Posted on 12/04/2007 5:21:31 PM PST by JRochelle
Because the Boston Globe was looking into it. From the paper, posted a short time ago:
Mitt Romney, who has taken a tough stance against illegal immigrants in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, has continued to employ a company that uses illegal immigrants to do lawn work at his home.
Responding to inquiries from the Globe, which had observed the work taking place at his house and interviewed the workers, Romney tonight fired the company for failing to comply with the law…
Romney has made illegal immigration a central campaign issue in his bid for the nomination. At last week's Republican debate in St. Petersburg, Fla., Romney was quick to attack Rudy Giuliani for safeguarding illegal immigrants in New York City.
Yet early the morning after the debate, immigrants from Central America who say they are here illegally were in plain view on the lawn in front of Romney’s salmon-colored mansion in Belmont. Chatting in Spanish, they hustled to rake massive clumps of leaves, dump them in barrels, and clear debris from his tennis court.
Their boss, Ricardo Saenz of Chelsea, was the same man who for a decade brought illegal immigrants and others to work for Romney, whom he had met through their shared Mormon faith. A year ago, the Globe broke the news that illegal immigrants landscaped Romney’s 2.5-acre property.
In the past two months, the Globe observed Saenz and his crew at Romney's estate once a week, except during the week of Thanksgiving…Last Thursday, the Globe interviewed two of the three workers who were at Romney's house. Both said they were illegal immigrants from Guatemala; one of the immigrants said the third worker was also here illegally….
[However, the royalty types are generally very uncomfortable with the practice so it is seldom resorted to by those in authority.]
Hummmm, you seem to have a keen eye in these matters.
I use my credit card at FR during fundraisers, but I don’t use it any other time on the Internet. I went to the website but didn’t find a mailing addy. I’ll email them at ‘contact’. Maybe I can get a nice yard sign and a bumper sticker or three. We Tennesseans kept the goreghoul out of office. Maybe we can get Fred elected!
My son hired an illegal to paint my house and paid for it. I suppose that makes me personna non grata around here. The guy down the street wanted $8000 to do it. This guy did it with a sprayer in two days with a helper, charged $1500. I never had one do work for me before but now I see why people want to hire them because I've had to hire a lot of work done, and out of 10, only two didn't botch the job.
I liked my lawn guy (legal), but he wouldn't cash my checks until the end of the summer but did a good job, and I paid when he asked for more money than we started with, to do weeds on my driveway and in the NEIGHBOR's small section adjoining mine with the whacker. Then I called for 3 weeks and got this funny background talking on his answering machine, even went to his house to see if he was ok.
My son got my mower going that had been sitting in the garage for two years with gas still in it. Hard to start, but he got it going, so he mowed the last grass cutting for me. Then he mulched my leaves and I built cages for them to use for compost/mulch in my garden areas next year.
I do all the work I am able to do myself, but I have to hire some help for some things. Bring it on (ducking).
Sorry, it was a long known perspective that I conveniently quoted.
This was an unusually warm fall. I’m in upstate NY and hubby was mowing until the end of November. The leaves were late in falling and we raked right up until it snowed this week.
This guy is an opportunist of the first order. There are two candidates running who have genuine records on this issue. Their names are Tancredo and Hunter. The combined accomplishments of the rest do not compare.
but..but...I thought we could trust the former Mass Liberal governor when he said he’d converted to conservative thought! And after he pounded Rudy on illegal immigration, he was supposed to be our champion right? Right.
he’s all talk. a phony. A liberal masquerading as a conservative, as is Huck and everyone polling double digits except Thompson.
The conservative elite that have attacked Thompson, a conservative pol, all in an effort to prop this guy up are alone responsible for the rise of someone even more unacceptable in Huck. NRO (most of them anyway) and k-Lo ought to be real proud they’ve been supporting this fake all along.
I’m sure Romney and his supporters want to spin this, but the company was busted once and he kept them around. If he was really against this employment, he’d have kept tabs on them when they were given a second chance.
I’m sure illegal immigration is the big issue in Iowa, but they need to get clue about more then Romney that being the case. huckabee is even worse and they have apparently developed a crush on him.
Why would illegal immigrants admit to being here illegally? Were any of them named Greg Packer?
Huckabee is no conservative either! Vote for either Fred Thompson, Tom Tancredo, or Duncan Hunter.
But Romney got caught on this a year ago when the Globe first reported this! How in hades did he not fire them after he got caught the first time???
