Immigration reform ebbs and flows as an issue of public debate, with high tide usually occurring around election season. The flurry of activity this fall in Washington—lots of debate but no guest-worker program and authorization for new enforcement measures, including 700 miles of fence on the Mexican border—will likely die down for a while now that the mid-term elections are over. But immigration is of more persistent interest to the home building industry, which depends on immigrant labor, both legal and illegal, as much as perhaps any other in the country. Custom builders tend to employ fewer low-skilled workers than their colleagues in production home building and commercial construction. But even among those with no field employees, many use subcontractors who rely on immigrant labor, and so face the issue at least indirectly. The primary flow of construction labor into this country is over the Mexican border, so we put the question to custom builders in the Southwest: Do we need to reform our immigration system, and if so, how?
Like all of the builders we interviewed, Chris Sims of Sugar Land, Texas, spoke frankly. “I think we need to face reality, and the reality is, we have 11 million illegals in the country performing a valuable service to the country.” In the Houston area, where Sims works, “the majority of the [construction] workforce … is undocumented. If they were to disappear tomorrow, there wouldn’t be any construction in this city.” The construction workforce includes a smaller percentage of American-born workers every year, and Sims says that the issue is not necessarily money. “I think it’s because it’s hard, dirty work. I see lots of Americans taking jobs at fast-food restaurants, when they could make two or three times as much working in the field. None of the people on our jobs are making minimum wage. They’re typically making $10 to $12 an hour.” Sims says that the workers on his jobs earn every penny, and have more than earned his respect. “They’re here to raise themselves up by their bootstraps.” They keep their heads down, send money home to their families in Mexico, and return home for holidays. “These people have been through a lot,” Sims says. “You have to have a certain amount of admiration for what they’ve done, and continue to do.”
Sims plays by the rules and, to the best of his knowledge, all workers on his job-sites are legal. But he can’t say for sure. “We do get their Social Security numbers, but those can be easily forged. The reality is that we’re on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy.” Sims would prefer an official guest-worker program that would “acknowledge reality and allow the government to keep tabs on the workforce. I just don’t see how the federal government can round up 11 million people and send them south. They’ll be back in six months.”
In Northern California, Chris Avant has seen a change in the composition of his labor force. “Just in the last four years, maybe five years, the whole industry shifted,” he says. “Within the jobs, within the whole industry, there’s just a higher percentage of Latino guys.” Recent calls for tighter enforcement of immigration laws don’t worry him. “As an employer, it doesn’t scare me that much, because the majority of my guys are legal.” But Avant, too, is frustrated with the current state of affairs. “It’s a tough issue, but I think that passing a law and making it illegal does not solve the problem at its root. You just create a second economy when you do that.” Avant provides full benefits to his employees, but he notes, “You’re competing against this whole secondary economy where they’re paying in cash and not paying any benefits.” That makes life especially difficult for smaller companies trying to follow the rules. Fixing the problem, Avant believes, would require government action on two fronts: stimulating economic growth and revitalizing trade-school education here in the U.S. In the meantime, he insists, “More people should be offered a legal path.”
