Personal Injury Law

Work Comp - Work place injuries and immigrant worker rights

By Steve Lombardi

When did an honest day's work become a crime? If being a common laborer weren't tough enough, immigrant workers doing the work that our kids won't now have to worry about being arrested amass for visa violations. I for one am sick and tired of listening to immigrant workers get bad mouthed about working in this countrywhen all that they aredoing is an honest day's work for low wages. It's ridiculous that in a country where we have so much, we want to throw out those workers doing work even our children won't do. So let's do a roundup of the InjuryBoard.com posts and then you can let me vent over this issue.

I see that some of my colleagues on Injuryboard.com have taken up the torch and posted blawgs about the latest case involving workers' compensation benefits being owed to immigrant workers. Pat Jennings started it off discussing the South Carolina Supreme Court case that held in favor of providing workers compensation benefits for injured immigrants. There is a story about Texas construction accidents increasing due in part to the language barrier that persists on the job sites. And then there is a post titled, Deported Illegal Worker Wins Workers' Compensation Benefits, by Dan Deuterman. My favorite by far is that by Nick Avgerinos from Chicago. Read his post about workplace discrimination and breaking down barriers by speaking up for those without a voice.

Well stated, Nick. In speaking for those that dare not speak out, you are doing the American labor workers a great service. The profit margins for many industries are propped up on the backs of workers who ask little and have no freedom to speak up about abuses. I hear my friends and some family memberstalking disgracefully in accusing immigrants of "stealing our jobs." I look around my own neighborhood and see Spanish immigrants doing work my own kids refuse to do. Unless you want to cut grass, clean houses, landscape, work in the meat packing industry, or any of the other jobs our kids refuse to perform, then leave them alone. The immigrants do not shy away from hard work. My own children will not do the jobs that many people believe are being "stolen". They need to get a life and remember where their mother's, fathers and ancestors came from and what made this country great. Hard work was a cultural norm in this country. Now instead of Welcome Wagon, America drives up in "ICE" vans carting them away and treating immigrants as if they were criminals just for wanting to work hard.

Common sense seems to be a rare commodity these days. How intelligent is it for a generation that refuses to wear the same style of clothes for more than one season, to cover their bodies with tattoos? Wall Street executives who do little to increase shareholder value rake in multi-million dollar bonuses. Politicians grab hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to lie to us. And what do we do about it? Nothing. Maybe all of us whose kidsrefuse to do hard manual labor should adopt an immigrant. That would legalize one good worker and save ourselves tax dollars while getting the work done that this country needs to run properly. Then we should take the Wall Street criminalcrowd and instead of sentencing them to some posh "prison", put a wheel barrel and shovel in their hands sentencing them to hard labor. Lastly take the politicians and remove from them the need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions. Instead if ten run for mayor, then make the mayor's position a committee of ten. If 100 want to be senator, let 100 of them be senator but share one vote. The worse that could happen is that no new legislation would get passed; which sounds like an improvement.

So leave the immigrants who want to clean houses, mow lawns, plant sod and trees along with doing road repairs alone. Take my kids, PLEASE! Take my KIDS! I'll make it easy for you. I'll tell them it's the ICE cream truck.

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on June 07, 2008 (boomark / email).