No Turning Back

Ten times,Adrian Calderon swam the Rio Grande in the dark trying to cross the border from Mexico into the United States, carrying nothing more than an extra pair of jeans in a duffel bag. Ten times, he was turned back by border patrol officers. Finally, he had had enough. Standing on the banks of the river, he stared at the water. In disgust, he threw his bag into the current and watched it wash away, along with his hope of earning enough money to buy the equipment to work as an optometrist, a career he had been training for in Mexico City.

“I gave up,” Calderon says. “I was so tired.” He went home to Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico, but his father encouraged him to try one more time. That time, he made it across, guided by a coyote, a man he paid $540 to lead him across the desert. It was 1983; he was 20 years old.

“We would walk at night and jump under bushes like rats when we would see immigration planes,” he recalls now, years after he abandoned his plans of being an optometrist and went to work for Dallas home builder Charles Breckenridge, owner of Breckenridge Luxury Homes. He now serves as the company's quality control inspector. “I didn't realize how dangerous [the trip] was,” he adds, shaking his head. “I don't know how I did it.”

It is a story told time and again by men and women, some of them little more than children when they made their journeys. Most were desperate to escape grinding poverty and willing to risk their lives and endure any sacrifice to provide for their families. Others fled Central American countries torn by violent battles between the government and rebel fighters, such as the 36-year civil war in Guatemala that officially ended in 1996.

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Concrete workers from Fredericksburg, Va., (right) march toward the White House, proclaiming support for a guest worker program and fair labor practices. More than half of day laborers, for example, in the Washington area have experienced at least one instance of nonpayment or a bad check from an employer, and one-third have been abandoned on job-sites, according to a UCLA study. Julio left his family in Guatemala two years ago and rode 16 days in a van before arriving on U.S. soil. The majority of day laborers have been in the country less than five years.

Immigrant workers solicit a would-be employer at an informal day labor gathering spot. While many day laborers have had access to formal education in their native countries, their lack of English fluency—and, in many cases, their illegal status—makes career advancement an uphill struggle.

At 17, Darwin Fuentes (right) was sent north by his family in search of a higher wage than the standard take-home pay of $5 per day in his native El Salvador. Once in the United States, he spent more than $7,000 on attorney fees and filing penalties in a green card application process that lasted nine years (he obtained legal status in 2004). Fuentes works as a forklift operator, carpenter, and de facto translator for ACE Carpentry in Beltsville, Md. His Salvadoran wife, Mayra, works for a mortgage company and is training to be a loan officer. They have two boys: Darwin Jr. (left) and Walter (right). “I still send money home to my mom in El Salvador,” says Fuentes. “It's hard to live there.”

Almost universally, their journeys involve paying coyotes who congregate in towns along the U.S.-Mexican border, today charging thousands of dollars for a dangerous journey through miles of desert, often on foot, without even the barest essentials for survival. Robbery, rape, and death are horrifying, yet all-too-common, possibilities along the way.

For those who make it to safety, the real struggle then begins: to find shelter, food, and—the ultimate goal—work. A job is vital not only for life's essentials but also to pay debts to the coyotes, who don't hesitate to threaten the travelers' loved ones to ensure payment.

“The coyote lives in the area where I live in Mexico, so he knows where to find me,” says Imelda Olguin, 45, from Hidalgo, Mexico, who has made the border crossing twice to support her children after a divorce left her with nothing. “It's better to pay to avoid problems.”

Mickey Hernandez, 24, a project manager for Legacy Homes in Dallas, explains why undocumented immigrants are willing to make extreme sacrifices, break the law, and literally risk their lives for the chance to work in the United States. Born in Puerto Rico, Hernandez came to this country on a college baseball scholarship and had a brief stint in the minor leagues before switching to home building last year.

“Family is everything in the Hispanic culture,” he says. “They feel very proud of what they provide their families, like a color TV.” If they can't provide for their families on the wages they can earn locally, they will go anywhere they can find work. A day laborer working on a landscaping crew in Atlanta can make $10 an hour; in Mexico, the same kind of work might only pay $1.20 an hour.

“Here, even if we just work one day, we can survive for a week,” says Juan Gomez, 45, of Hidalgo, Mexico, who came to the United States in 2004 and sends money home to his wife and a daughter he hasn't seen since she was 4 months old. “In Mexico, I can work always and hardly survive. And there are more possibilities to find jobs here than in Mexico.”

