Trouble brewing at the courthouse site

[Dog Walker]

Immigrants are the vital new blood that we need, but illegals are easily abused and exploited.  During a rehabilitation project a few years ago, I noticed that  a sub-contract drywall crew was showing up nights and weekends only.  At first I thought that they were working on another, bigger job and fitting my project in after hours.

After getting suspicious and unhappy with the quality of the work, I was able, with my childish Spanish and a lot of repitition , to find out what was going on with the crew.

They were all illegals, young men brought here from somewhere in Texas and paid sub-standard wages with no benefits at all.  They were being put up in cheap motels, five and six to a room and fed the cheapest food available.  Most of their money, except for a little, was being sent back to their home countries.  By working nights and weekends they were avoiding the Immigration Service and especially the State of Florida Workers Compensation Inspectors.

I did throw them off the job and reamed out my contractor for hiring such a sub-contractor, but did not have the heart to report them to the authorities.  I felt by reporting this slime ball sub-contractor it would hurt the poor guys trying to send money to their families worse.

[GideonGlib]

The fact of the matter is that the workers hired should be organized, living wage earning, union workers. Construction and trade unions have long been a way of ensuring highly skilled local workers for the construction industry, and projects should be estimated to include skilled domestic labor. Trying to avoid this is why less skilled illegal workers are hired, and it should be stopped. Just pay the real cost of building, using American workers.

As a side note, the US needs to support trade policies and the development of organized domestic labor and industry thought Mexico and Latin America. Latin American workers do not come here to "take jobs" but out of need, there is no reason that a country as rich in people and resources such as Mexico should not share a lifestyle comparable to Canada and the US.  

[5ptscurmudgeon]

350 workers total,100 illegal aliens amongst them.

I know numerous home-owning,tax paying friends in the construction industry unemployed or working part time.

Shame on you John Payton and Staff. The least you can do is run the rat bastards from Turner Construction out of town on a rail for this crime of greed and arrogance.

[north miami]

Our nation was so wealthy we had to allow illegal import of cheap labor..................

[urbanlibertarian]

GideonGlib wrote: "...there is no reason that a country as rich in people and resources such as Mexico should not share a lifestyle comparable to Canada and the US."

Actually there is one primary reason.  Government corruption in Mexico.

[Dog Walker]

GideonGlib wrote: "...there is no reason that a country as rich in people and resources such as Mexico should not share a lifestyle comparable to Canada and the US."

Actually there is one primary reason.  Government corruption in Mexico.

Corruption like that is almost guaranteed in countries that have inherited a "mercantile" system of business, i.e. you cannot do business without permission from the crown.  It is an alternative system to capitalism or socialism and combines the worst aspects of both.  It was the prevailing system throughout the old Spanish Colonial Empire and you still see the sad remains in most Latin American countries and the Philippines.  China and Korea had similar systems with similar results until revolution and occupation changed them.

[mtraininjax]

350 workers total,100 illegal aliens amongst them.

I know numerous home-owning,tax paying friends in the construction industry unemployed or working part time.

Shame on you John Payton and Staff. The least you can do is run the rat bastards from Turner Construction out of town on a rail for this crime of greed and arrogance.

Agreed! TU editorial stated we are in the "Great Recession", with total unemployment running at 17.5% (includes those who lost a job, temp jobs, and those who have given up looking), which is higher than it was in 1982, when it got to 17.2%

What does Peyton do all day? Surely he would visit the Courthouse site and see how work was progressing? It is that hard to spot 100 illegals working on the jobsite and not ask the question, are all these people legal? Surely no, because that is not what "running government, like a business" is all about these days.

[5ptscurmudgeon]

 Immigration and Naturalization is not legally allowed on site but City of Jax Building Inspection is. You think they would've at least sent a confidential blurb upstairs about the situation. Oh silly me, It's a city project and it gets no inspection realistically. I know. I work in new or recently renovated city buildings all the time. You can't believe the silly crap or shoddy work we pay dearly for.

"running government, like a business"

yeah, an oil business.

[tufsu1]

folks, the news was clear...most of these people provided documents....they just turned out to be invalid....doubt the Mayor or anyone else outside of INS would be able to detrmine that!

[Ernest Street]

Dog Walker usually hits the broader picture on the head.This thread is directly about Illegals being on our public courthouse job site.
The broader picture is why these indiscretions keep CONTINUALLY happening right under our noses, and what we could possibly do about it. I for one will blow up if I hear one more native Jax resident say (And I quote) "It's always been that way around here....Nobody's gonna do anything different about it"   or the best one....."it's all about what sperm you were from" ROFLOL!!!

When is JAX BASTILLE DAY?...count me and my pitchfork in...

[Cricket]

Not that I am letting the city contractor off the hook entirely, but in all fairness he might have done everything right if it is true that he was presented with "perfect" documents and followed the hiring procedure in its entirety. Then there must be something fundamentally wrong if a SSN can be presented on an application but cannot be verifiable in real time. The onus should be with the INS to provide this verification link so that screening can be done on the fly and authorities can be immediately alerted when an infringement is detected. This being the courthouse site, we are all quick to throw the mayor and the City and the contractor under the bus but it is the failings of the INS we should be condemning.