Massachusetts governor, presidential hopeful and outspoken opponent of illegal immigration Mitt Romney employed undocumented workers for eight years, paying them cash and having them work 11-hour days. Perhaps this will be the new trend, like stridently anti-gay Republican officials who turn out to like a little penis themselves.
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Having to pay them cash should’ve been a BIG hint that they weren’t legal. Otherwise I’d say it’s the responsibility of company Romney hired to police their legality.
If the laws were seriously and consistently implemented and steep penalties were levied against violator companies- with the jobs dried up the problem would be more manageable. Additionally I don’t see why the Social Security Agency can’t provide Immigration and Customs Enforcement with lists of the hits they get for bad Social Security Numbers- so they can go to the source (employer and employee).
The employees told the Globe that company owner Ricardo Saenz never asked them to provide documents showing their immigration status and knew they were illegal immigrants.
“He never asked for papers,” said Rosales, who said he had paid smugglers about $5,000 to take him across the US-Mexican border and settled in Chelsea.
The workers said they were paid in cash at $9 to $10 an hour and sometimes worked 11-hour days.
Romney never inquired about their status, they said.
He hired a company that hired illegal immigrants. BIG difference.
I don’t know that I’m buying it. He’s got guys working at his house for eight years that don’t speak English and he doesn’t suspect anything? I say at best the man turned a blind eye.
Now if I said that in any other situation you know people wouldn’t wait to start calling me racist.
I’ll buy a blind eye, but your post is implying that he knew full well and was personally paying these guys under the table when that was not the case.
I-9 violations that were never followed up on (in terms of the company never asking for documentation)
A person would think that someone like Romney, who wants to be President, and was Governor of Massechussets, would want to avoid the slightest appearance of impropriety
Lots of people for lesser jobs have been not hired or fired when the truth came out about them hiring undocumented workers.
I think it is highly unlikely he didn’t know their status. He put it out of his mind thinking he was getting away with it.
I’m with TravlMn. When companies ask to be paid in cash and they have nothing but guys who don’t speak English working for them then it’s a good bet something hinky’s going on. At the very least it should raise some issues re accounting practices.
Nah, I don’t think so. That’s the sort of common-sense matter where I generally part company with a lot of liberals. The fact that their primary language was (reportedly) not English doesn’t mean that they are undocumented workers, but if you’re governor (or intend to be), it’s the sort of thing you might want to look into.
I never stated or implied in the blog entry that he was aware that these guys were undocumented, though of course I did in my followup comment. Romney, I see via the AP, just issued his first statement on it, saying that he had no idea.
“””stridently anti-gay Republican officials who turn out to like a little penis themselves.”””
So size doesn’t matter after all, at least among closeted gay Republicans.
Or it does…
Is that what the article said? I thought it was saying the company was paying its employees in cash, not that it was asking its clients to pay in cash.
At any rate, this is silly, and Waldo’s summary is deceptive. The guy hired a company that hired illegal immigrants. I guess we should check to see if he’s dined at any restaurants that employed illegals to bus tables. Maybe some of the furniture in his house was assembled by illegals. Dig, people, dig!!
The only statement made about this in the article is:
It seems unclear. Fortunately, there are probably dozens of other articles that have been written about this since that are probably a lot clearer.
You’re drawing a parallel between Romney’s hire and relationships that are entirely dissimilar in an attempt to provide distance that did not actually exist. His workers were not removed from him in the sense of people that bus your tables or assemble your furniture — we do not interact with these people, and generally do not even have an opportunity to see them.
In the case of workers at one’s home, the company is a mere abstraction, a legal formality — these people worked for Romney, even if their pay did go through a third party. If somebody spent 11 hours at my home for just one day, I suspect that I would get to know the rudiments of his life. If he did this for eight years, I should know him very well, indeed.
Either Romney is lying, he turned a blind eye, or he is such a callous ass that he failed to learn even the most basic elements of his own home’s servants.