Calderon, who became a U.S. citizen in 1991, agrees. “Right now, even if you had a profession, you couldn't work in Mexico,” he asserts. “Corruption is the way it is. Here, you can prove yourself and use your skills.”

But once here, life for the workers is often little more than a daily grind for survival, says Juan Sanchez, 46. He worked as a chauffeur in Mexico City. For the past five years, he's cleaned up new houses in Dallas. He likes working in construction because, unlike restaurant or hotel work, it doesn't require knowing how to speak English. Every extra dollar he makes goes to support his wife and daughters in Mexico; every action is measured against the risk of being deported.

“There is no free time—only Sunday,” he says. “A lot of illegals don't go out at night because they're afraid of raids.”

Plus, the workers often face abuses, but are afraid to report them. Sanchez recently left a job and started his own business, he says, because the owners—Hispanics who are legal—sometimes held back on paying their undocumented workers and threatened to “kick them out of the country” if they complained. But being here is still worth it, he says: “My daughters go to a good school.”

Without the proper documentation, language skills, or access to transportation to get full-time jobs, many immigrants gravitate, at least initially, to the informal day labor market. A recent national study, “On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States,” co-authored by the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at UCLA, the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy at New School University, reports that nearly 120,000 workers—93 percent of whom are immigrants and 75 percent of whom are undocumented—are working as day laborers or looking for day labor jobs.

Waking before dawn, they congregate on street corners, in the parking lots near home improvement stores, or at day labor hiring centers, waiting for contractors or homeowners who have a day's work for a landscaper, a painter, a framer, or a roofer. (The day labor study reports that 49 percent of day labor work comes from homeowners and 43 percent from construction contractors.) In a raw display of survival of the fittest, dozens of available workers swarm any approaching vehicle—rushing past those who are older or slower—for the chance to work for an average of $10 to $12 an hour.

Often jumping in a truck without knowing where they are going, what they will be doing, or how they will get home, the workers are at high risk of abuse and injury. The study reports that about half of the workers had employers—both individuals and contractors—refuse to pay them within the previous two months.

Maria Garcia knows their stories all too well. The executive director of Hispanic Community Support in Duluth, Ga., Garcia regularly files police reports for undocumented workers who haven't gotten paid for work they've done. Regardless of a person's legal status to work in the United States, it's illegal to not pay for work that's been performed. One case in particular led Garcia in 1999 to found Hispanic Community Support, which provides a day labor hiring center, as well as English classes, counseling, health referrals, and other community services.

As Garcia and her husband were leaving church one day, they saw a man standing on nearby railroad tracks as a train approached. He ignored their warnings, and a church member risked his own life to push the man out of the way of the oncoming train. Asked why he tried to commit suicide, he said that he had recruited his friends to work for a contractor, who didn't pay them. His friends accused him of keeping the money for himself. Garcia says she'll never forget what he told them: “He said, ‘I feel so helpless. I failed my family. I failed my friends. I've lost all hope.' ”

When people ask Garcia why so many undocumented workers have ignored immigration laws and streamed into the United States, she speaks for her fellow immigrants, saying simply, “We heard about the American dream. What it means is hope, personal growth, a better education, and more opportunity.” But then she adds, “Nobody tells you if you reach out for the American dream, you are abused, mistreated, and nobody wants your kids in their schools. They want you because you work hard for a quarter of the payment and you won't complain. Where is the fairness? Someone worked so hard on that house and wasn't getting paid enough to make it. How can [employers] say [that they are] not responsible? How can things go so wrong?”

As a very visible part of the immigration reform issue, day laborers have become a flash point in the debate. Protesters against the hiring of undocumented immigrants have picketed day labor hiring centers and those who hire the workers, rightly stating that under federal law, it's illegal to hire undocumented workers. Their position is that the hiring centers serve as magnets for illegal aliens, and the government shouldn't fund programs that help employers break the law and take jobs away from Americans.

Garcia points out that regardless of immigration status, the workers have a legal right to be paid for work they've done, and they are protected under OSHA safety regulations. She notes that anyone is welcome to use the center to look for work, but citizens are rarely among those waiting at 7 a.m. for the doors of the hiring center to open. She scoffs at the notion that the workers are usurping jobs from Americans who are willing to work.

