Who can argue with that? In Washington and the suburbs, day workers line up for work on street corners, waiting for contractors to collect them for delivery to a day's work. It's a legitimate custom, and the employers are easy to identify. But in these parts of Virginia, hungry immigrants hear about jobs through informal networks spread by word of mouth. The vulnerable become even more vulnerable. Workers who threaten to report employers for cheating them say they're threatened with exposure, reported as illegal as though their status were unknown to the employers who hired them.
Typical is Edgar Cardenos, an illegal immigrant from Nicaragua who has been in this country for eight years. His wife is pregnant with their second daughter, who will, of course, be an American citizen by virtue of birth. He heard about an Outback Steakhouse in the neighborhood that was paying $15 to build an addition to the building. He hurried to the parking lot of the restaurant, saw a crew of men putting up dry wall, spackling seams, creating a new ceiling and installing exterior siding. He was told he could join them at $15 an hour. He put in two weeks' work and received a check for one week. The contractor promised the rest later. The first check bounced, the next one never arrived. The initial contractor said he hired a subcontractor and paid off at his end. He was two steps away from the crime. The subcontractor disappeared. Such employers are twice guilty -- first for hiring illegals and then for cheating them of their pay.
This isn't a high-bucks Ponzi scheme, but low life cheating of human labor. Wendy Inge, director of the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry, told the Virginian-Pilot that when a worker complains, no one investigates his immigration status. Nevertheless, cheated laborers are afraid to complain lest they be sent home.
Cardenos has now applied for an income tax ID, though zero times zero, as any child learning his multiplication tables can tell you, is still zero. Cardenos does the kind of low-wage work that even in these tough times others don't want to do. He now works at two painting jobs, putting in 16 hours a day.
"It's very difficult to (work) where you don't get paid," says Cardenos. "I have a family to take care of."
Life is not fair -- we all know that. Bernie Madoff is living the prison life, leaving his wife to survive on $6 million. But the recession is "unfairer" to some than to others.