Colorado & Denver News

by Alan Gionet
DENVER (CBS4) ― One of the hottest issues in Colorado is immigration reform and lawmakers recently focused on employers. They approved a plan to require employers to verify legal status of their employees.

Many undocumented workers gather on certain street corners looking for work for the day.

"How many, how many do you need?" a day laborer yelled at a passing car on a popular Denver street corner. The driver of the car could be a potential employer

CBS4 asked the workers why they came to the land of the free and every one of them gave a similar answer.

"Here, almost everyone gets work," said one of the immigrants.

On a recent, hot July morning, a man hired by CBS4 went undercover on the street at Colfax and Dayton and found that it's a day-by-day job search for the people waiting to hear from employers.

"You're on the street, this is the street, sometimes they don't pay," one of the men told the man. "It's screwed up."

The pay normally varies from $6 per hour to as high as $10 per hour. The workers said some days they work and aren't paid, but said their employers never ask them if their documented.

The undercover assistant asked a day laborer if employers asked for documents.

"No, you are on your own here and they don't ask for a thing," the man answered.

Statistics from the National Association of Homebuilders indicated 24 percent of the workers in Colorado's construction industry are immigrants, but didn't indicate how many of those may be in the country illegally.

CBS4 spoke with some people who said illegal immigrants now make up a far bigger percentage of the construction industry.

"Who cares? They're here," said Skip Guarini, a construction business owner. "They're building our houses. You're not going to build the houses without them."

Guarini runs a business that teaches Latinos and other workers construction safety. He believes the law has been ignored for decades and homebuilders have come to rely on undocumented workers, making them a part of the foundation of the industry.

"If illegal labor went away in Colorado completely, you're housing market would most likely collapse within 30 to 60 days," Guarini said.

He believes illegal immigration isn't the fault of the laborers or employer.

i??If they are here illegally they are here illegally because we chose not to enforce the law, we chose not to close the borders off,i?? Guarini said.

The issue of what to do about employers is hotter than ever in Congress. It's far from settled at the federal level and many people, including Representative Tom Tancredo, believe the time has come to get tough.

"What I want to see is you absolutely have to go after the employer," Tancredo said.

Can employers be held accountable for hiring illegal immigrants? While many people CBS4 talked to said no. The government said yes.

In 2005, immigration enforcement said it arrested nearly 400 employers on criminal charges and compared it to 25 criminal arrests in 2002.

The government said its Web based "system verification program" is being used to check workers on 400 job sites in Denver. Companies can check identifications like social security cards or permanent resident cards without a cost.

Donna El-Hehiawy with Western Summit Constructors in Denver said there's no excuse for employers not using the program.

"I pop it into the system, it really takes minutes," El-Hehiawy said.

In the meantime, workers continue on the job sites while laborers wait on the streets and a tough problem to solve remains a part of every day life.

Additional Resources

• For more information, visit U.S. Citzenship and Immigration Services, Verification Information System Web site.
  

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