Guess what. Restaurants hire illegal immigrants. Why prosecute one man out of thousands?
That was the reaction of New Haven attorney Diane Polan Tuesday when asked about the guilty plea entered earlier in the day in federal court by her client, Andrew Adames of Oxford.
Adames, 43, owns the restaurant chain Senor Pancho’s, with locations in Litchfield, Monroe, Prospect and Southbury.
Adames pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of unlawful employment of aliens, according to Acting U.S. Attorney Nora R. Dannehy’s office.
He now faces a maximum of five years in prison. Adames has also agreed to pay the government $150,000.
The government said Adames employed at least 10 illegal immigrants in his restaurants between January 2008 and January 2009.
Adames doesn’t deny the charges — but, given the broken immigration system in the U.S. and the lack of action by the feds to fix it — Polan questioned why a case was brought against the Oxford businessman in the first place.
“The U.S. government is trying to fix our broken immigration system on the backs of restaurant owners like Andy Adames,” Polan said. “It is a tragedy.”
Adames, a Mexican-American who is a U.S. citizen, has a wife and children and has been in the restaurant business for some 20 years, Polan said.
“He, like virtually every other restaurant owner in this state — Mexican restaurant or not — is employing undocumented people. The government has decided to make an example of him,” she said.
Polan said Adames hired the illegal immigrants because they were hard workers and dedicated employees.
“He was not taking advantage of them,” she said.
The government apparently learned about Adames’ hiring practices when agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) came into contact with some tenants to whom Adames rents apartments. The nature of the contact was not clear to Polan, but she said the tenants also worked at Senor Panchos and at least one was an illegal immigrant.
That kick-started the federal investigation.
Polan said the case underscores the need for comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S.
“This (conviction) is not going to fix our system. It’s just going to brand people like my client as federal felons. It’s not going to solve the problem.”
Adames still owns the restaurant chain. Polan said she is confident a judge will impose a lenient sentence, given his standing in the community.
Judge Peter C. Dorsey is scheduled to sentence Adames Sept. 18 in federal court in New Haven.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas P. Morabito prosecuted the case, which was investigated by ICE and the U.S. Department of Labor.
That is too bad. Andy and Tammy are great people, but Andy probably just got caught up in running his business and not thinking of the consequences. Hopefully he’ll avoid prison and just have to pay a hefty fine.
My understanding is that this guy actually paid his workers according to the law: minimum wage, overtime, etc. As Attorney Polan said, he was not exploiting them.
If so, then his arrest is a complete travesty. First, you’d be hard-pressed to find a restaurant in Connecticut that doesn’t employ undocumented immigrants. Second, many if not most of them exploit immigrant workers by paying them at substantially less than the law requires. I am aware of a number of very well-heeled restaurants that will pay a dishwasher as little as $75 for a twelve hour shift – a rate that is a full $1.75 cents an hour less than the Connecticut minimum wage. And since most of these kitchen workers work five or six or even seven days a week, their bosses are also usually cheating them out of hundreds of dollars in overtime wages.
I recently reviewed a case involving an owner of multiple restaurants who has employed both documented and undocumented workers at less than minimum wage with no overtime. If the employer’s wage theft is as widespread throughout his business operations as it appears, it is reasonable to estimate that every penny of profit he has made in the last decade was stolen directly from his workers. If the feds want to target someone, why not a real criminal like that?
Undocumented immigrants who work in Connecticut drive down wages and working conditions ONLY IF employers are allowed to exploit them by paying them less than minimum wage, not paying them overtime, not covering them with their workers compensation policy, etc. Focusing on employers who hire people in violation of immigration laws is upside down. The real problem is wage theft.
If you crack down on illegals in Danbury, you are violating their “Civil Rights”
In New Haven, if you become a “Card Carrying” illegal, it’s O.K.
It is common knowledge that the building trades can not function without the illegal laborers.
I don’t get it.