Romney’s Company Bain Capitol Selling America Out To Chinese CompanyPosted in February 4th, 2008 | Editby William Landers in Connecticut, Economy, Mike Huckabee, Politics, William Landers, religionSeveral years ago this would have been considered treason. He was going to put our army, navy, air force and marines in danger.
HUNTER CALLS ON ROMNEY TO OPPOSE BAIN PARTNERSHIP WITH CHINESE COMPANY
HUNTER CALLS ON ROMNEY TO OPPOSE BAIN PARTNERSHIP WITH CHINESE COMPANY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 2, 2007
CONTACT: Gary Becks (619) 334-1655, dlhunter08@yahoo.com
San Diego, CA - - - Presidential candidate and current Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Duncan Hunter, today called on former Governor Mitt Romney to send a “clear statement” to the leadership of the company he founded, Bain Capital, to terminate a proposed business deal with a controversial Chinese corporation seeking to acquire U.S. defense contractor 3COM. Bain Capital is attempting to form a business arrangement with Huawei Corporation, a Chinese corporation founded by an officer of the Peoples Liberation Army of Communist China, which faces allegations of assisting Saddam Hussein in the targeting of U.S. aircraft and in helping the Taliban develop surveillance equipment.
“I am extremely concerned that Governor Romney’s company would tout a highly suspect Chinese corporation as a strategic partner,” stated Hunter. “Forming a business partnership with a corporation known to have direct ties with terrorists and dictators while, at the same time, openly seeking to acquire a major U.S. corporation that performs vital cyber security work for the Department of Defense, can only be characterized as irresponsible.”
A resolution has been introduced in Congress, H.Res. 730, which states; “The preponderance of publicly available evidence clearly suggests that as currently structured, the proposed transaction involving Huawei threatens the national security of the United States and should not be approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States .” A copy of this resolution is provided.
Hunter stated in his letter to Governor Romney, “…while it is true that you no longer control Bain Capital, the contributions you have received from its principals as its founding member indicate that your influence within the company remains strong.
“Further, while the Committee on Foreign Investment has yet to rule on the Huawei transaction, this corporation’s connection to Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and the Army of Communist China should clearly disqualify them from becoming, in the words of your former company, “a strategic partner” in acquiring a U.S. firm such as 3COM, which performs vital cyber-security work for the U.S. Department of Defense.
“This letter is a request that you immediately issue a statement of policy that this transaction should be terminated on the grounds of national security. Please let me know what you intend to do.”
A copy of Congressman Hunter’s letter, as well as two articles regarding Huawei acquisition efforts are provided. Media are encouraged to contact Gary Becks at (619) 334-1655 for additional information or to arrange an interview with Hunter.
Showing posts with label 08. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 08. Show all posts
Monday, February 4, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Huckabee's Fans Work From The Heart
Huckabee's Fans Work From The Heart
Bill O'Brien of Wolcott, Nick D'Amato of Hamden, and John DelVento of Torrington hold signs for Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee during a rally outside Hartford's XL Center Saturday before the start of the UConn basketball game. (MARK MIRKO / February 2, 2008)
| Courant Staff Writer
A stiff wind, overcast skies and chilly temperatures couldn't stop LeJeune and his fellow Huckabee supporters. As state voters gear up for Tuesday's presidential primary and numerous national campaigns and operatives descend on Connecticut to get out the vote, LeJeune said his campaigning on Saturday — a grass-roots, local volunteer effort — was meant to generate energy among fellow voters. "Ours doesn't come from money, ours comes from our heart," William Landers of Wallingford said of the Huckabee campaign effort.Landers, LeJeune and the other Huckabee supporters wound their way through the streets of downtown Hartford waving at cars, distributing literature and promoting their candidate. Landers, who owns a landscaping and masonry business in Windsor Locks, filled the streets with chants of "We Like Mike!"LeJeune, a South Windsor entrepreneur who owns an information technology business, said he hoped to persuade voters to consider Huckabee, whom he called a good fit for Connecticut's voters and values. But he also hoped to get Connecticut residents thinking about one of the most important elections in history, he said.He found plenty of Connecticut residents just a short hike from Bushnell Park. As thousands of basketball fans descended on downtown Hartford for UConn's Saturday afternoon game with Pittsburgh, LeJeune's band of Huckabee supporters worked the crowd.
