Deprived of American dream, immigrants still helping city recover
Drive along the streets in Meyerland — where sidewalks still spill of worldly possessions, and the air reeks of rot and Clorox — and you likely will spot another fixture: Crews of Spanish-speaking workers, many undocumented, doing the heavy lifting.
People like Roberto Vidales, a 34-year-old carpenter in a red Texans T-shirt. He was washing his plastic lunch container outside a white brick house during a brief break from demolition work Tuesday afternoon.
Vidales, who is undocumented, said he takes pride in helping families with the grittiest work, but the good feelings are mixed with grim thoughts: worry, fear and the sense that he’s increasingly unwelcome in a country where the president talks of walls and deportation. Just this week, Vidales followed the news as President Donald Trump announced a plan to rescind an Obama-era protection for immigrants who were brought to this country illegally as children. The protections, known as DACA or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, end in six months unless Congress decides to replace them.
“So many people have so much work, it’s unbelievable,” said Vidales, who said he was removing molding wood and sodden sheetrock from a house where he had nearly finished a remodeling job before the flood. “If they try to take us out of here, they won’t have enough people to finish the work.”
A few blocks away, Mauricio Guevara, an undocumented worker who came here 13 years ago from El Salvador, was toiling with a crew of five to remove flooded debris. He said it was the fourth house he had helped empty.
“It’s really dirty, grimy work,” he said. “There’s no one who works as hard as we do. We shouldn’t be punished for it.”
Just then, the woman who hired him emerged in near panic, anxiously motioning for him to get back to work. There was no time for an interview when the mold in her house was growing.
Yes, Houston is being rebuilt by families, neighbors, volunteers and religious groups — but also by the hands and the sweat of people who otherwise live in the shadows. These people who are deprived of the American dream even as they help many in Houston begin to recover theirs. ‘We’re always worried’
It’s a reality many in Houston refuse to see, or acknowledge publicly, but that leaders in the construction industry know all too well.
“We will never be able to rebuild Houston without the undocumented workers already living within our city,” says Stan Marek, who runs a family-owned construction firm and has been a tireless advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. “The problem at hand is that most employers will be unable to hire them because of their status.”
But many will hire them, and the workers who can be found will do the work in a system where they will be exploited. They will have access to no insurance if they’re hurt, they will work long hours with no overtime pay, and they will have no one to turn to if they’re not paid at all, says Marek.
Vidales has worked his whole life in this world, growing up in Tomball and Sugar Land, and getting by on the carpentry skills his dad and uncles taught him in the summers growing up.
He has made a decent living, he says, enough to provide for his three kids. And he gets along well with those who hire him in The Woodlands, Sugar Land and parts of Houston.
But these days, Vidales says he can’t help but wonder if the people he’s helping at reduced rates voted for Trump. And often, he doesn’t have to wonder. Some proudly sport Trump signs and speak openly of their support for the president. Vidales keeps his mouth shut, he says, and just keeps working.
But one word lingers in his mind — “hypocrite.”
The same people who may support Trump’s tough immigration policies don’t bother to ask his status, he says.
“They just want to get the job done, and that’s it,” he said. “They’re calling us to say ‘will you please give me a quote?’ They’re calling us because no other American that’s white will go over there.”
And, as they shake his hand and pay him in cash, they probably never consider the risk he takes to simply make a living.
“They don’t know what we’re going through,” he said. “We’re always worried, looking in our mirrors every time there’s a cop — nervous, even though we’re not doing anything bad.”
Vidales said his mother brought him to the United States from Mexico when he was 6 months old. He thought about applying for DACA but feared divulging his status and personal information to a government that could one day turn on him.
“I was scared,” he said. “And now, I’m glad I didn’t sign up.” Principle or people?
He says he was frequently reminded as a youngster that he wasn’t from here. Some kids in school called him “Mexican beaner,” but he says America is the only country he’s known.
He feels American; he feels a kinship with the people he works for. But he doesn’t understand their support for a leader who disparages people whose only sin is seeking a better life.
“It’s hard to look at the president and say, ‘That’s my president,’ ” he said.
Truth be told, it’s hard for many of us. This is a land of opportunity, and also of laws. But when the laws are flawed to the point of broken, when they’re unfair to the point of un-American, we have to ask ourselves what comes first — principle or people?
It’s up to Congress now to find a solution for young, law-abiding immigrants who came here through no fault of their own, known as Dreamers. As our elected leaders debate, they should remember the contributions of all of those toiling alongside us, American in spirit if not on paper.
They include dreamers Jesus Contreras, a DACA recipient and Houston paramedic who helped scores of people over six days during Harvey flooding, and Alonso Guillen, a volunteer who died during a rescue.
But they also include immigrants like Vidales, those with no special status, only a willingness to do the work no one else wants to do. It’s time to give them the dignity and respect they deserve, the kind that can only be found in comprehensive immigration reform.
That will take time, of course. But honesty takes only mere seconds. Enough with the hypocrisy. We need these workers. Right now, they’re digging Houston out of the worst flood in American history. The least we can do is offer them a path out of the shadows.