Cesar is a 42-year-old refrigeration repairman from Costa Rica who came to Baton Rouge 14 years ago on a tourist visa with his wife and then 5-year-old daughter. Though the visa expired long ago, Cesar and his family are still here.
In the years since, a son’s birth enlarged the family. Cesar—who asked Business Report that his last name not be used in its new cover story on the national immigration debate and its local impact in order to protect his identity—has found work as a handyman. He has gotten a driver’s license from the state and a tax ID number from the IRS. His son, now 10 and a U.S. citizen, attends a local magnet school. His daughter goes to community college. The family has a good life here, much better than the one they left behind.
Still, Cesar, his wife and daughter are illegal immigrants—three of an estimated 65,000 or so in Louisiana who stand to gain temporary legal status and work permits under the terms of President Barack Obama’s recent executive action. From Cesar’s perspective, the president’s action is a godsend—a long-awaited reprieve from years of worry that will enable him to work legally in the country he has come to regard as home.
“I am happy now,” he says. “I am ready for it.”
Many others are not. The new Republican-controlled Congress has threatened to overturn Obama’s action. Nearly half the states in the U.S. are challenging it in court, and immigration has become one of the polarizing hot-button issues of the day.
Here in the Capital Region, business leaders and those who deal daily with immigrant workers—whether documented or not—have a more pragmatic approach to what they say is an extremely complex situation.
As a matter of principle, they generally oppose Obama’s executive action on the grounds that it is of questionable constitutionality. On the other hand, they need people such as Cesar to work at their farms, in their plants and on their job sites. Immigrants are willing and able to do such work. Local people are not. The issue, as these business leaders see it, is not what to do with illegal immigrants but rather how to get more legal immigrants into the country.
“We’d love to train a bunch of Louisiana workers, but we don’t have them,” says Ken Naquin, CEO of Louisiana Associated General Contractors. “How do you attract a young person to a job that is dirty, wet, cold or hot? We have to find our workers from somewhere.”
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