LET ME BE CLEAR: I am not mad at nor hating upon these Hispanic/Mexican men. They are working hard and making a living. They have parted from their families to do this type of hard labor job.
The pictures above are of my own house.
Earlier this year our community got hammered with a hail storm. The insurance company approved my claim to get new asphalt shingles.
I had an army of roofing companies ringing my door bell, leave marketing materials on my door and hang large billboards around town all to get some business.
I have seen White and Black roofing company agents working the community.
When the work gets done - I have NEVER seen anyone but Hispanics/Mexicans who do the actual work. The American firms function as Sales Agents, Insurance Claims Specialists, Project Managers and Customer Service Agents. The Hispanics are doing all of the work.
Mindful of this I interrogated the company that I chose to go with. First I selected them because my good friend up the street had a positive experience with them on his roof repair. I asked the company agent about the status of his workers. He said that they are all payroll employees and not "day laborers". He showed me the insurance certificate and some document claiming that they all had to go through training in order to receive the 25 year warranty on the roofing materials.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF POLICY
I try as hard as possible to include African-American owned businesses in my bid process. (Hey - this is just like the NFL head coach selection rule) In this case it didn't matter. There are few American labor crews doing this type of work so it doesn't matter.
When it comes to brick work and cement work - in the past - the African American worker had a lock on this area of the building trade in many parts of the nation. When this community was constructed 12 years ago - I saw only Hispanics doing this work. Again - I am not mad at them.
This present fact is directly correlated to our present immigration policies. As the African-American stands in support of the people who propose lax immigration policies it is the African-American laborer who suffers from long term consequences of these policies.
Black people love to have the "clean hands" notion that WE HAVE NEVER DISCRIMINATED AGAINST ANYONE. We love to be liberal and progressive in our policy outlook.
This is possible ONLY because when we look at the conjoined twin of employment and economics we look to THE SYSTEM to provide us with the jobs and needed resources to build up a certain standard of living. Some how those policies on the front end that enjoy support are abstracted from the backend results.
There are a defined number of job opportunities in our nation at any given time. To not control the quantity of people vying for these job opportunities is suicide to your own interests. Our quest for "accommodation" also means that the misery is borne by those who compete in this intensive labor space in the job market.
I was impressed by these guy's lack of fear. They climbed on the roof and went to work scraping off shingles even before the second round of men came to install the safety rope. Had the either of the two men on the back of my house fallen - they would have went to the ground 3 stories below. Even with the safety ropes installed - they were not always close to one of them where they could grab hold to break their fall.
I am sure that many Americans would say "these guys are crazy" just as I was saying as I took these pictures. This is a dirty and a dangerous job. THEY are not the problem. They are only seeking to feed their families with the opportunities that they been presented in a different country.
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