Illegal Alien Wage Theft in Miami-Dade County

The Miami-Dade County Commission has taken up the legal issue of illegal aliens getting short-changed on the work they do as day-laborers.  Apparently many illegals are being ripped-off by people who pick them up in parking lots to do various types of work such as cutting grass, cleaning, painting, etc.  Many of these people who hire day-laborers illegally, go one step further in their law breaking.  After hiring these workers illegally, they then refuse to pay them as agreed after the work is done.

Enter the Miami-Dade County Commission.  In they step by passing an ordinance, requiring that all such illegal employers must pay all their illegally-hired illegal alien workers within 14 days of services rendered or else they will be in violation  of yet another, much less serious, law.

Anyway, from the Miami Herald:

The issue has reached the Miami-Dade County Commission, which on Feb. 28 passed an ordinance requiring employers to pay within 14 days of contracting the work unless a consistent pay schedule has been established.

Interviews last month in South Florida with 15 foreign-born day laborers revealed how many are short-changed.

Wage theft, as the practice is known, is a form of robbery, according to immigrant-rights activists who have stepped forward to help workers recover their unpaid wages.

Undocumented immigrant workers are also targets of armed criminals who know the migrants carry cash because they cannot open bank accounts since many do not have driver's licenses or official identification.

The majority of the day laborers interviewed over a period of two days in Miami-Dade had nothing to show their immigration status.

Of the 15, four said they had always been paid. The rest said that, at least once during their time in the United States, they had not been paid.

Read the full Miami Herald article here