1 week Ago
The most jarring of many ridiculous statements made by Vice President-elect JD Vance during his debate with Gov. Tim Walz was that millions of immigrants working under the table and off the books was crippling the economy. As someone who spent decades working beside immigrants to build hundreds of Santa Fe homes, it’s clear Vance knows nothing about the homebuilding industry in Santa Fe and indeed the entire country.
Homebuilding has always been about immigrants, in every era and every market. It’s virtually impossible to accomplish paying people cash off the books. In fact, it’s deductions from their paychecks, using legitimate Social Security numbers or not, with matching employer contributions, that’s keeping Social Security solvent and my paltry monthly checks coming.
It’s not to say people in trades don’t sometimes work for cash, just not when they’re on jobsites Monday through Friday. My first 15 years as a struggling carpenter and homebuilder in Santa Fe were almost never without looking for a weekend side job. The higher wage in cash was vital to supporting a young family on a single income.
In a Hispanic city in a Hispanic state, it’s lazy to think that who builds our houses is different than the rest of the country. It’s certain the homebuilding workforce in Vance’s Ohio is no different. Percentages vary, but the national industry could not exist without immigrant labor, documented or otherwise, who shoulder the lion’s share of the work.
The Trump campaign rang alarms about an army of young “military-aged” men flooding the border, as if they came with insurgent intent. No, they came to find jobs and get to work, and are perfectly suited for the trades necessary to get houses built. Santa Fe custom builders are justifiably proud of the exquisite quality of their multimillion-dollar products, a quality verified by out-of-state buyers represented by newly transplanted Realtors from high-end national markets.
Many highly skilled workers who built those homes woke up Wednesday morning wondering, “ Vendran por mi y mi familia ?” (Will they be coming for me and my family?) It’s too soon to know what will happen. If history is proof, some radical things will be attempted only to be thwarted by the courts, like banning travel from certain Muslim countries. But that was then, and times — and the courts — have changed.
The Southwestern keystone blue states of New Mexico and Colorado will be challenged by the policies of the arc of red states that surrounds them. Sadly, the National Association of Home Builders, with which I have stayed engaged, has gone silent on immigration even though they were one of the few industries to challenge the first Trump administration and the Obama administration on their immigration policies. With technical neutrality during the recent election cycle but explicitly supporting Trump’s singular focus on solving the housing crisis by slashing regulations (never defined as to which ones, exactly), it is hoped the national association will use its insider position to temper the impulse to destroy the workforce that can fix the national housing supply shortage.
As a builder and developer, which Trump proudly claims to be, one would hope there would be a glimmer of recognition as to who helped make it happen. On the other hand, if many reports of his building practices are true, he sometimes hired trade contractors who paid in cash off the books and who then later could be stiffed for being crooks. Santa Fe needs more immigrant tradespeople to build more houses.
Maybe it’s time to double down on the sanctuary city status..
