n increasing numbers, Hispanic immigrants are putting down roots in the Roanoke Valley. They're pouring concrete, opening hair salons and filling classrooms. Some employers, meanwhile, are attributing their success to this new labor pool. In this occasional series, The Roanoke Times explores the local impact of the national debate about immigration.
During a busy Friday night dinner waiter Jesus Malaga serves an armload of food to their Anglo customers. Malaga came to America four years ago from Mexico and, like many Mexican immigrants in Roanoke, first landed a job at El Rodeo.
Efforts to close giant loophole
That’s the way it’s worked since the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, a law that made it illegal to hire unauthorized workers — but was never enforced against employers.
The law’s wording gave companies a loophole they could drive a bulldozer through: Immigration authorities had to prove an employer “knowingly” hired illegal workers.
As long as the immigrants’ documents were a reasonable facsimile of the real thing, the employer was in the clear.
President Bush has proposed expanding the Basic Pilot program, a now-voluntary initiative that allows employers to verify workers’ eligibility by checking the personal information provided by new hires against federal databases.
The U.S. House of Representatives, as part of its attempt to revamp immigration laws, has proposed a mandatory version of Basic Pilot that would employ an automated phone service, with cost estimates of $11.7 billion per year.
Gallery 
Marco Giron of McNeil Roofing works on a repair job at the Virginia Museum of Transportation.
But implementing such a program would take years, according to Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian public-policy foundation in Washington, D.C.
“The Pilot program has had its share of problems already,” Griswold said. “It’s not led to a whole lot of apprehensions. And even if you catch 1,000 illegal workers, that’s about the number that are coming in every day, so you haven’t made any real progress.”
Nationwide, one in four roofers is an illegal immigrant, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. For construction workers, that number is one in seven.
“If we were able to seal the border and kick out every undocumented worker, it would be a disaster for important industries in Roanoke and throughout the country,” Griswold added. “Without Hispanics, there are industries that literally can’t find enough workers to meet the needs of their customers.”
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