Building lives: Valley’s boom makes state sixth in immigrant workers

Monday, Dec. 16, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.

Fixing roofs in Southern Nevada has put a roof over the heads of Manuel Castillo and his family for their 14 years in the United States, half of them in Las Vegas.

"I came here because a friend said there was a lot of work here," Castillo, a roofer originally from Mexico City, said.

Castillo, who spoke while on a break from patching leaks in Green Valley roofs last week, is not alone. He is among tens of thousands of immigrants drawn in the past decade to the Las Vegas Valley by its jobs, making Nevada one of the states with the highest share of foreign-born workers in the nation, according to a recent study.

Based on census and Department of Labor data, the study, issued by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies, showed that half of all workers first entering the nation's work force during the '90s were foreign-born. The study, commissioned by the Business Roundtable, a group of corporate chief executives, included legal and illegal immigrants.

The percentage of foreign-born workers was even higher for men: Eight of 10 men starting work in the United States in the last decade were foreign-born.

Nevada has consistently drawn foreign-born workers to hotels, casinos, restaurant and construction jobs during the decade, making the state sixth in the nation in the percentage of immigrants in the workforce, the study says.

One in five workers in Nevada was foreign-born in 2001, many of them newly arrived. Nearly 8 percent of all workers in the state were immigrants who had entered the country after 1990.

Advocates of looser immigration rules said the numbers show why undocumented immigrants should be legalized: The economy needs them.

But opponents cite the same numbers as reasons to tighten the laws, noting that employers take advantage of the lower-paid immigrants for cheap labor and are squeezing the native middle class out of the labor market.

Among those who would like to see immigrant workers have an easier time in this country is a representative of the state's leading industry -- hotels and casinos -- and an official from the major union that represents their workers.

"This study shows what appears to be obvious to most of us in labor -- without immigrant workers there would not be a robust and vital economy," said Glenn Arnodo, political director for the Culinary Union. About half of the union's 45,000 members are immigrants, Arnodo said.

"Latinos, and immigrants in general, come to Nevada to work ... (and) the state couldn't function without immigrant labor," he said.

"Given their work and their tax dollars, there should be a political voice to accompany this role and legalization of undocumented immigrants."

Van Heffner, president of both the Nevada Hotel and Lodging Association and the Nevada Restaurant Association, agreed the state needs the workers.

"We've been asking for immigration reform ... and I think we need to do it," Heffner said.

But a national group on immigration reform said that undocumented immigrant workers and their families drain more from society than they add.

Dan Stein, executive director of the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the study just shows that employers prefer low-cost immigrant labor to higher-cost native workers.

"It shows what everybody already knows -- that more and more sectors of the employer market have found immigrants to be a source of low-cost labor," he said.

"This is creating an hourglass economy ... effectively driving a large sector of the American workforce out of the market and creating a disappearing middle class."

Stein said that raising wages would encourage more native-born workers to take jobs being filled by immigrants. He also said that the social services immigrant families need cost more than what immigrant workers add to the economy.

"If they've got kids in school or elderly parents who need health care, then the value added by their labor is offset by the costs of the social safety net for these family members," he said.

Jeremy Aguero, principal analyst for Applied Analysis, an economic and financial research firm whose clients include local government, hotels and casinos, said that the benefits immigrant workers bring to the state far outweigh any costs that would accompany legalization.

"I think the whole system with regard to undocumented immigrants needs to be revamped -- we know it isn't very effective or efficient and promotes people trying to hide," he said.

The economist said his grandfather immigrated here from Cuba and worked for years on the Strip.

One of the study's authors, meanwhile, said he was not pulling for one side or the other in the immigration debate.

"In my study, I'm just trying to tell the story as it is ... (and) want us to look at how much we depend on immigrant workers and help decide what we should do from here on in," said Andrew Sum, researcher and director of the labor market center.

Sum said that he is not in favor of undocumented immigrants and that many immigration laws were ignored during the economic boom of the '90s.

"What happened was not in the interest of the native or immigrant workers -- we ignored the law for almost a decade," he said.

At the same time, he said, it seems clear that immigrants, both legal and illegal, filled a need during the period studied.

"How would we have filled the jobs without immigrants? I don't know," he said.

While Nevada's resorts would like to see immigrants have an easier time getting legal permission to work in the country, they don't hold out hope in the near future because of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"I'm not sure if we're ready for (reform) because the war on terrorism has really complicated the entire issue," Heffner said.

Manuel Castillo, meanwhile, will keep climbing onto roofs across the valley as long he keeps getting hired. A foreman because of his experience, Castillo said that many of the people who work in construction don't have papers. They get by with false ones, he said.

"I don't know why this government doesn't give all the immigrants who have worked and paid taxes here for years an amnesty, since it would help them also, giving them a way to know who everyone is and where they are."

And then he gathered up his crew's pizza boxes while they put out their cigarettes and headed off to fix leaks.