Immigrant Labor

On August 1, 2012, William Gheen, head of the anti-immigrant political action committee Americans for Legal Immigration (“ALIPAC”), wrote a rant http://tinyurl.com/blqgauv about how he insisted that American workers deliver consumer goods that he purchased at Home Depot. It’s hard to miss the irony that the head of an organization called Americans for Legal Immigration discriminates against immigrants. It's also ironic that an anti-immigration leader who purports to honor the rule of law encourages employers to discriminate based on national origin in violation of Federal law. I digress. In response to that tirade, I write of my own experiences.

I went to Home Depot one time to buy a kitchen sink. Yeah, that’s right. Home Depot has everything a homeowner needs including the kitchen sink. Home Depot has a very liberal returns policy. They’ll take almost anything back without question. Knowing this I was careful to buy a product that looked like it hadn’t been already opened or tampered with. I don’t want to get something that had been returned and restocked without all the necessary parts and instructions. We also got the pipes and putty and everything else we needed to complete the project.

 When I opened the box, I, as usual, looked for some instructions. I didn’t find any. I figured that was the industry norm for sinks. It’s a sink for cryin’ out loud. What do you need instructions for? You put it in that big hole on the kitchen counter, you inbred moron. So I didn’t think anything of it. After doing the measurements I proceeded to install the sink. When I removed the old sink, I noticed that there were some clips that held the sink in place. I didn’t think twice about it. I just figured I’d use the same clips for the new sink. But the new sink had a different configuration such that the old clips would not work.

So we went back to Home Depot. We inquired of an American employee who then called the resident plumbing department expert, another American. We explained the situation and showed him the model that we bought. He recommended that we use some clips that were displayed in the sink section. So we got those and went back home. The clips didn’t seem to fit. I figured that the guy at Home Depot would know what he was talking about so I tried every way to Sunday to try and figure out how those clips were supposed to be affixed.

 I went to the manufacturer’s website to try to get more information. They had an instructional video, and they had something else that intrigued me: a set of instructions for the model of sink that I had purchased. I went to the box to look to see if any instructions were included. I didn’t find anything. I looked at the PDF of the instructions that I had downloaded. The clips in the pictures in the instructions looked a little different than the clips that the American plumbing expert at Home Depot sold me.

 So I called the manufacturer. “Where can I get these clips?” I asked. I was told that the clips were supposed to be included in the box with the sink along with the instructions. The manufacturer offered to mail to me the parts that I needed. We went back to Home Depot to see if we could get the right clips. We didn’t want to have to live without a kitchen sink for two days while we waited for the clips to arrive in the mail. This time we talked to the manager. We were pissed. They took the right clips from another box and gave them to us. They’ll probably sell that other box without the clips to some other sucker.

 By this time, I had had it. A fun Saturday home project resulted in so much frustration as a result of the complacency of American workers. We considered getting someone to finish the installation. We called Home Depot. They said that they would charge us $500 to have someone, probably an American, install the sink. That was unacceptable.

 So we went to the immigrant community. Someone we know has a fiancé who has a mom who goes to a church where there are a lot of immigrants. One guy from Bolivia named Miguel is a licensed plumber. Miguel was available to stop by that evening. He took a look at the situation and gave us a quote of $120. Giddy Up! The next day he installed it. We gave him $200 because he was a nice guy. 

The next spring we had an issue with an outdoor faucet so we called him again. He had to cut into the drywall to get to the pipe, cut out the old faucet and replace it with a new one. He charged us $150, parts included. He even cleanup up all the dust that resulted from cutting into the drywall.

There was another time when strong winds from a storm blew off some siding. The spot that was blown off was way up at the top. I didn’t have a ladder that would get me anywhere near that. No problem. We contacted someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew an immigrant who could do the job. I watched the guy do it. He was diligent. The first thing he did was go up and check out the scene. He didn’t carry with him the siding pieces that had been knocked off. It took him about 15 minutes to do the whole job. I don’t remember how much he charged, but I do know that, despite a hurricane and some very violent weather that knocked out electricity and uprooted trees all over the region, no siding has been blown off our house since. 

We know a young, red-headed, freckle-faced American man whose father owns an HVAC company. He’s the ex-fiancé of a former co-worker of someone we know. Our next door neighbor’s A/C broke down during the recent heat wave. We recommended Johnny. Unlike William Gheen, we don’t discriminate. We chose the best recommended professional at the best price.