They were joined by others stumping for their presidential candidates. Placards and posters from candidates ranging from Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to Republican candidate Ron Paul were spotted around the XL Center Saturday afternoon.
Tim White, a Cheshire town council member who also stumped on behalf of Paul's presidential campaign outside the center, said his group's grass-roots effort was about increasing recognition and spreading interest in their candidate.
"Look," LeJeune said, "you can't buy passion in an election."
What a great story from the Hartford Currant making the head lines of the Connecticut section.
The story appeared above Obama and Clinton.
I am so honored by the Hartford Currant.
Also News Channel 3 . Who ran it the Huckabee Rally at 6 and 11 P.M on Saturday Feb. 2nd. and Also 5, 6, and 7 a.m. Sunday the 3rd 2008.
This is truly makes me have hope that the News can not be control completly by News corp. and Wall Street both owned by the same.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
THE TRUTH ABOUT MITT ROMNEY
Mitt Romney is strict with illegal immigrants, only if he or his fellow corporate ( million-billionaires ) are not using them. Mitt Romney did nothing to stop illegal immigration during his role as liberal leader of MASS.You might ask why I say liberal leader. Well during Mitt Romney’s leadership the state of Mass was the forefront for gay marriage. Never had in the history of Mass, did so many companies leave the state, close up their operations and move them over seas, work visa programs increased 60%, illegal immigration increased 70%, and unemployment increased 90%.
The unemployment was replaced with the following:
The results $15 to $25 hr jobs these Mass residents enjoyed for many years turned into $5.50 to $10 an hr. Walmart, McDonald’s, and other job types like that, with no benefits.
Connecticut had to bail Mitt Romney out by providing better paying jobs for Mass residents.
Mass residents had to use state funded health care that was being paid by the employers before. The hospitals had lines 10 hrs long to get a basic health care dealt with.
The tax payers had to pay for Mitt’s buddies who sold out the state of Mass. and reaped huge profits.
When the citizens finally got rid of Mitt Romney there is now a law requiring employers to pay for health care for all employees in Mass. The huge lines to get health care are now gone and the Mass. residences are now healthy and happier.
Mitt Romney knowingly had contributed to illegal immigration. He knew that the worker who had been there many times was caught before working illegally on his lawn. He said he talk to the company yet the company for years sent the same guy back who was caught.
I ask you this, if you are that naive and as governor you do not know who is on your lawn and interacting with your family. Then you would never know who is coming into the USA taking all the jobs in America. I should say you and your rich friends know but do not care as long as you can reap the rewards of slaving (working slaves) humans, while selling out your fellow Americans.
John McCain and Rudy Giuliani share similar views.
John McCain wants to give amnesty to illegal immigrants and increase work visa programs. Which will costs the remainder of good paying jobs while those same people lose their homes and China companies buy them up.
Rudy Giuliani and his rich elite want to keep free trade with China and increase goods made there, he thinks it is a good thing, (LOL).
Giuliani will end all manufacturing in the USA and cause this country to go into a depression so him and his rich buddies and buy themselves some young wives.
Ron Paul is just simply a hater of anything good.
Fred Thomson is one of the bush rich elite pack. Nice trophy wife Fred. How many deals with the devil did that take.
The only one of the group who has been honest and has his entire life served the poor and middle class, has been Mike Huckabee. Strange isn’t it they are freaking out he is beating them. I guess since Mike , is more like Teddy Roosevelt who brought America out of the great depression and raised the quality of life in America is a bad thing for that rich elite.
SUCHITEPEQUEZ, Guatemala — Outside his aqua-colored concrete house here, Rene Alvarez Rosales paused under an almond tree to answer questions about a subject with which he has surprising familiarity: Governor Mitt Romney’s Belmont lawn.
For about eight years, Rosales said, he worked on and off landscaping the grounds at Romney’s home, occasionally getting a “buenos dias” from Romney or a drink of water from his wife, Ann.
“She is very nice,” said Rosales, 49.
About 6 miles away in Copado, a 37-year-old man who recently returned to Guatemala from the United States told a similar story, describing long days tending Romney’s 2 1/2-acre grounds.
“They wanted that house to look really nice,” said the worker, who asked to remain anonymous. “It took a long time.”
