Business Owners Say Undocumented Play Key Economic Role

WACO, Texas (By Warren Vieth, LATimes) January 1, 2006 — Angelica Tellez and her family migrated to central Texas from northern Mexico in 1983, seeking a better life. Today she owns her own business, Angie's Bazaar, selling bridal gowns and quinceañera dolls to Waco's burgeoning Latino community.

Hers is a classic immigrant entrepreneur success story, the kind President Bush likes to cite as he tries to attract more Latinos into the Republican fold.

But there's a catch: For her first eight years in this country, Tellez was an illegal immigrant, living in the shadows of the law and the back alleys of the economy.

"I worked so hard to be what I am now, to have my own business, to have my own house," said Tellez, 38, who became a legal resident in 1991 after marrying a U.S. citizen. "It's the people without papers who work the hardest."

Under legislation passed by the House in December and praised by Bush, stories like Tellez's would be heard less often. Living in the United States illegally would change from a civil offense to a federal crime, turning an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants into felons and rendering them permanently ineligible for legal residency. Employers would be required to go to greater lengths to verify workers' legal status and penalties for violations would become much stiffer.

Here in Bush's backyard, a half-hour's drive from the Prairie Chapel Ranch where he and First Lady Laura Bush spent the last week unwinding, business owners appear increasingly anxious about the direction the immigration debate is taking.

America needs to crack down on illegal border crossings to deter potential terrorism, criminal activity and community disruption until other reforms are in place, several employers said in interviews last week.

But turning America's entire population of undocumented residents into criminals and seeking to ship them all out of the country is another matter, they said, and threatens to cause more economic damage than it prevents.

"We need to get control of our borders for a lot of reasons," said Carey Hobbs, president of Hobbs Bonded Fibers Inc. and a prominent Waco Republican. "But there are a lot of businesses where if you took the illegal aliens out, it would shut them down."

Among them: hotels, restaurants, building contractors, landscaping firms, food processors and farming operations, according to employers and labor market analysts.

Hobbs' 260 employees make acoustic insulation for cars and other fiber batting products. Many of his plant workers are Latinos, and he said the company made sure they had Social Security numbers and other required documentation.

"As far as we know, they're all legal, but probably some of them aren't," Hobbs said. "They're great workers, and they contribute a lot to our success."

Waco custom homebuilder Steve Sorrells said he considered it up to his subcontractors to verify the legal status of their employees. He also said he thought construction firms would be crippled by the mass deportation of illegal immigrants.

"If there was a flip of the switch and all of a sudden undocumented workers couldn't stay here anymore, it would be devastating," Sorrells said. "My feeling is: Let's assimilate them into America and try to make it work. There's no way we're ever going to shut it down."

It remains uncertain whether Washington will wind up trying to completely shut down illegal immigration. The "enforcement-only" bill approved by the House appears unlikely to make it through the Senate in its current form. Bush has called on Congress to enact broader legislation that would create a temporary worker program to accommodate undocumented immigrants in the country.

But business groups and immigrant advocates were troubled by the president's kind words for the House bill, which also would make it a crime for social service agencies and church groups to offer support to illegal immigrants, withhold federal aid from cities that provide immigrant services without verifying legal status, and build about 600 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Their concerns have created a political alliance between groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Council of La Raza, a leading Latino organization. At the same time, it has created fissures within the Republican coalition, pitting business interests against cultural conservatives who think illegal immigration is overburdening community resources and contributing to social ills.

Some Waco-area immigrants said they thought the continuing influx of illegals had contributed to crime and other problems, and that some new arrivals had gamed the system to obtain public services and government benefits. But they insisted those people were in the minority and that most immigrants came to their community to take jobs many Americans considered distasteful.

"I'm sure there are people who do scams, but that's not everybody. They can't just categorize us all," said Maria Rodriguez, who arrived in Waco from Mexico with her parents and three older brothers in 1990.

"My family, we've been working here for 15 years," Rodriguez said. "We never asked for any government money. We can't, because we're working with illegal documents. The only thing we can do is just work."

Rodriguez married a U.S. citizen, and is in the process of obtaining legal residency. But her parents and one brother still reside in the country illegally. Although her 65-year-old father, a diesel mechanic, suffers from diabetes, all of them have held jobs almost since the day they arrived, she said.

Father Sergio Lopez, who ministers to about 8,000 Mexican Americans at Waco's historic St. Francis Catholic Church on the banks of the Brazos River, guesses that at least a third of his congregation is undocumented.

"They might have broken the law by coming to this country without papers, but they're not criminals," Lopez said. "They just want to make something of their lives."

Roane Lacy Jr., whose Plantation Foods turkey processing operations employed 1,800 people before the Lacy family sold it seven years ago, said he was happy to hire Mexicans who migrated to McLennan County in large numbers in the 1970s.

"A lot of folks came here and knew they could find work," Lacy said. "It was hot, dirty work, picking up dead turkeys and … fixing machinery and driving tractors and building fence and clearing brush."

Lacy said his company couldn't find enough U.S.-born employees to fill its needs at the wages its officials decided they could afford to pay. He also said he thought today's economy would be crippled by the removal of undocumented workers.

"The rounding up of 11 million people — that reminds me of shipping Africans back to Liberia," he said. "The country is built on immigration, and we have an essential labor shortage. … If you rip everybody out and send them home, you're going to have a lot of things stop."

That view is shared by Sergio Garcia, who was in his late 20s when he quit his chauffeur's job in Veracruz, Mexico, to take his chances in Waco's workforce. He declined to discuss the specifics of his status when he immigrated, but said he soon qualified for legal residency.

Garcia held several jobs, and began earning extra income selling shellfish in Styrofoam containers to immigrants attending weekend soccer games. One cup of shrimp led to another, and Garcia's sideline evolved into El Siete Mares, a popular Waco seafood restaurant that now employs as many as 17 people, depending on the season. Some of them remind Garcia of himself two decades ago.

"If they take all the immigrants back to Mexico and the other countries, people like us, we're not going to have any employees," he said. "The economy here is going to crash down big-time."

Among the patrons who might be affected: the White House Travel Office, which contracts with Garcia to provide catered food to journalists and staff members when the president vacations at his ranch.