So much for the notion that border-jumping immigration criminals are “doing the jobs Americans won’t do.”

Last summer, 40 or 50 carpenters from Local 1305, the Fall River chapter of the New England Council of Carpenters, didn't work at all.

Ron Rheaume, the business manager for the union, said that means about 10 percent of the union's 500-strong work force couldn't find any jobs for the first time in recent memory.

The biggest reason, he believes, is the influx of illegal immigrants who have begun to work in the New England construction industry over the past four to five years.

"It's blatant and it's everywhere," he said. "It's happening in prevailing wage jobs and it's happening in state projects. It's happening all over the place."

John O'Connor, a senior organizer with the carpenter's union, said the employment situation in Massachusetts has been so changed by illegal labor that it is even becoming impossible for high school students to find such traditional part-time positions as bus boys, landscapers or painters.

And it's not just a problem of the immigrants undercutting high wages by working cheap, he said.

"They're taking the lower-wage jobs from Americans who work in lower-wage jobs."

Round ‘em up! Ship ‘em back! Rawhide!

Posted by: Greg at 09:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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