Undocumented Workers and the Need for Labor

Southeast Watches with Anticipation as Congress Debates Immigration

By Pam Hunter

Contractors in the booming Southeast market, already struggling to find enough labor to build their current projects, are keeping a close eye on Congress as it wrestles with the topic of undocumented workers and the need for immigration reform.

The topic moved to the top of the congressional agenda this spring, after immigrants and related advocacy groups held major demonstrations across the U.S. that called for enhanced civil rights and at the same denounced any effort to send "illegals" back home.

Hispanic immigrants - both legal and undocumented - have become a significant part of the U.S. economy. According to the Federation for Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank that studies immigration and its impact on the United States, an increase in the immigrant population in the United States between 1990 and 2000 accounted for 34.9 percent of the nation's rise in population. About 1.1 million immigrants are expected to enter the country this year.

Regionally, the 2000 Census showed that immigrants - both legal and undocumented - accounted for 29 percent of Florida's population, 6.6 percent of Georgia's, 7.2 percent of North Carolina's population and 3.3 percent of South Carolina's. A large percentage of those are Hispanics coming from Mexico and Central and South America.

In the construction industry, which continues to experience significant shortages of labor, the Hispanic workforce plays a significant role. Keith Sommer, regional vice president for the Orlando division of Atlanta-based Pyramid Masonry, said that about one-third of Pyramid's workforce is Hispanic.

"We certainly need them," Sommer said. "I would like to see a legal way for them to be in this country and to see the current laws properly enforced."

Dave O'Haren, executive vice president of Decatur-Ga.-based general contractor Holder Construction, estimated that about 40 to 50 percent of its hourly workforce in the Southeast is Hispanic.

And Roger Huggins, president of Rogers Construction Co. in Lawrenceville, Ga., said the Hispanic workforce is key to his company's productivity.

"Could we get it done without them?" Huggins asked. "My answer is yes, we would, but with what we've seen of the workforce, there would definitely be a drop in productivity and a definite increase in costs."

While all three companies claim to adhere to current immigration laws and regulations that require employers to check identification records of potential employees, they acknowledge that sometimes potential employees provide false documents.

"The procedures are not foolproof," O'Haren said.

However, current law forbids employers from questioning documents presented to them that appear legitimate. "You're really following two sets of rules," O'Haren said. "One is the immigration [rules]; the other is the fair employment, EEOC-type rules. You have to walk a bit of a tightrope."

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Mark Wylie, president and CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors' Central Florida Chapter in Orlando, added: "If an employer feels like an employee's documents don't look so good, but [the potential employee] presents good documents, he could expose himself to discrimination charges" if he doesn't hire him.

The Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization that studies Hispanics, estimates that between 850,000 and 1 million undocumented workers live and work in Florida alone. About 20 percent of those work in the construction industry. Nevertheless, a low unemployment rate ensures that even undocumented workers with good false identification can find work. Undocumented workers "are still working in the industry because there is so much demand," Wylie said.

Sommer said he has been forced to terminate good employees who presented false documents when they applied for the job. "Here in Orlando, over the years we have laid off quite a few people, but they just go to work for our competition," he added.

Compounding the problem is the lack of a viable guest worker program, Wylie said. The lack of a viable program to allow immigrants to come to the United States legally to work for a limited period of time "is forcing these people to go farther underground," he added.

Wylie said a guest worker program is essential to any immigration reform measure.

"There are people on the other side of the border - whether it's Central America or Mexico - that are certainly willing to come here to work in these trades and who have the skills or the ambition and aptitude to learn them, and they're more or less prohibited from legally working."

O'Haren, who also serves as president of Associated General Contractors' Georgia Branch, cautioned that any guest worker program needs to be logistically workable.

"We're in favor of and support a reasonable guest worker program, but it's got to have the functionality to make it work, and the databases and the software have to work in order for it to be effective," he said.

O'Haren estimated that current databases used to verify that potential employees are legal U.S. workers are inaccurate approximately 10 percent of the time.

"If you start using that to either hire or not hire, then you open yourself up to additional problems," he said. "We want a system that's more or less foolproof if you are going to start obligating employers to follow that system."

Mark Woodall, director of government affairs with AGC's Georgia Branch, agreed that reform should be comprehensive. "We recognize the system is broken," he added. "The reform has to be about securing our borders, but it also needs to address our workforce needs [and create] a guest worker program."

Wylie said the issue of what to do with the 11 to 12 million undocumented workers already in this country should be "completely divorced" from other aspects of reform.

"The concept of rounding up 11 million to 12 million people and putting them in jail is ludicrous," he said. "The fact of the matter is these people are not committing a crime - they're here to do a job."

In an effort to make some headway on the issue, the Georgia Legislature passed its own version of reform. The law, which goes into effect July 1, 2007, takes a comprehensive approach and will require some additional verification requirements on public works contractors.