THE US REPORT

Commentary by Kay B. Day

Lone gull at Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. (by Kay B. Day)If you think about it, there’s rich irony in more than a quarter of workers at the county courthouse allegedly filing false identification documents. The county courthouse in Jacksonville—the city that is, according to local lore, the largest in land mass in the mainland United States—has apparently become a hotbed for illegal workers.

There’s additional irony when official data is considered. The U.S. Dept. of Labor noted a 10.7 percent unemployment rate for Jacksonville as of September, 2009.

Construction jobs are jobs American citizens and legal guest workers would definitely like to have.

The company overseeing the project, Turner Construction, has done business in the U.S. for more than a century and has locations in more than a dozen states. Turner recently announced being selected by the U.S. Marine Corps to manage construction of the $109 Million bachelor enlisted quarters at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Turner said it’s been recognized as the nation’s largest builder of green, education, healthcare, sports and correctional facilities.

The Florida Times-Union said more than a dozen of the people arrested worked for a subcontractor, United Forming. UF’s corporate office is in Austell, Ga.

A spokesperson for the Jacksonville office of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection shed light on why the city is a target for illegal workers. By phone, the spokesperson told The US Report, “We’re a very large city...and there are a lot of construction jobs.”

A glance at the CBP Jacksonville web page gives an idea of the large amount of territory a single office must handle: The Jacksonville Border Patrol Station’s operational area covers 13,269 square miles and includes eighteen counties in the northeast area of Florida and two coastal counties in southeast Georgia. In addition to physical size, Jacksonville’s geographic location, with elements such as I-95 and the port, present opportunities like tourism and vulnerability like crime. It is difficult to understand why the federal government does not increase resources for CBP offices across the country. These are the officers on the front of line of national security.

The federal government subsidizes academic poetry and select dance troupes, via the National Endowment for the Arts. Under the administration of President George W. Bush, the feds increased educational spending on the federal level by more than 50 percent. But in October, some senators were so concerned about possibilities for budget cuts related to national security, they sent an official letter urging Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano to maintain the strength of border patrol agents. At the U.S. Senate website, a press release notes Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) asked Napolitano to provide a written response addressing recent border reports and her plans to tackle the concerns regarding border security.

The Florida Times-Union said authorities discovered “about 100 fake documents after looking at the paperwork the city started collecting three weeks ago to crack down on arrests of undocumented workers.”

The president of the North Florida Building and Construction Trades Council told the TU, “[T]he news about the false documents confirms what he already knew, even he was surprised there were 100.”

If those 100 workers with fake credentials took 100 jobs, that could knock 100 U.S. citizens out of jobs they would do. Considering the scope of the contractor and the subcontractor, it’s obvious there is a critical problem with worker documentation in the country. Such a problem also begs the question of national security—could a building be compromised deliberately? Such a problem also points out the vulnerability of entitlement programs—how much federal aid already goes to people in the country without legal documentation?

The Jacksonville courthouse dilemma is but one example that dispels the straw man myth suggesting illegal workers only take jobs that U.S. citizens and legal immigrants or guest workers will not do.