How dysfunctional is the US immigration system? It is so dysfunctional that even Lou Dobbs, a man who has built his brand spewing hate speech at immigrants, can’t even follow it.
Last week The Nation labeled Dobbs an “American Hypocrite” for hiring unauthorized immigrant workers,
But with his relentless diatribes against “illegals” and their employers, Dobbs is casting stones from a house—make that an estate—of glass. Based on a yearlong investigation, including interviews with five immigrants who worked without papers on his properties, The Nation and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute have found that Dobbs has relied for years on undocumented labor for the upkeep of his multimillion-dollar estates and the horses he keeps for his 22-year-old daughter, Hillary, a champion show jumper.
Dobbs’ response? He claims he never employed undocumented workers because he didn’t sign their paychecks (or were they paid in cash?). According to Dobbs they were employed by independent contractors he hired to maintain his various multimillion dollar estates including his daughter’s five European Warmbloods, a breed of horse that often sells for $1 million apiece.
A hyper technical defense if I ever heard one. Something Dobbs would have angrily referred to as “gibberish” when he was pushing his anti-immigrant vitriol on CNN.
I must admit I enjoyed watching Dobbs squirm in his duplicity last week.
But Dobbs is not the point. The point is that the current system is completely unworkable. Congress needs to get off its collective…fill in the blank here…and fix this mess. We need a well designated temporary worker program so that Lou Dobbs and others who need to hire essential workers can do so legally and in a safe and orderly manner that protects the wages and working conditions of US workers. We also need an employment based immigration system that is focused on attracting the best and the brightest to our universities, research institutions, and industries and retaining them.
The jobless economic recovery that plagues America will be unquestionably stimulated by a well targeted system for skilled and unskilled workers; one that promotes our economy and enables employers to grow their businesses. And, as experts all across the spectrum recognize, the legalization and full participation in the US workforce of 11 million unauthorized workers will increase the wages and working conditions of all Americans by adding $1.7 trillion to the gross domestic product over the next ten years, adding $5 billion in consumer spending, and creating nearly a million jobs.
I wonder if, in a show of good faith, Dobbs will voluntarily offer to pay the government a hefty fine for hiring illegal immigrants. After all, Dobbs has made it clear that those who violate the immigration law should suffer its harsh consequences.
Anything less would be amnesty, wouldn’t it?
Mr. Chapman,
I watched the Lou Dobbs interviews and he never answered the key immigration subcontractor question: How much control did you have over the individuals performing services? As you are probably aware, mere documentation of a sub-contractor arrangement does not limit liability. In addition, if good old Lou had “knowledge” of the worker’s unauthorized status, then the arrangement doesn’t matter at all.
In Lou’s uses, he had someone care for his estate and horses. In both of these types of jobs, it is quite possible that he or a family member exerted a significant amount of control over the activities of these workers. Therefore, the questions about control and knowledge are completely relevant. Individuals have been convicted of felonies for improper use of sub-contractors, so these questions carry extra weight in my opinion.
What I find puzzling is that in the cases of both Meg Whitman and Lou Dobbs, more conservative folk are willing to grant an infinite amount of understanding and will go to great pains to defend the accused. In Whitman’s case, there is a code question to determine legal status to work in the U.S. – “Can you travel outside of the U.S.?” With knowledge a domestic worker could not travel and a SSN no-match, the government would have a case.
One thing I have learned since working around this area for more than 10 years is that immigration attorneys need to stick together. Unfortunately, we have few friends on the conservative side who are willing to lend an open ear. That is the environment we live in. Lou Dobbs is one of the prime reasons such a condition exists.
And on your point about the H-1Bs, AILA has been playing defense for years. In case you missed it, in late-2004, AILA held a teleconference discussing the H-1B/L-1 Act of 2004. The message was clear to everyone from the Republican controlled Congress – don’t come back here and ask for anything else – this is all you will get. Since then, the fight has been to keep the unlikely alliance between Senators Durbin, Grassley and Sanders from gutting the H-1B/L-1 programs altogether.
Just my thoughts.
Tony Weigel
I find this blog comment to be nothing short of outrageous, but at the same time simply points out once again how AILA national has become simply a mouthpiece for a political viewpoint rather than a serious advocate for immigration issues. How many H-1b reforms have been passed through Congress based on your efforts? How many employment based reforms? Not many if any. Instead we see the ridiculousness of this sort of blog where Mr. Leopold simply uses his position to tout a political viewpoint and take a pot shot at an opponent. If you have nothing better to do than attack someone on the weak basis of this attack on Mr.Dobbs then I implore you to keep your fingers off the keyboard.
Mr. Leopold’s outrageous article simply regurgitates the same garbage that The Nation was spewing out last week. Mr. Dobbs responded in pointing out that independent contractors did the work. First, Mr. Leopold needs to get his facts straight. The reporter from The Nation was raked over the coals on this and admitted they had no evidence Lou Dobbs or his companies ever hired an illegal alien. Exactly what does Mr. Leopold expect people to do? If someone comes to my house to put in carpet, I am not running downstairs to check passports or green cards. This is the point Bill O’Reilly made in interviewing Dobbs when he said that he was not going to climb ladders to check the status of employees of independent contractors. Mr. Leopold is simply an example of the knee jerk reactionaries that tend to populate the radical immigration fringe and it simply detracts from any serious advocacy. You certainly will not get conservatives in the Republican party to work with you on immigration reform with this sort of approach, and after November that will be a much more important issue for you.