As Governor Mitt Romney explores a presidential bid, he has grown outspoken in his criticism of illegal immigration. But, for a decade, the governor has used a landscaping company that relies heavily on workers like these, illegal Guatemalan immigrants, to maintain the grounds surrounding his pink Colonial house on Marsh Street in Belmont.
The Globe recently interviewed four current and former employees of Community Lawn Service with a Heart, the tiny Chelsea-based company that provides upkeep of Romney’s property. All but one said they were in the United States illegally.
The employees told the Globe that company owner Ricardo Saenz never asked them to provide documents showing their immigration status and knew they were illegal immigrants.
“He never asked for papers,” said Rosales, who said he had paid smugglers about $5,000 to take him across the US-Mexican border and settled in Chelsea.
The workers said they were paid in cash at $9 to $10 an hour and sometimes worked 11-hour days.
Romney never inquired about their status, they said.
In addition to maintaining the governor’s property, they also tended to the lawn at the house owned by Romney’s son, Taggart, less than a mile away on the same winding street.
Asked by a reporter yesterday about his use of Community Lawn Service with a Heart, Romney, who was hosting the Republican Governors Association conference in Miami, said, “Aw, geez,” and walked away.
Several hours later, his spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, provided the Globe with a statement saying that the governor knows nothing about the immigration status of the landscaping workers, and that his dealings were with Saenz, who is a legal immigrant from Colombia.
Fehrnstrom said that Romney would look into the matter further.
“We’ll see what happens from here on out,” Fehrnstrom said. “If the Globe has information on people that are in the country illegally, obviously that would have to be verified. . . . We’ve already taken the first step in that direction by calling Mr. Saenz.”
Page 2 of 3 –The situation underscores the extent to which illegal immigrants permeate the US economy. Even as Romney travels the country, vowing to curb the flood of low-skilled illegal immigrants into the United States, some of those workers maintain his own yard, cutting grass, pruning shrubs, and mulching trees.
Saenz said he met Romney through the Mormon Church and said Romney has used his company’s services for a decade. Saenz said Romney never asked him if his workers are legal immigrants.
“He doesn’t have to ask,” Saenz said. “I’m a company.”
Saenz asserted that all the workers he used were in the United States legally. Told by reporters that his employees said they were in this country illegally, Saenz responded: “What you’ve heard is not my problem.”
Saenz said he had never requested any proof from his employees to show they are here legally.
“I don’t need to tell them to show me documents,” he said. “I know who they are, and they are legal.”
Federal law calls for employers to examine the documents, such as green cards or Social Security cards, that establish an employee’s identity and eligibility to work in the United States.
The Globe received a tip in July alleging that Romney was using illegal immigrants to landscape his property. Reporters then observed the lawn service workers outside Romney’s house more than a dozen times, sometimes as frequently as twice a week.
Reporters tracked down four current and former employees of the company at their homes in Chelsea and in Guatemala. All had landscaped Romney’s property while working for Community Lawn Service with a Heart, and their tenure ranged from one worker who had joined the company just a month ago to another who had worked there 10 years.
The workers said they found the jobs at the landscaping company through other Guatemalan immigrants after arriving in Chelsea.
Of the four interviewed, only one said he was in the United States legally, showing a reporter his Social Security card and a Massachusetts driver’s license, which the reporter checked against public databases to verify its authenticity. The other workers acknowledged they had no genuine documents, though some said they purchased fake documents, and described harrowing trips to the United States, eluding authorities and paying thousands for their passage. The interviews were conducted in Spanish.
The undocumented workers appear to be a significant presence at the tiny company. Reporters who observed the company in recent months never saw more than three people working at any time. Typically two men were working on any given day.
Community Lawn Service also provides landscaping for a Massachusetts Port Authority property in Revere and public school grounds in Chelsea. The Globe reported in June that companies using undocumented workers had received state contracts, triggering intense debate on Beacon Hill. Romney and GOP lawmakers have supported an effort to prohibit the practice.
The workers who had landscaped Romney’s property seemed unaware of the governor’s support for stricter controls on illegal immigration. Several described casual encounters with Romney over the years and said he had never expressed any curiosity about their status.
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Rosales recalled Romney sometimes waving as they tended to the grounds, which include a tennis court and swimming pool. Romney occasionally called out, “buenos dias,” drawing good-natured laughter from the workers. Ann Romney was friendly, Rosales said, and he said she brought them water on one particularly hot day.
