I camped outside Congressman Dana Rohrabacher's house in Huntington Beach the other day to make sure no illegal immigrants showed up to mow the lawn.
It wouldn't have been good timing for the congressman if they did. A vote is due this week in Washington on a bill by Rohrabacher that would require doctors and nurses to report suspected illegals for deportation.
Why should MDs do the dirty work? Seems to me that if Rohrabacher really wants to drive out illegal immigrants, he should have introduced a bill imposing fines on neighbors who hire undocumented gardeners. I saw lots of trimming and leaf-blowing as I approached his house.
The congressman and his wife just had triplets, by the way. If they hired a nanny, I wondered, did they ask to see her papers?
Not much was happening outside the Rohrabacher home, so I decided to get a feel for the neighborhood and check back later. Within minutes, I found three illegal immigrants.
Julio was with a crew of four that was landscaping a house three blocks from the congressman's. He said he had been in the country just a month after paying a coyote $2,200 to get across the border.
I asked the crew chief, a legal resident, if he ever asks employees for papers.
Nope.
And how about the homeowners who hire them? Do they ask for papers?
Never, he said.
Of course not.
We've got a don't-ask, don't-tell policy because we know the price is right. And it seems to me that if we're going to enjoy the benefits of cheap labor, we shouldn't tell an immigrant to get lost when he gets his hand caught in the hedge trimmer and needs a doctor.
In an alley behind Rohrabacher's house, I found a young couple washing their cars. Brian Grasela and Aleta Thompson said laborers knock on the door all the time looking for work, and they assume many are illegal.
"They do a good job and the price is good, so it works," said Brian. "I'm going to go into horticulture, so I'll be working with a lot of illegals."
Aleta said she works at a restaurant where many employees are illegal, but nobody says or does anything about it. There's just a wink and a nod, because that's the unstated national policy, despite the charade at the border.
The young couple pointed down the alley to three guys who were landscaping a yard almost directly behind Congressman Rohrabacher's house. Two of the workers told me they were illegal.
