The Role of 7.2 Million Undocumented Workers

Dec. 11, 2007 — -- The dirt under Mike Mendenko's nails reveals more than his 52 years at Village Nurseries in Hightstown, N.J., where he has worked since he was a teenager.

As owner of a seven-acre tree farm and landscaping company, he's facing the toughest job of his life — finding workers. And if Mendenko challenged the fragile documentation of the workers he's got, he might have no business at all.

Immigration advocates say he is not alone. If all small-business owners did the same, whole industries — landscaping, restaurants and construction — might collapse.

For Mendenko, it's hard to compete against big-box retailers, and, it's even harder to find labor, especially as the debate over the role of immigrants has escalated in the presidential nomination campaign.

"Very few American folks are willing to do this kind of work anymore," said Mendenko, whose son left the nursery to study white-collar science at Cornell University. "We're desperate for the help."

Mendenko has stopped trying to find teenagers to do the backbreaking physical work. These days, he says he relies on a legal — "if you believe what people tell you" — immigrant work force.

Just last week, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney fired the undocumented Guatemalan landscapers who mowed his lawn and cleared the debris from his tennis court. The former Massachusetts governor has made illegal immigration central to his campaign message and has accused his opponents of being soft on the issue.

"Romney's own family is faced with the truth that most people in Massachusetts and the rest of the country already know," Ali Noorani, head of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, Massachusetts' largest pro-immigrant group, told the Boston Globe. "America runs on immigrants."

Republicans may have adopted softer tones at a debate televised by the nation's leading Spanish-language network Univision this week, but they still take a hard stand on border security.

Even the Democrats, who are pulling back some of the traditional Hispanic vote lost in recent years to the Republicans, are taking a tough stance.

"I have to believe these candidates know better, but they are willing to say anything to get elected," said Craig Regelbrugge, vice president for government relations for the American Nursery and Landscape Association.