Romney has been critical of illegal immigration as he touts himself to Republican primary voters as a conservative alternative to Senator John McCain, who has teamed up with Senator Edward M. Kennedy to push for a middle ground approach on the issue.
Romney supports construction of a new 700-mile fence along the country’s border with Mexico and stationing National Guard troops at the border until it is finished.
He also said that employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants should be penalized. After the Globe’s story in June about contractors on public projects using illegal immigrants, the governor announced he would seek an agreement with federal immigration authorities to allow Massachusetts State Police to arrest illegal immigrants for being in this country illegally.
In September, on Fox TV’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” Romney said the border must be secured and restated his support for the fence along the Mexican border, prompting host Bill O’Reilly to dub it “the Mitt Romney Memorial wall.”
The experience of the workers on Romney’s property seems far removed from the political rhetoric.
The worker in Copado said a state trooper stationed in Romney’s driveway once inquired about his immigration status, about six months ago. Saenz, the company owner, who was at the property at the time, told the trooper that the worker was in the country legally, but had forgotten his papers, the worker told the Globe. The trooper never inquired again, said the worker, who repeatedly returned to the governor’s property but avoided the trooper. Saenz told reporters he did not recall the incident.
Both the Copado resident and Rosales said they took the landscaping jobs to earn money for their families back home. After making it to the US-Mexican border, they crossed the Arizona desert on foot. When they finally arrived in Chelsea, where friends and family lived, they did odd jobs and eventually found work at Community Lawn Service with a Heart.
They said they were grateful for the work. About 80 percent of Guatemalans live in poverty, according to the US State Department. The workers said they made far more at Community Lawn Service than they could in their Central American homeland.
“It was a good job,” said the worker in Copado, not far from a stream where local women wash their clothes. “I didn’t make a lot, but I earned $16,000 working for that company.” He said he returned to Guatemala after four years because he missed his wife and daughter and has used his earnings to buy a pickup truck and land on which to build a small house.
Another of the undocumented workers, who has been living in Chelsea for two years and joined the landscaping firm a month ago, is finding life here hard.
“The truth is, it’s very difficult,” the 46-year-old worker said. “One lives day to day.”
The one legal Guatemalan immigrant interviewed by the Globe, who has done work at the Romney property numerous times, has been a constant presence at the landscaping company. But he said Saenz regularly hired illegal workers to work alongside him. He said exchanges with the governor on the property are rare.
“The one who talks to us is the wife,” said the legal immigrant. “She asks how we are.”
The issue of illegal immigrant laborers has been tricky and sometimes damaging to political figures. President Clinton’s first two nominees for attorney general, Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, saw their chances dim after it was reported that they had employed illegal immigrants as nannies.
In 1994, Republican Michael Huffington lost his bid for the US Senate after acknowledging he had employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny for five years.
The unemployment was replaced with the following:
The results $15 to $25 hr jobs these Mass residents enjoyed for many years turned into $5.50 to $10 an hr. Walmart, McDonald’s, and other job types like that, with no benefits.
Connecticut had to bail Mitt Romney out by providing better paying jobs for Mass residents.
Mass residents had to use state funded health care that was being paid by the employers before. The hospitals had lines 10 hrs long to get a basic health care dealt with.
The tax payers had to pay for Mitt’s buddies who sold out the state of Mass. and reaped huge profits.
When the citizens finally got rid of Mitt Romney there is now a law requiring employers to pay for health care for all employees in Mass. The huge lines to get health care are now gone and the Mass. residences are now healthy and happier.
Mitt Romney knowingly had contributed to illegal immigration. He knew that the worker who had been there many times was caught before working illegally on his lawn. He said he talk to the company yet the company for years sent the same guy back who was caught.
I ask you this, if you are that naive and as governor you do not know who is on your lawn and interacting with your family. Then you would never know who is coming into the USA taking all the jobs in America. I should say you and your rich friends know but do not care as long as you can reap the rewards of slaving (working slaves) humans, while selling out your fellow Americans.
John McCain and Rudy Giuliani share similar views.
John McCain wants to give amnesty to illegal immigrants and increase work visa programs. Which will costs the remainder of good paying jobs while those same people lose their homes and China companies buy them up.
Rudy Giuliani and his rich elite want to keep free trade with China and increase goods made there, he thinks it is a good thing, (LOL).
