Labor Pool: Who's To Blame For Illegal Hiring?
Contractors skate by in Milford undocumented labor case
He grew up in desperate poverty in a tiny community in Ecuador and started working at nine to help feed his family. He came to the U.S. and worked as a day laborer, and by the time he was 30 he had started his own roofing company, Same Day Roofing in Milford.
Extended Family
Frances Nolivo, an organizer with the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said Tacuri was a central figure in Milford's isolated Ecuadoran community, inviting others to his house for coffee and dinner and hiring many of them to work for him. Many of his employees were also relatives or people Tacuri's family knew well in Ecuador.
Now, Tacuri is in jail after pleading guilty earlier this month to 38 counts of harboring and hiring fellow Ecuadorians who, like Tacuri himself, are illegal immigrants. His lawyer, Raymond A. O'Hara of Worcester, said that when Tacuri is sentenced in July, he may face as much as 15 months in jail, and he will certainly be deported whenever he gets out.
âHe will never be living free on the streets of this country again,â he said.
To some, that may be a relief. Tacuri clearly broke the law, first by coming to the country at all and then by hiring and housing at least 18 other illegal immigrants, including three juveniles. It seems likely he paid them under the table, though both O'Hara and Nolivo said he was known for paying good wages. If that's the case, it was good for the workers, but the IRS tends to frown on such activities.
Tacuri also did well for himself. When he was arrested in a December raid, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seized four vans and a truck, plus a three-family house that he bought in 2006 for $470,000, apparently including a down payment of more than $100,000.
But blaming Tacuri alone seems to miss a big chunk of the story. O'Hara said Tacuri, who is illiterate and speaks no English, depended on American-owned companies, mainly from the Boston area, to subcontract jobs to Same Day Roofing.
Hard Work
O'Hara said the jobs that went to Same Day tended to be the ones that the American companies didn't want to do, because they were in remote locations in New England or particularly difficult.
O'Hara also said it's hard to imagine that the American companies didn't know they were getting undocumented labor, but they may not have had any legal duty to make sure Tacuri and his workers were allowed to work for them.
A representative of the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's Office said she cannot say whether anyone else will be charged in the case and cannot discuss the office's policies on when to charge companies for hiring illegal workers.
Ronald N. Cogliano, president and CEO of the Merit Construction Alliance, which represents nonunion construction companies, said he doesn't think the hiring of undocumented workers - either directly or indirectly - is widespread in the industry.
âI don't think it's that common of a practice,â he said. âI believe that they're few and far between.â
Cogliano said it can be hard to keep track of how subcontractors conduct business, but he said companies that want to can do the paperwork to provide some assurance that workers are legal.
âI know that many of our guys on the general contractor side will stipulate that any of their subs have these provisions in place,â he said. âUnfortunately there's bad apples everywhere.â
When Tacuri was arrested, O'Hara said, some of the American-owned companies apparently owed Same Day Roofing a lot of money, which leaves Tacuri owing others.
âIt's just a cascading waterfall of woe,â O'Hara said. âHe came to this country with nothing and he's going to leave the country owing people money probably."
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