BigJournalism […] Bill in Alabama is a tower crane operator. “I bounce all over the country, major cities, Houston, Nashville, Miami,” he said. “It is just absolutely a regular thing to see jobs that are anywhere from 75 to 95 percent Hispanic, and a very large portion having an illegal component to it. In my particular situation, being a tower crane operator, it’s imperative we’ve got people on the other end of the radio that speak English, so they can understand how to guide the crane safely as well as doing the job on time and all that.”
“It’s a regular thing for us to get people on the radios that understand just the very, very minimum of English, enough to tell the crane to swing or move or whatever,” he continued. “If I was to say something like, ‘Look out — something’s falling down, get out of the way,’ their response most of the time would be to look up and say, ‘OK.’ And not understand a word of what I’m saying.” He continued
It’s what I’ve been preaching all along…these Illegals, ‘doing the jobs American’s won’t do’, are a bunch of dangerously non-skilled workers. The vast majority (at least 95%) are totally inept & what I would consider very dangerous on a construction site. They have to be constantly watched, constantly monitored. They are incommunicable, cannot read blueprints, do not comprehend rudimentary building techniques, cannot fathom specifications, building codes & construction laws. They are a menace & a danger to all of us.
Case in point: I once interviewed an ‘applicant’, clearly not a citizen of this country, for a civil inspector’s position. I asked him to name what he considered an accomplishment in his previous/present position. He stated, with pride, that he made the contractor sink pilings for the pending new highway bridge structures 100′ into the ground. The contractor argued that to reach bedrock they had to go 120′, thus adding time to the contract (time is money; especially in construction). The potential inspector bristled with pride that the specifications called for 100′ and no more, no less. I asked if the bedrock was 120′ as the contractor claimed. My Inspector candidate proudly announce it made no difference, the specifications called for 100′, & that’s what they should be regardless. My grading of this applicant was considerably low.
The next day, going to work, I heard on the radio that the bridges on the new Highway Connector Project all had to be re-piled due to the discovery that they did not reach bedrock.
Needless to say, that person was not hired.