how stuff works: illegal employment

picture your average usa city with a huge construction project, crawling with workers. the city hires a contractor for the job, and the contractor subcontracts each part. for example, joe smith is the contractor and he hires sally jones company as the concrete subcontractor. sally jones company sub-subcontracts different concreting jobs to johnny green, johnny blue, and johnny red.

on monday, johnny green shows up with a crew of 8 guys and mixes, measures, pours, smooths, and finishes the concrete for all the sidewalks on the east side of the huge construction project. johnny pays his workers $50 each, cash. johnny green wants his $400 back, so johnny bills sally jones who bills joe smith who bills the city. city pays joe pays sally pays johnny who has already paid his crew $50 cash each for the day, so johnny keeps $400.

johnny and his crew show up again on tuesday and they're going to do the sidewalks on the west side of huge construction project but someone gives ol' johnny boy the heads up that officer krupke is on his way to have a li'l looksee, so johnny gives his crew the day off without pay and pours the concrete himself. when office krupke stops by to ask ol' johnny why's he working alone, johnny says he likes to work alone. office krupke asks how'd johnny get the east side sidewalks done all on his lonesome. johnny says, i work fast, that's all.

johnny green's crew is undocumented and he pays them cash. when johnny submits the invoice to sally, johnny doesn't tell her he had a crew and sally doesn't ask. nobody checks the paperwork of the sub-subcontracted concrete crew on the east side sidewalk job. wahlah, illegal employees on the huge construction project.

my carpoolmate was a bit vague on the details but said there was a raid at the real live local huge construction project and "that day only 28 out of 100 people on that part showed up." i said, well duh, that's because they were illegal. she was trying to convince me there would be a paper trail for the officials to follow if they would just get off their butts and follow it. she was convinced that the mythical johnny green would have paperwork for his crew, although the paper might be falsified. i said, no, that's the whole point - there is no paper trail. un-docu-mented. she was rather insistent - yes, they have to fill out an i-9. i was like, no they don't. she kind of kept saying i-9, and i took stock of the situation and you know, she was driving, so at that point i let it go.

[raids are often done by INS and illegals are often immigrants, but not always on either count. and, just because someone's a citizen doesn't mean it's okay to pay them in cash and not report it.]