Giuliani will end all manufacturing in the USA and cause this country to go into a depression so him and his rich buddies and buy themselves some young wives.
Ron Paul is just simply a hater of anything good.
Fred Thomson is one of the bush rich elite pack. Nice trophy wife Fred. How many deals with the devil did that take.
The only one of the group who has been honest and has his entire life served the poor and middle class, has been Mike Huckabee. Strange isn’t it they are freaking out he is beating them. I guess since Mike , is more like Teddy Roosevelt who brought America out of the great depression and raised the quality of life in America is a bad thing for that rich elite.
SUCHITEPEQUEZ, Guatemala — Outside his aqua-colored concrete house here, Rene Alvarez Rosales paused under an almond tree to answer questions about a subject with which he has surprising familiarity: Governor Mitt Romney’s Belmont lawn.
For about eight years, Rosales said, he worked on and off landscaping the grounds at Romney’s home, occasionally getting a “buenos dias” from Romney or a drink of water from his wife, Ann.
“She is very nice,” said Rosales, 49.
About 6 miles away in Copado, a 37-year-old man who recently returned to Guatemala from the United States told a similar story, describing long days tending Romney’s 2 1/2-acre grounds.
“They wanted that house to look really nice,” said the worker, who asked to remain anonymous. “It took a long time.”
As Governor Mitt Romney explores a presidential bid, he has grown outspoken in his criticism of illegal immigration. But, for a decade, the governor has used a landscaping company that relies heavily on workers like these, illegal Guatemalan immigrants, to maintain the grounds surrounding his pink Colonial house on Marsh Street in Belmont.
The Globe recently interviewed four current and former employees of Community Lawn Service with a Heart, the tiny Chelsea-based company that provides upkeep of Romney’s property. All but one said they were in the United States illegally.
The employees told the Globe that company owner Ricardo Saenz never asked them to provide documents showing their immigration status and knew they were illegal immigrants.
“He never asked for papers,” said Rosales, who said he had paid smugglers about $5,000 to take him across the US-Mexican border and settled in Chelsea.
The workers said they were paid in cash at $9 to $10 an hour and sometimes worked 11-hour days.
Romney never inquired about their status, they said.
In addition to maintaining the governor’s property, they also tended to the lawn at the house owned by Romney’s son, Taggart, less than a mile away on the same winding street.
Asked by a reporter yesterday about his use of Community Lawn Service with a Heart, Romney, who was hosting the Republican Governors Association conference in Miami, said, “Aw, geez,” and walked away.
Several hours later, his spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, provided the Globe with a statement saying that the governor knows nothing about the immigration status of the landscaping workers, and that his dealings were with Saenz, who is a legal immigrant from Colombia.
Fehrnstrom said that Romney would look into the matter further.
“We’ll see what happens from here on out,” Fehrnstrom said. “If the Globe has information on people that are in the country illegally, obviously that would have to be verified. . . . We’ve already taken the first step in that direction by calling Mr. Saenz.”
Page 2 of 3 –The situation underscores the extent to which illegal immigrants permeate the US economy. Even as Romney travels the country, vowing to curb the flood of low-skilled illegal immigrants into the United States, some of those workers maintain his own yard, cutting grass, pruning shrubs, and mulching trees.
Saenz said he met Romney through the Mormon Church and said Romney has used his company’s services for a decade. Saenz said Romney never asked him if his workers are legal immigrants.
“He doesn’t have to ask,” Saenz said. “I’m a company.”
Saenz asserted that all the workers he used were in the United States legally. Told by reporters that his employees said they were in this country illegally, Saenz responded: “What you’ve heard is not my problem.”
Saenz said he had never requested any proof from his employees to show they are here legally.
“I don’t need to tell them to show me documents,” he said. “I know who they are, and they are legal.”
Federal law calls for employers to examine the documents, such as green cards or Social Security cards, that establish an employee’s identity and eligibility to work in the United States.
The Globe received a tip in July alleging that Romney was using illegal immigrants to landscape his property. Reporters then observed the lawn service workers outside Romney’s house more than a dozen times, sometimes as frequently as twice a week.
Reporters tracked down four current and former employees of the company at their homes in Chelsea and in Guatemala. All had landscaped Romney’s property while working for Community Lawn Service with a Heart, and their tenure ranged from one worker who had joined the company just a month ago to another who had worked there 10 years.
