VA - Candidate says illegal aliens replaced VDOT workers

ABINGDON, Va. – A 9th District congressional candidate claims that illegal immigrants are working Virginia state highway jobs – but he acknowledges that he hasn’t reported his suspicion to authorities.

Instead, independent candidate Jeremiah Heaton sent a letter calling for an investigation to the news media, and he addressed the letter to one of his opponents, Republican candidate Morgan Griffith.

“If you fail to conduct a timely investigation into this matter, ... the public will have no other choice than to conclude you fully condone the hiring of illegal immigrants with our tax money,” Heaton wrote.

On Monday, Heaton said that Griffith, majority leader in the Virginia House of Delegates, has been derelict in his leadership responsibilities for not monitoring the immigration status of workers employed by subcontractors for the Virginia Department of Transportation.

“As the majority leader in the General Assembly and my opponent in this race, he has made definitive statements that he is very much against illegal immigration and that he’s going to fight as congressman to stamp out illegal immigrants coming into this country,” Heaton said. “If he’s allowing it to go on unchecked in the state of Virginia, he’s most certainly not going to do anything at the congressional level any different.”

Griffith’s campaign did not reply to requests for comment made Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Democratic incumbent Rick Boucher responded to the issue with a statement on his immigration policy: support for Arizona’s controversial immigration enforcement law; construction of a fence on the U.S.-Mexican border; increased border patrol funding; and use of U.S. troops to aid border enforcement.

“I favor secure identifiers such as tamper-proof driver’s licenses as a way for employers to have certainty in knowing that employees are legal,” Boucher said in an e-mailed statement.

Accompanying Heaton’s letter are photographs of men working on Interstate 81 in Smyth County. In a video, Heaton confronts them about their immigration status and one tries to explain that they are working under what sounds like a guest worker program.

In Monday’s interview, Heaton said their immigration status is not important; what is important, he said, is that those workers have displaced Americans who were laid off by VDOT in response to budget cuts.

“In a time when we’re trying to create jobs for Americans, we shouldn’t be importing folks here with work permits from Mexico, even if they are here legally,” Heaton said. “I’m sure there’s somebody who would use that weed-eater in America, or drive that tractor to bushhog.”

Heaton also said state subcontractors should be required to hire American workers – even if it means paying them more.

Heaton also accused the company that maintains the stretch of roadway he targeted, TME Enterprises, of routinely hiring undocumented workers.

The president of TME, Matt Ehrenzeller, called Heaton’s accusation “defamatory.”

“It truly surprises me and disappoints me,” Ehrenzeller said.

TME has about 170 full-time employees statewide, in addition to seasonal help. Ehrenzeller said the company fills 25 to 30 seasonal positions each year with legal foreign workers because it is unable to find Americans willing to do the jobs. He also said his company strictly adheres to the state and federal procedures required to ensure that employees have the proper documentation.

The company uses the work visa program known as H-2B to bring temporary workers from Mexico for seasonal highway maintenance tasks such as picking up litter and weed-eating along the guardrails. Ehrenzeller said such hiring is typical in the landscaping industry, and the idea that they are displacing American workers is “an absurdity.”

“I know it’s kind of shocking, but even with the unemployment the way it is, it’s really hard to find [people to fill] those positions, especially when they’re working on the side of the road [and] they go from job to job,” Ehrenzeller said.

“We can put ad after ad in the paper, and the response that we get from it is so limited we could not ... fulfill our contractual requirements with that labor source. We could not get our work done.”

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, employers who apply to participate in the H-2B program must show a need for the workers and show that their presence will not harm the wages and working conditions of similarly employed workers in the area. The workers apply in their home countries for admission into the program.

Ehrenzeller said Americans benefit because H-2B workers pay into the Social Security system and never draw out of it. He said the company advertises in the community to fill its full-time positions and is always hiring in the summertime for seasonal work.

“We don’t care what color or creed or ethnicity you are,” Ehrenzeller said. “If you’re a qualified employee with the right paperwork, we would make our decision based on what capabilities you have and whether we think you’d make a good employee or not.”

The lack of local help is the same explanation Heaton provided two years ago when questioned about Hispanic laborers on his farm, during an interview for a story about a corn maze on his property.

On Monday, Heaton said those workers on his farm are native-born American citizens who were raised in South America because of their family’s work as members of the Mennonite faith, and he verified their citizenship status before hiring them.At VDOT, Chief of Communications Jeff Caldwell said that under federal law, VDOT subcontractors –– like most any employer in the country –– can hire only legal workers and must verify all workers’ eligibility to work in the U.S.

“The [Immigration Reform and Control] Act gives enforcement authority to certain federal governmental agencies, but these agencies have not delegated any such authority to other agencies, such as VDOT,” Caldwell said in an e-mailed statement Monday.

“However, if there is reason to believe a contractor is in violation of the Act, VDOT will notify one of the authorized agencies. ... Any person with reason to believe that a contractor working under contract with VDOT has violated the Act is welcome to notify one of the authorized agencies.”

Caldwell said those agencies include the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Labor, and the Justice Department’s Office of Special Counsel for Unfair Immigration-Related Employment Practices.

According to the Justice Department, federal law prohibits discrimination based on workers’ citizenship status. The Office of Special Counsel enforces this law for employers that have more than four employees.

Asked whether it would be possible to verify whether individuals alleged to be undocumented are in the U.S. legally, ICE spokeswoman Cori Bassett said the bureau “is precluded from disclosing information about an individual or their case without their written consent.”

According to ICE, suspicious activity can be reported to the bureau at (866) DHS-2-ICE.

http://www2.tricities.com/news/2010/oct/07/candidate-says-illegal-immigrants-replaced-vdot-wo-ar-547306/