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Need to take our country, our jobs back
Sep 06, 2009 |
Dear editor,
I am a 43-year-old hard-working brick mason who began his career working for his father. For many years I had so much work that on many occasions I needed my crew to be in more places than one to fulfill the work demand.
However, that is not the case today or for the past few years. What seems to be happening in the field of construc-tion is that when you do see construction sites, both commercial and residential, there doesn’t seem to be anyone of the American nationality, and it makes you feel as if you are in another country.
The past few years, the majority of our news stations, locally and nationally, have been talking about the number of illegal immigrants that are crossing our borders. To me the purpose of that is for them to come to our country, take our work and then in turn ship the money back to their country. They do not carry the insurance needed; they do not pay the taxes that we pay, and that is the reason you can see the numbers of other nationalities growing within your own communities.
There needs to be something done. An action needs to be taken for those of us that do things legally and who get up every day to make a living for our families.
The majority of construction workers cannot continue to make a living if illegals are coming into our country and don’t pay taxes, don’t carry the proper insurance and can do the job a lot cheaper because they don’t have any ex-penses to pay.
We can’t compete, and that is the bottom line. Our own fellow neighbors are doing this to us. So to those of you who support this and hand your business out to them just so you can save a dollar are just as guilty because you are contributing to them, and you are knocking out a fellow American who pays his dues.
We have seen our manufacturing companies disappear, and if we don’t take a stand, no one is going to do it for us. We cannot fix this overnight, but if we join together, demand that our government enforce the immigration laws, secure our borders, seek and arrest the business owners and individuals who are hiring these illegals so that we can take our country back, win our jobs back and then once again truly be able to say, I am proud to be an Ameri-can.
Rodney Newby, LaFayette
Eric Hartley: For illegal hires, who pays a price?
By ERIC HARTLEY, Staff Writer
Published 09/06/09
Robert Bontempo stood in federal court on Friday not just to be sentenced for his own
The 47-year-old Annapolis Painting Services owner, who hired dozens of illegal immigrants, also became a symbol for every employer hiring undocumented workers - and, in a sense, a stand-in for our entire national debate over immigration.
The prosecutor urged the judge to send a message to other employers with the sentence. Probation and property forfeiture aren't enough and embolden employers to keep hiring illegally, he said.
"If the only penalty is a financial one, a pecuniary one, then it simply becomes a cost of doing business," Assistant U.S. Attorney P. Michael Cunningham said.
It was a convincing argument. If we really want to send a message, maybe we should punish people like Bontempo, who pleaded guilty in April to illegal hiring and money laundering.
Our national debate and proposed solutions focus too much on the symptom (the aliens flooding across the border) rather than the cause (the employers who will hire them). We build walls, talk tough and hire more Border Patrol agents, but slap employers on the wrist.
Still, is it right to make Bontempo pay not just for his crimes, but for the failure of an entire system?
There would be something fundamentally unfair about a small-time local painting company owner going to jail for hiring 24 undocumented workers at a time when Fortune 500 companies that hired thousands have gotten away with it.
When clothier American Apparel was found to have hired 1,800 illegal immigrants, the punishment was a $150,000 fine (about $83.33 per illegal hire), Bontempo's lawyers noted. No one went to jail.
In a huge Wal-Mart illegal hiring case, same thing: No one went to jail. Judge William D. Quarles Jr. called the contrast "disturbing."
Why the difference?
Well, it's pretty easy to arrest and deport poor Hispanic people. They generally can't hire lawyers from the blue-chip Washington, D.C., firm Williams & Connolly, as Bontempo did. (Past clients include Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney.) They're not big political donors who hobnob with congressmen, like some businessmen.
Immigrants, who live in rental homes and often left their families back home, aren't pillars of the community.
When Bontempo went to court, the room was packed with supporters. Many of them and scores more - doctors, teachers, clergy, immigrants who have worked for him - sent letters of support to the judge.
He's a father of two young children, 10 and 7; a businessman who employs 28 people; a "philanthropist" who gave money to Special Olympics Maryland and a New Orleans musician left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. In noting all this, his highly skilled lawyer, David M. Zinn, was able to humanize him.
That's exactly what too often does not happen to immigrants themselves in our overheated rhetoric. They're not human beings; they're "those damned illegals stealing our jobs." When they're deported, hearing rooms are rarely packed with supporters.
Quarles noted Bontempo's "unblemished record" prior to these charges and said he was "a basically good person."
But the judge also batted away many of the defense arguments. He found Bontempo had knowingly "harbored" illegal aliens for profit, renting them homes, paying them in cash and having them driven to work.
What Bontempo did is unfair to businesses that play by the rules. And even if he'd been trying to come into compliance with the law before the June 2008 raid, as his lawyer said - well, that's nice, but it doesn't erase years of knowingly skirting the law.
Quarles agreed that all the financial price Bontempo has already paid - forfeiting cars, homes and cash - was not enough. But the judge said the sentence federal guidelines suggested, 15 to 21 months in federal prison, was "too harsh," and sentenced Bontempo to six months' confinement in a jail or halfway house.
He'll be allowed to work during the day, but Quarles told him: "You won't go home to sleep with your family at night."
That's something, but it's a middle-of-the-road sentence that won't do much to advance the debate one way or the other. The judge noted wryly that it was probably a fair sentence because both sides would be unhappy.
County Executive John R. Leopold, who was disappointed with the sentence, echoed the prosecutor's argument Friday, saying, "The highest priority should be to send a strong message that if you hire illegal immigrants, you are going to jail."
Fair enough. But if we're going to do that, we should also send some multimillionaire CEOs to jail, not just the Robert Bontempos.
