gringogirl
Joined: 29 Jun 2006
Posts: 187
Location: gone
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 Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 12:17 am Post subject: Illegals take jobs In Virginia |
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Immigration Crisis: West Virginia's Hand
The State Journal
The immigrant population in West Virginia is growing, but are there
enough jobs to go around? In our special report "No Borders", 12 News
investigates immigration and why some are calling it a crisis
situation.
Story by Gabe Gutierrez Email | Bio
It's almost impossible to pinpoint the exact number of undocumented
workers in West Virginia. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters here in
Bridgeport says it's investigated thousands of cases in the past year
alone.
"They're coming in, undercutting wages and taking jobs that West
Virginians would've had," Leroy Stanely says. He's the director of
organizing for the carpenters' union. He says illegal workers are
exploited by smugglers often called "coyotes".
"I've seen these people living in tents. Living in barrels. Living in
terrible conditions. Twelve or fifteen of them living in room with one
bathroom that didn't work."
Stanley says it's problem, with no easy solution.
"Right now, the federal government is turning a deaf ear. There are no
borders."
In the Mountain State, there's believed to be several staging areas for
smuggled workers. Stanley says the Division of Labor is investigating
one in Lewisburg and several in the eastern panhandle near Martinsburg.
Last October, police found more than ten illegal immigrants living at a
Morgantown motel. Some of them were working at local construction
sites.
"Immigrants, both legal and illegal, bring benefits and costs," says
Josh Bernstein with the National Immigration Law Center in Washington,
D.C.
Buckhannon restaurant owner Sal Carmona might be one of those benefits.
His customers certainly think so.
"We're not terrorists. We just want to come and work, man," says
Carmona.
Carmona was born in Mexico. His mother, a legal U.S. citizen, brought
him over in 1972 -- illegally.
"There's this black cloud over you. You know you're not supposed to be
here. But you're a kid and what do you do?"
Carmona wasn't a legal resident until he was 14, and it was more than
20 years before he became a citizen in a naturalization ceremony in
1999. His wife, Virginia, was also part of that ceremony.
"We feel now that we are a part of America! All these years we've been
here and we did feel a part of it," she said in an interview at the
time, "but now it's confirmed! It's like, 'We did it!'"
In just four years, the number of Hispanics in the Mountain State has
grown by nearly 20 percent. That's legal residents. Oscar Rivera is one
of them. He works at CityNet, a computer tech company in Bridgeport. He
says immigrants have gotten a bad rap.
"They're not all illegal. People like me, that came to the state,"
Rivera says. "I've been working all my life. Paying taxes. Doing good
for the state."
That's what people like Leroy Stanley want to encourage, legal
immigration. That's become tougher in the past few decades. So some
immigrants have to choose between obeying the law or feeding their
families.
"This is a crisis situation," Stanley says. |
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Bootsie
Joined: 22 Jun 2006
Posts: 492
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| Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:54 am Post subject: |
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| That explains a lot of things to me. It has always puzzled me that my little town in North Carolina has a HUGE population of people who came here from West Virginia. They came here to work in the furniture factories and I guess I can now see why. Illegals have taken over their state as well. The terrible thing is that they moved here to get away from illegals taking their jobs and now North Carolina is WAY UP THERE on the list of states with a HUGE population of ILLEGAL ALIENS. AND, they have take all of those furniture factory jobs. Well, they've taken what few are left that haven't been outsourced. |
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