Don’t repeat mistake of using illegal labor

Richard W. Byrd, Las Vegas

Thursday, April 17, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.

Regarding Timothy Pratt’s story in Monday’s Las Vegas Sun, “Immigrants boost economy — but how much?”:

The illegal alien workforce is now leaving the state, seeking employment and returning home. But what happens in the next few years as the market corrects and we need laborers? Do we repeat the trend that resulted in 60 percent to 80 percent of the Las Vegas Valley’s residential construction workers being illegal immigrants?

As a Las Vegas resident working in the real estate and development industry, I saw firsthand how this labor force came to be. Will we repeat history or correct it?

Twenty years ago, in an attempt to provide inexpensive construction, developers and contractors would hire legally licensed subcontractors. The foreman or supervisor would be a legal citizen who spoke English first and Spanish second.

The subcontractor would hire illegal workers to complete the task and pay them in cash. Soon foremen and supervisors who spoke Spanish first and English second became licensed subcontractors and hired illegal workers to complete tasks and paid cash, as before.

The difference is that soon the primary language spoken on most residential job sites became Spanish. The fact that all communication on job sites was in Spanish made it imperative for all workers to speak Spanish. To this day the contractor hires the subcontractors who still often hire illegals — or as they are often referred to, undocumented workers — whose work credentials are suspect at best to complete the job at hand.

To change the workforce in the future we need to change the hiring process and require all workers on all job sites to be documented. Documented workers are likely to be bilingual and able to communicate with all other workers, thus opening the trades to all nationalities. Bilingual speech and proof of work documentation will also curtail predatory hiring practices by subcontractors, foremen and supervisors who manage by fear and intimidation.

We need to prepare now or we will just be repeating history.

The writer is a real estate broker.