“Your children will be doctors and lawyers with million-dollar houses,” she says of Americans. “You think they will be construction workers? These [people] are needed. There is no one to take these jobs.”

Responses to BUILDER'S “Immigrant Worker Impact Survey” tend to support Garcia's position. One reader says, “Teenage Americans do not want to become apprentices. They have too much MTV in their heads. ... They have no concept of a good day's wage for a good day's work. They are not instilled with the Protestant work ethic. They do not see work as a means to have a fulfilling life. Immigrants, on the other hand, just want work, any work. They appreciate the chance to work and they work hard.”

In conversations with immigrant workers around the country, many said that if they could make the same wages in their home countries as they do in the United States, they would rather go home than bring their families here. But for others, the trip across the border was a purposeful journey toward a new identity as Americans.

Jose Benitez was a teenager when he made the trip from El Salvador to the United States by himself 17 years ago. He spent 45 days traveling on foot and by bus to get to Texas. He worked first in restaurants and began working in construction five years ago. The work he does here not only gives his mother in El Salvador a better life, it's given him a life that wouldn't be possible in his home country. Now a U.S. citizen and a full-time laminate countertop installer, he recently bought a house from one his customers, Legacy Homes. “I've got everything I want now,” he says. “A family, a house, a car.”

It took Calderon six years to obtain his green card to become a permanent resident. Then, in 1991, he became an American citizen. “We did a house for a lady who was a civics teacher when Adrian was in citizenship classes,” Breckenridge recalls. “He would ask about the Supreme Court justices.” The Breckenridge family was there at his swearing-in ceremony, taking pictures.

Calderon has married and is raising three daughters in the United States. “I'm so proud of my girls,” he says. “They're in magnet schools. My oldest one wants to be a dentist.” He owns a home and has bought two acres south of Dallas where he hopes to someday build a house and have a horse to ride, like he did as a boy on fiesta days. “I want to go back to my roots,” he says, smiling, “and see if I can still ride.”

He is proud of what he's been able to do for his parents, two brothers, and two sisters in Mexico by sending money home to them. It's a sacrifice, but one he's more than willing to make, he says, because nothing is more important to him than his family. He has a vacation home now in Ciudad Lerdo, Mexico, which his brother built with money Calderon sent. But Dallas is home. “The U.S. has been like my second country,” he says. “It's my first one now.”

These steps should help you prove you're I-9 compliant.

With the risk of federal jail time and six-figure fines, it's time to examine your company's policies and procedures relating to both employment eligibility and independent contractors. Legal and human resources experts recommend the following to maintain compliance:

Check your contracts. Require contractors to comply with all local, state, and federal laws, including verification of eligibility to work in the United States and collection of federal I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification forms. Former prosecutor and immigration attorney Rebekah Poston recommends that your contract state subs must complete I-9 forms within three days of hire, retain I-9 documentation for three years after an employee is hired or a year after termination, in accordance with federal law, and that they not destroy records during those time frames.

Hire true subs. Make sure your subs are truly independent contractors. It's critical because employers are only required to verify the status of their own employees. The tests to prove independent contractor status differ for immigration, fair labor laws, and the IRS, but in general, they center on whether the sub has other customers; if he's paid by the job and not by the hour; if he provides his own tools; and if he is “subject to control only as to the result,” Poston says, which means that you can dictate standards of quality and when a job has to be finished, but you don't tell the sub how to get the job done, how many people to bring, what type of tools to use, or how many hours a day to spend on the job. As a separate business, that's the sub's decision to make. “If you meet most of those, you have a defense for not doing I-9s for those subs.” Contact the IRS for its criteria for determining independent contractor status.

Maintain arm's length. Instruct your superintendents to not directly supervise contractors' crews. “Don't exercise the human tendency to butt into a relationship that's not yours,” says Angelo Paparelli, president of the Academy of Business Immigration Lawyers. “Only deal with one person—the contractor. Don't dictate how to staff the project with respect to particular individuals. It's about maintaining an arm's length relationship.”

Be alert. Establish a policy that jobsite superintendents are to report anything suspicious to senior management. For example, if there's a rumor of federal raids on jobsites and half of your workforce doesn't show up, it's safe to assume most of them are undocumented. “That needs to be reported back up the line to exercise some appropriate reaction,” Poston says. “You have to do things to show you're responsible.”

Post the rules. Put signage at every gate on your jobsite saying that all contractors are required to verify their employees' work eligibility.

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