be put in place before passing its own immigration reform law, Gould said.
Any immigration reform should include a provision for a guest worker program that would allow employers to go to Mexico, for example, to choose workers and check their medical background and whether or not they have a criminal record. Most importantly, Gould said, foreign workers need to have biometric identification that contains individual and unforgeable markers such as fingerprints or eye scans.
Gould is now in the process of applying for 15 H2B temporary work visas for his employees. But this avenue of filling the need for unskilled workers is hampered by the U.S. State Department, which grants only 33,000 such visas annually for the entire country.
"We have 7 million workers in the construction industry in the U.S., and we project we'll need 180,000 new workers annually for the next 10 years - that's 1.8 million," Gould said. "That's just our industry, not hospitality or tourism. This economy would be toast if we lost (immigrant) workers."
How TERRIBLE the contractors will have to keep raising their wage until it meets a market price. How TERRIBLE is Capitalism. How TERRIBLE is it that we have to pay for the health, schooling and other things of illegal invaders.
Capitalism sucks in your world, I know.
From my lips to God's ear : )
You hit it precisely.
I practice Reagan supply side economics, you on the other hand practice the marxist economics of such as the envirowhackos. The envirowhackos wish to restrict the supply of a commodity, energy(oil, coal, nuclear, etc.), while you wish to restrict a different commodity, labor.
OK since you wish to be so idealogically pure, let's take your "America only" ideaology a step further. Let's stop all oil imports right now. Gas would go to $5 a gallon and the economy would go into a tailspin. Now am I for an all oil economy, no I am not. I am for getting us off of dependence on foreign oil and would love to see coal and nuclear provide more of America's energy needs, unlike the envirowhackos who wish to restrict the supply of energy.
In the labor market the supply of native born American labor is being restricted, by rampant abortion and a general trend of young Americans who shy away from manual labor and to pursue white collar careers, but the houses still have to be built, food harvested, and toilets cleaned and there is a willing workforce to do those "evil" things.
I say get out of the way of the contractors and farmers and not do the liberal democrat thing by putting up roadblocks and restrict them trying to get their products to market.
LOL! Whew talk about being delusional. The parents want their kids to take internships in such fields such as medicine, not the farm fields.
But nice try at demonizing people who do such "evil" things as pick the food you eat. Dirty bastards.
Huh when America imported labor to fuel the industrial revolution in the early 20th century, which built the base of our current prosperity, that's ok.
But doing the same thing now is "evil".
I think there is a definiton of insanity, IMO, overlooking and dismissing what works, and promoting things that don't work, over and over again.
Damn, you mean I have to cut my own grass???
The only people who use the term "labor" as a "commodity" are communists and socialists.
Wheat doesn't go to the hospital, go to schools or get welfare.
But at least I know where you are coming from. Your "supply side" fig leaf has clearly slipped off, leaving us all laughing at what it covers.
Yeah those evil corporate barons such as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford, who without their intitive there would have not been an American industrial revolution and the base of our current prosperity.
Which labor union do you work for, not creating wealth, but like a parasitic tort lawyer, suck off the wealth creation of others.
Huh you mean wheat doesn't get help from it's predator insects in the form of insecticides, doesn't get stronger with the help of human engineeringing, and doesn't get welfare in that agri-scientists try to make wheats enviroment the most hospitable so it will be fruitful and reproduce in abundance.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.