[fabsroman]

Okay, I seriously doubt that the immigrants were IMPORTED by the contractor to specifically do the work. More likely the immigrants were already here and they were willing to do the work because they had nothing else to do.

My granite counter top fabrication client hires legal immigrants for about $10 an hour. Some of his employees only take home $700 every two weeks, which I have no idea how they live on. His secretary/bookkeeper is making $28,000 a year, clearing about $1,050 every two weeks, and her rent is $1,400 a month. I have no idea how she makes ends meet.

I will agree that the illegals are taking many skilled jobs away from the legal americans, first generation immigrant or otherwise. The workmanship is utterly terrible too. Now, I also think the workmanship of most of these hispanic immigrants is pretty crappy. My granite client had to have his guys cut the same slab 3 times because they screwed up twice. First time they cut it too short. Second time they drilled the sink holes in the wrong place, and the third time they got it right. He also gets a lot of complaints about the quality of work done, yet clients come to him because he is the cheapest in town. You get what you pay for. Before I knew this client of mine, I hired a friend of my dad's to do my kitchen counter tops in granite, who was also a first generation hispanic immigrant. He came over and measured the counter top and I told him that one measurement was critical because it was the key to making everything fit right. I checked the measurement on the sheet and it was right. I called him the day before he was going to cut the slab and confirmed the measurement with his daughter. The slab arrives and that measurement was 3/4" of an inch too big. I had to end up cutting out the drywall to slide the slab in and it doesn't line up evenly with the stove. On top of that, they scratched my new stove. I wasn't happy. The same guy put the granite counter top in my brother's place and he didn't put a steel reinforcement bar where the sink cutout is. Guess what, the granite slab cracked right there while they were installing it. I would have returned it, but my dad, who was doing the remodel, accepted it.

The granite client also had his employees paint a granite tile display white in the shop. The walls around the display are green, and there was a ton of white paint strokes all over the green paint. It has been there for months now and I cringe every time I go down there and see it.

I think they have a completely different idea of what is good workmanship. To them, these places look great compared to what they came from in Latin America. However, to us the workmanship is sub par. The customer service is also a little bit lacking with these guys. Initially, my client could not understand why people would get pissed at him when he showed up two hours late for an estimate appointment. I think he is finally starting to understand (i.e., some people just left the house and he made the trip for nothing).

The way new homes are built using the stick built method is utterly insane. My deck was missing half the nails it should have had in it, and in some places finishing nails were used where normal head nails should have been used. However, I don't know if the guys doing the deck were immigrants or not.