L.A. Workers Join Fierce Debate Over Immigration
Drexell Johnson and his Young Black Contractors of South Central Inc. are hungry for work -- and when polite requests for an opportunity are rebuffed, they're not afraid to raise a ruckus.
After Johnson was cut out of a contract when Staples Center was being built, he drove to the construction site, spinning 360-degree rolls and kicking up doughnuts of dust until, he said, a bulldozer nearly ran him down. In Torrance, his group staged a mock hanging in front of an automaker's office. And earlier this month, they hauled a makeshift "slave ship" to an Inglewood mall development to symbolize economic injustice.
The tactics may seem outrageous, but they underscore the rage and frustration that Johnson and his cohorts feel about losing out to other workers in the region's construction boom. Their anger is fueled by a 14% unemployment rate among African Americans in Los Angeles, twice as high as among whites.
So the news that President Bush and some members of Congress are pushing to bring more blue-collar guest workers into the country -- perhaps 400,000 annually -- leaves the contractors indignant.
"Hell, no, don't bring no one in from nowhere," said Johnson, a 47-year-old Mississippi native who founded his consortium of 35 minority contractors a decade ago. "Train the people here. Give the people here the same opportunity you're willing to give someone out of this country."
The guest-worker proposals have reignited fierce debate -- and sharply divided the Republican Party -- over some of the most controversial aspects of national immigration policy. Do immigrants take jobs from Americans? Or are they needed to fill jobs Americans won't do? Do they lower the wages of America's least-educated workers? Or do they benefit most Americans by providing cheap labor for a wide range of jobs, from nannies to construction workers?
Such questions are particularly critical in California, where immigrants make up one-third of the state's labor force, the highest percentage in the nation.
Unlike legislation recently passed in the House, the Senate's comprehensive immigration bill, scheduled for debate next month, is expected to contain bipartisan provisions for guest workers and a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants.
