It has been almost a year since Lou Dobbs left CNN amidst a Latino protest campaign citing his inflammatory rhetoric against undocumented immigrants. Perhaps in a kind of sick twist of fate or a simple sign of the times, Dobbs himself is now accused of employing undocumented workers, something he has denied knowingly doing.
The Nation magazine along with the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute ran an article last week after a yearlong investigation into Dobbs’ private life. They assert that he “has relied for years on undocumented labor for the upkeep of his multimillion-dollar estates and the horses he keeps for his 22-year-old daughter, Hillary, a champion show jumper.”
No one has claimed that Dobbs knowingly employed illegal workers, but many suggest that he could have taken steps to prevent this type of situation. Dobbs denies any knowledge that the workers were here illegally, telling ABC’s Good Morning America, “I never, ever used a contractor as a way in which to indirectly hire an illegal immigrant purposefully. Never, never, never.”
That defense wouldn’t be much help to him, though, if lawmakers took Dobbs’ own advice and slapped employers of illegal workers with felony charges. He has repeatedly called for stiffer penalties on employers who create demand for undocumented workers.
The long hours and low wages involved in the care and grooming of horses are a magnet for illegal immigrants, since most of these jobs won’t be filled by those with other options. According to critics, Dobbs was well aware that landscaping and equestrian care are the kinds of places an employer needs to be vigilant about, and that he could have required special clauses in any contract with a third party that employs these kinds of workers. The documents can be written so that the contractor must affirm under penalty of perjury that the workers used are here legally, but in this case they were not.
Although it is unclear how much Dobbs knew about the people working on his grounds and grooming his daughter’s show horse, his biggest enemy could be the trap that affects not only employers like himself, but workers in unskilled jobs across the country. According to immigration lawyers, immigrant workers in jobs that are considered low-skilled are in a Catch-22. While there are plenty of jobs in need of unskilled laborers, there are precious few visas for unskilled workers.