Tom Gorman wonders if paying an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work makes him part of the ‘immigration problem’

Wednesday, March 29, 2006 | 7:13 a.m.

As the debate over immigration policy again takes center stage, you can imagine Mark Edwards salivating. He's a local radio talk-show host who rallies opposition to illegal immigrants.

Talk-show hosts thrive on fractious debate, and the illegal-immigrant issue is about as divisive as it gets.

Just look at Congress. The House is embracing the hard conservative position that illegal aliens are lawbreakers who don't deserve safe harbor. A liberal-leaning Senate committee wants to help illegal immigrants become citizens.

Over the past week, hundreds of thousands of people have rallied around the country in support of immigrants who have illegally crossed the border to improve their lives. Edwards referred to the marchers as "mobs." Talk show guys like being inflammatory.

Indeed, these are great days for commentators. Before his "on-air" light turns on in his radio booth at the downtown Plaza hotel, I bet Edwards feels like a thoroughbred race horse in the starting gate. Bring it on, baby! Bring it on!

Five nights a week on the 50,000-watt KDWN AM-720, Edwards' guests preach why illegal aliens are bad for Las Vegas and bad for the United States of America.

Meanwhile, Edwards' group, "Wake Up America," is striking out at day laborers who gather outside home improvement stores and nurseries looking to make a few honest bucks.

Among the group's tactics, Edwards said, is to photograph day laborers, whom he assumes to be illegal immigrants, as well as the people who pull up curbside to hire them.

"If you're someone who hires these people, we're going to photograph you and take down your license plate and your company sign if you have one on your vehicle."

For what purposes, I wondered.

"To see if you have a contractor's license. If you do, then I guess we can't take it much further," Edwards said. "But we want to make you and them nervous. Nobody likes their picture being taken."

He said the group then will post the photographs on the Internet. I went to his organization's Web site and didn't see any photos.

I told Edwards that I have hired day laborers. I pay them a good day's wage and feed them lunch.

Shame on me, Edwards said. I should go to the state employment center or put an ad in the newspaper when I need a day laborer. But that just wouldn't work. I hire these fellows at the last second, when Jeanne decides to give me a weekend honey-do list and I need help.

(I only wish these guys wouldn't swarm the vehicles that pull up because it is intimidating. Las Vegas should set up day-labor centers, as has been done in California, to organize the job-hunting chaos.)

I don't know if I'd be embarrassed or flattered to have my photo on the Internet after hiring a day laborer. It would show me hot and sweaty and wearing a dirty T-shirt. People would see a new side of me.

People like me are the root of the immigration problem, Edwards said, because we encourage and reward illegal immigrants with work. Even worse, he said, we are taking jobs away from U.S. citizens.

"These illegals are working everywhere," Edwards said. They've even taken over as grocery store baggers, depriving teenage U.S. citizens of those jobs, he said.

As a result, non-Hispanic teenagers who have lost their jobs to illegal aliens are, he said, "druggin' it on the streets, and living moment to moment."

I asked if I heard him right. Because illegal immigrants are working at Albertsons, Smith's and Vons, U.S.-born teenagers are now on the streets doing drugs? Excuse me?

"Maybe that's carrying it a little bit too far," he conceded. (Hyperbole goes a long way in the radio talk-show business, I guess, which makes it difficult to know what to believe and what to dismiss.)

Depending on how I wake up any given morning, I can argue either side of the debate on immigration policy.

But public policy aside, I will continue to respect human beings who are trying to improve their families' lives through honest work, regardless of what paper they carry - or don't carry - in their wallet.

I have never seen a Hispanic day laborer panhandle for money on a downtown sidewalk or a freeway off-ramp. Nor have I seen a non-Hispanic guy looking for work in front of Home Depot or the nursery.

So if I'm guilty of supporting the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, so be it. When I hire one, I don't ask if he's a U.S. citizen. I ask him if he'll work his butt off for some money.