The workers said they found the jobs at the landscaping company through other Guatemalan immigrants after arriving in Chelsea.
Of the four interviewed, only one said he was in the United States legally, showing a reporter his Social Security card and a Massachusetts driver’s license, which the reporter checked against public databases to verify its authenticity. The other workers acknowledged they had no genuine documents, though some said they purchased fake documents, and described harrowing trips to the United States, eluding authorities and paying thousands for their passage. The interviews were conducted in Spanish.
The undocumented workers appear to be a significant presence at the tiny company. Reporters who observed the company in recent months never saw more than three people working at any time. Typically two men were working on any given day.
Community Lawn Service also provides landscaping for a Massachusetts Port Authority property in Revere and public school grounds in Chelsea. The Globe reported in June that companies using undocumented workers had received state contracts, triggering intense debate on Beacon Hill. Romney and GOP lawmakers have supported an effort to prohibit the practice.
The workers who had landscaped Romney’s property seemed unaware of the governor’s support for stricter controls on illegal immigration. Several described casual encounters with Romney over the years and said he had never expressed any curiosity about their status.
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Printer friendly
Single page
E-mail to a friend
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Save this article
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Globe front page
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Rosales recalled Romney sometimes waving as they tended to the grounds, which include a tennis court and swimming pool. Romney occasionally called out, “buenos dias,” drawing good-natured laughter from the workers. Ann Romney was friendly, Rosales said, and he said she brought them water on one particularly hot day.
Romney has been critical of illegal immigration as he touts himself to Republican primary voters as a conservative alternative to Senator John McCain, who has teamed up with Senator Edward M. Kennedy to push for a middle ground approach on the issue.
Romney supports construction of a new 700-mile fence along the country’s border with Mexico and stationing National Guard troops at the border until it is finished.
He also said that employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants should be penalized. After the Globe’s story in June about contractors on public projects using illegal immigrants, the governor announced he would seek an agreement with federal immigration authorities to allow Massachusetts State Police to arrest illegal immigrants for being in this country illegally.
In September, on Fox TV’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” Romney said the border must be secured and restated his support for the fence along the Mexican border, prompting host Bill O’Reilly to dub it “the Mitt Romney Memorial wall.”
The experience of the workers on Romney’s property seems far removed from the political rhetoric.
The worker in Copado said a state trooper stationed in Romney’s driveway once inquired about his immigration status, about six months ago. Saenz, the company owner, who was at the property at the time, told the trooper that the worker was in the country legally, but had forgotten his papers, the worker told the Globe. The trooper never inquired again, said the worker, who repeatedly returned to the governor’s property but avoided the trooper. Saenz told reporters he did not recall the incident.
Both the Copado resident and Rosales said they took the landscaping jobs to earn money for their families back home. After making it to the US-Mexican border, they crossed the Arizona desert on foot. When they finally arrived in Chelsea, where friends and family lived, they did odd jobs and eventually found work at Community Lawn Service with a Heart.
They said they were grateful for the work. About 80 percent of Guatemalans live in poverty, according to the US State Department. The workers said they made far more at Community Lawn Service than they could in their Central American homeland.
“It was a good job,” said the worker in Copado, not far from a stream where local women wash their clothes. “I didn’t make a lot, but I earned $16,000 working for that company.” He said he returned to Guatemala after four years because he missed his wife and daughter and has used his earnings to buy a pickup truck and land on which to build a small house.
Another of the undocumented workers, who has been living in Chelsea for two years and joined the landscaping firm a month ago, is finding life here hard.
“The truth is, it’s very difficult,” the 46-year-old worker said. “One lives day to day.”
The one legal Guatemalan immigrant interviewed by the Globe, who has done work at the Romney property numerous times, has been a constant presence at the landscaping company. But he said Saenz regularly hired illegal workers to work alongside him. He said exchanges with the governor on the property are rare.
“The one who talks to us is the wife,” said the legal immigrant. “She asks how we are.”
The issue of illegal immigrant laborers has been tricky and sometimes damaging to political figures. President Clinton’s first two nominees for attorney general, Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, saw their chances dim after it was reported that they had employed illegal immigrants as nannies.
In 1994, Republican Michael Huffington lost his bid for the US Senate after acknowledging he had employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny for five years.
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