ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
Texas talks big and tough on immigration. In 2021, Republican Governor Greg Abbott announced Operation Lone Star, which sent the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety to the Southern border. The next year, Texas started bussing migrants out of state. In 2023, lawmakers passed a bill making illegal immigration a violation of state law. And Abbott added razor wire on the border and floating barriers in the Rio Grande. And this year, the governor ordered hospitals to ask patients their immigration status, ostensibly to collect information on costs.
And yet, reports Jack Herrera in Texas monthly, the market for undocumented workers in Texas and across America is thriving. His latest piece is titled "The Border Crisis Won't Be Solved At The Border," and he joins us now. Jack Herrera, thanks for being with us.
JACK HERRERA: Thanks for having me on.
WESTERVELT: So it's estimated nearly a quarter of all construction laborers nationwide are undocumented. You take a hard look at the Texas construction industry, which is booming. How reliant are Texas builders on undocumented workers? And, you know, how are they able to find them when the state is so active in trying to stop and to penalize people who come into the U.S. illegally?
HERRERA: Yeah, well, I think when I first started visiting construction sites, it was obvious that a significant number of construction workers in Texas were undocumented. And we have data from Nationwide showing it's at least a fourth of workers, but it seems much higher in Texas. A survey conducted about 10 years ago by Workers Defense Project visited sites in cities like Dallas and Houston and El Paso, surveyed workers, asked them their legal status, and more than half said they were undocumented. Texas, the legislature and Governor Abbott have put up razor wire and barriers all along the Rio Grande. But time and time again, year after year, they have not put up any barriers between workers and the companies trying to hire them.
WESTERVELT: So they're getting tough at the border, but in the interior, they're kind of looking the other way?
HERRERA: That's exactly right. For instance, in the last legislative session, you see a whole raft of bills make it to Abbott's desk, and he signs off on SB 4, which might even enable Texas to force people to deport themselves by threatening them with prison time and adds more resources towards patrolling and policing the border.
But what's interesting are the bills that did not reach Abbott's desk, This year, you see a collection of bills actually that seek to implement E-Verify in the state, and this is the federal program that helps employers guarantee that their workers have legal status. You saw two attempts to mandate E-Verify, and both of them fail in the Republican-controlled state House. In some instances, Republicans voted against the bills in committee, and when they were taken to the floor, you never saw a vote. And what the reporting there was, was that there weren't enough Republican votes to pass it.
WESTERVELT: Jack, your story includes an outspoken contrarian Texas construction CEO named Stan Marek, who's sort of blown the whistle on the industry's reliance on undocumented workers and lobbies for immigration reform. What are some of the things that he's proposing as a solution?
HERRERA: It all basically comes down to an idea called tax and ID. If workers are here and they're already working, let's not solve a problem by creating another problem. Let's let them keep working, but they're going to get a tamper-proof ID, get in the system, and they're going to pay taxes and potentially back taxes. But as long as they're in the system, they're paying taxes, they can get, at the very least, temporary work status.
WESTERVELT: Jack, why does construction seem to be such a tough immigration nut to crack? I mean, E-Verify and taxes - those aren't impossible things, I mean, even if you exclude bad employers who just want to exploit cheaper-than-legal market labor.
HERRERA: I think the conventional wisdom is that employers are hiring them because these workers can be paid less, and you don't have to offer them workman's comp or protections, and if anyone complains on the job, you can threaten to call ICE. But as our country's gotten richer over the last 20 years and as blue-collar wages have fallen behind, the number of Americans going into the manual trades - carpentry, all the trades associated with construction - has plummeted, and so the only real way to staff these projects is to get immigrant workers. The problem is the legal immigration system can't keep up with demand. And so it's undocumented workers who are coming to fill that need. So what we're looking at is an economic system that expects them, relies on them, even recruits them for these jobs.
WESTERVELT: Immigration has been a huge issue in this presidential election. Kamala Harris says she wants to revive a bipartisan border security bill and try to find a pathway to citizenship for people already here without documents. Donald Trump has promised mass deportations. I mean, what does the situation in Texas tell you about those two very competing notions?
HERRERA: Yeah. I mean, I think that there's an impulse of people, including among immigrants who are here with legal status, to say, hey, if you're going to come work a job, get in line. Like, don't cut the line. So I think that there is a conversation to be had about the fairness of undocumented workers working jobs. But however you feel about that situation, if it upsets you or not, Texas and states around the country don't have an alternative to this workforce. If you want to keep building houses in Austin and Dallas and Houston, if you want to keep trying to avoid the worst of the housing crisis that's affecting Texas and every other state, you need these workers. So it really comes down to this. You can have mass deportation, or you can build new houses. That's really the trade-off here.
WESTERVELT: That's Jack Herrera. His piece "The Border Crisis Won't Be Solved At The Border" is in November's Texas Monthly. Jack, good to talk with you.
HERRERA: Great to be on. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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