November 08, 2007

Washington Post: "How to Hire a Day Laborer" (Gary Jacobsen)

The Washington Post explicitly supports illegal immigration, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that on October 7 they printed a short article called "How to Hire a Day Laborer" by Gary Jacobsen, who's also a columnist for the Potomac News, a former Marine Corps colonel, and a former low-level college professor (mysite.verizon.net/resqxf3p). Chris Core from Washington DC radio station WMAL proceeded to discuss the column on the air, apparently accusing Jacobsen of hiring illegal aliens. Now, Jacobsen is suing for defamation:

On the show, Core said that, in his column, Jacobsen "admitted to breaking the law concerning the hiring of illegal immigrants," Jacobsen said...

"I never said 'illegal aliens;' I said 'day laborers.' A day laborer could be a college kid trying to earn extra money," Jacobsen said...

He's right about that. On the other hand, the location where he picked them up is apparently a famous day laborer hangout (the 7-Eleven at Prince William Parkway and U.S. Route 1), and they seem to have conducted their entire conversation in Spanish. Now, certainly they could be Spanish-monolingual people who are here legally, and they could be among the 25% or so of day laborers who are not illegal aliens. But, someone who's familiar with his "work" says:

However, Gary rarely refers to "illegal" when discussing illegal immigrants. He accuses his opponents of being "anti-immigrant," or "anti-Hispanic." Last week he claimed the Board voted to "withhold services from immigrants," rather than "illegal immigrants." Last month he said calling illegal immigrants criminals was false.

The last also points out that what he obtained was a false bargain, for instance if his workers had been injured or had botched the job. A contractor in the comments on the WaPo story makes a similar point, ending with this only slightly over the top comment:

Too bad for Mr. Jacobsen slavery was abolished; he might have only been out the paint and the lunch.

We probably are never going to find out whether those he hired are here illegally (and he might not have been required to ask them or file other paperwork), but one thing is clear: the Washington Post is trying to mainstream acceptance of wide-spread illegal activity and trying to encourage short-sighted folks like Jacobson to profit from it.

Related:
Judi Hasson/MSNBC: how to hire (most likely illegal) day labor

Posted to Immigration2007b at November 8, 2007 10:28 AM