Sep 06, 2009 |
Dear editor,
I am a 43-year-old hard-working brick mason who began his career working for his father. For many years I had so much work that on many occasions I needed my crew to be in more places than one to fulfill the work demand.
However, that is not the case today or for the past few years. What seems to be happening in the field of construc-tion is that when you do see construction sites, both commercial and residential, there doesn’t seem to be anyone of the American nationality, and it makes you feel as if you are in another country.
The past few years, the majority of our news stations, locally and nationally, have been talking about the number of illegal immigrants that are crossing our borders. To me the purpose of that is for them to come to our country, take our work and then in turn ship the money back to their country. They do not carry the insurance needed; they do not pay the taxes that we pay, and that is the reason you can see the numbers of other nationalities growing within your own communities.
There needs to be something done. An action needs to be taken for those of us that do things legally and who get up every day to make a living for our families.
The majority of construction workers cannot continue to make a living if illegals are coming into our country and don’t pay taxes, don’t carry the proper insurance and can do the job a lot cheaper because they don’t have any ex-penses to pay.
We can’t compete, and that is the bottom line. Our own fellow neighbors are doing this to us. So to those of you who support this and hand your business out to them just so you can save a dollar are just as guilty because you are contributing to them, and you are knocking out a fellow American who pays his dues.
We have seen our manufacturing companies disappear, and if we don’t take a stand, no one is going to do it for us. We cannot fix this overnight, but if we join together, demand that our government enforce the immigration laws, secure our borders, seek and arrest the business owners and individuals who are hiring these illegals so that we can take our country back, win our jobs back and then once again truly be able to say, I am proud to be an Ameri-can.
Rodney Newby, LaFayette
Eric Hartley: For illegal hires, who pays a price?
By ERIC HARTLEY, Staff Writer
Published 09/06/09
Robert Bontempo stood in federal court on Friday not just to be sentenced for his own
The 47-year-old Annapolis Painting Services owner, who hired dozens of illegal immigrants, also became a symbol for every employer hiring undocumented workers - and, in a sense, a stand-in for our entire national debate over immigration.
The prosecutor urged the judge to send a message to other employers with the sentence. Probation and property forfeiture aren't enough and embolden employers to keep hiring illegally, he said.
"If the only penalty is a financial one, a pecuniary one, then it simply becomes a cost of doing business," Assistant U.S. Attorney P. Michael Cunningham said.
It was a convincing argument. If we really want to send a message, maybe we should punish people like Bontempo, who pleaded guilty in April to illegal hiring and money laundering.
Our national debate and proposed solutions focus too much on the symptom (the aliens flooding across the border) rather than the cause (the employers who will hire them). We build walls, talk tough and hire more Border Patrol agents, but slap employers on the wrist.
Still, is it right to make Bontempo pay not just for his crimes, but for the failure of an entire system?
There would be something fundamentally unfair about a small-time local painting company owner going to jail for hiring 24 undocumented workers at a time when Fortune 500 companies that hired thousands have gotten away with it.
When clothier American Apparel was found to have hired 1,800 illegal immigrants, the punishment was a $150,000 fine (about $83.33 per illegal hire), Bontempo's lawyers noted. No one went to jail.
In a huge Wal-Mart illegal hiring case, same thing: No one went to jail. Judge William D. Quarles Jr. called the contrast "disturbing."
Why the difference?
Well, it's pretty easy to arrest and deport poor Hispanic people. They generally can't hire lawyers from the blue-chip Washington, D.C., firm Williams & Connolly, as Bontempo did. (Past clients include Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney.) They're not big political donors who hobnob with congressmen, like some businessmen.
Immigrants, who live in rental homes and often left their families back home, aren't pillars of the community.
When Bontempo went to court, the room was packed with supporters. Many of them and scores more - doctors, teachers, clergy, immigrants who have worked for him - sent letters of support to the judge.
He's a father of two young children, 10 and 7; a businessman who employs 28 people; a "philanthropist" who gave money to Special Olympics Maryland and a New Orleans musician left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. In noting all this, his highly skilled lawyer, David M. Zinn, was able to humanize him.
That's exactly what too often does not happen to immigrants themselves in our overheated rhetoric. They're not human beings; they're "those damned illegals stealing our jobs." When they're deported, hearing rooms are rarely packed with supporters.
Quarles noted Bontempo's "unblemished record" prior to these charges and said he was "a basically good person."
But the judge also batted away many of the defense arguments. He found Bontempo had knowingly "harbored" illegal aliens for profit, renting them homes, paying them in cash and having them driven to work.
What Bontempo did is unfair to businesses that play by the rules. And even if he'd been trying to come into compliance with the law before the June 2008 raid, as his lawyer said - well, that's nice, but it doesn't erase years of knowingly skirting the law.
Quarles agreed that all the financial price Bontempo has already paid - forfeiting cars, homes and cash - was not enough. But the judge said the sentence federal guidelines suggested, 15 to 21 months in federal prison, was "too harsh," and sentenced Bontempo to six months' confinement in a jail or halfway house.
He'll be allowed to work during the day, but Quarles told him: "You won't go home to sleep with your family at night."
That's something, but it's a middle-of-the-road sentence that won't do much to advance the debate one way or the other. The judge noted wryly that it was probably a fair sentence because both sides would be unhappy.
County Executive John R. Leopold, who was disappointed with the sentence, echoed the prosecutor's argument Friday, saying, "The highest priority should be to send a strong message that if you hire illegal immigrants, you are going to jail."
Fair enough. But if we're going to do that, we should also send some multimillionaire CEOs to jail, not just the Robert Bontempos.
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