In 2006, the Globe publicly exposes the fact that his lawn company employs illegal aliens...so he continues to employ them while at the same time blithely spending the year campaigning for president in part on the immigration enforcement issue? I honestly don’t get it. It seems like a massive, inexplicable SNAFU.
Maybe he should build a big wall between his house & his front lawn.
Mitt's already given us a brief summary of what he will say. (WorldNetDaily had an article it linked to Tuesday from WBZ, New Hampshire, where they quote Mitt as saying):
[Thursday's speech] "...is not a repeat or an update of the Kennedy speech," Romney said in responding to an audience question after delivering an economics presentation to the city Rotary club. "I want to make sure that we maintain our religious heritage in this country, not a particular of faith, if you will, not of a particular sect or denomination, but rather the great moral heritage that we have that's so critical to the future of this country," Romney said. "So, I'll be talking about faith in America -- not my own faith in America -- and of course I'll answer the obligatory questions, as he did."
Many FREEPERS are already defending his speech without even having one insight as to what he will say. To hear them tell it, we should just leave it up to politicians to define "faith" & the rest of us should just shut our mouths. (Since when are faith issues off limits? So "faith" becomes "politics" just because some politico hustles it into his hands for possession? I don't think so)
We need to understand in advance what Mitt will try to do on Thursday. He is going to talk about "faith" as if it's generic. (Kind of like folks talking about Thanksgiving without really identifying exactly Who we're thankful to).
Faith is NOTHING if no specific target of that trust actually exists. For example, you could exchange computer-based contact with some "identity" all your life. But if you come to find out that this was person was never who he said he was, you were really in touch with another identity.
The day we start letting politicians define faith, with so-called "conservative" FREEPERS leading that charge, is a day where politics has declared war on yet another dimension of faith!
(Interpetation: Yeah, we know; don't hold anybody responsible these days...might breed responsibility...and a culture in decline can't have that)
I am not sure, but this problem is far bigger than this story and blaming homeowners (even a smart, rich one who is running for president) for an entirely screwed up system seems like an incredibly cheap shot.
(Interpretation: Yeah, we can't have only teflon Mitt holding the bag here...see, he's guilty...and him...and him...and him...well, let's just use shorthand and blame the...what was the word you used...oh, yeah the "system"...what's ironic in all this is that Mormon theology is so averse to blaming any previous generation for the sins of the current one...even not blaming Adam & Eve for humanity's sin...but here you are pointing your finger at the "system" which supposedly birthed Mitt's dirty green [front] Lawn-dry).
...blaming homeowners...seems like an incredibly cheap shot. But it seems like the only shot anyone's really got against him...(besides his faith that seem fair game, sadly).
(Tell me if I've got straight what you just said? Interpretationblaming homeowners seems like an incredibly cheap shot...well, even tho it's a "cheap" shot I guess it's the one & only legit shot...except for that other sad legit shot over there...)
I'll go out on a limb and say there is probably not one candidate that hasn't had an illegal provide them with some sort of service on their property or automobile etc... They just haven't been exposed.
(Interpretation: Yeah, they're all crooks, every last politician. What'd ya think, that we were voting for an ex-bishop-in-chief? Why you might as well write "crook" on each & every single one's resume'...)
Didn't anybody tell you have lawyer qualities written all over you & that your clients could likewise earn similar teflon titles? (I do have to hand it to you, though...whereas Mitt's defenders are vast & highly energetic on other threads, I don't seem to see them loitering around this one...)
For those that dislike Romney and all the others that hate Romney - Congratulations! You got a bonus apple that the MSM will bite.
Then again it is interesting that no one on this post made note of the fact that the illegal aliens were quite comfortable telling the GLOBE REPORTER that they are ILLEGAL.
Seems everyone here is gladly letting the Globe slide on their double standard. Is the Globe staking out Hillary Clinton's, or Obamas, or Dodd's, or Richardson's or Biden's homes? How about the homes of their campaign managers? All down the food chain.
I know - Romney made himself a fair target by shaking the anti-illegal alien tree but that doesn't give the Globe a pass on their curiosity only being peaked when a Republican is involved.
This posture by the Globe is so similar to the Senator Craig story of two days ago where eight men, simultaneously, decided to state that they had sex with Craig over the years. Why should that be of any interest to the Globe and the rest of the MSM except to say, "Gay Republican! Hypocrite!" I've read in the Globe editorials that bitched and moaned when certain highway rest stops had to be closed because of gay open-sex/rampant solicitation.
All I will say is we now have established a standard that says that when one contracts out private business, one needs to verify that all employees are legal.
PS: If Romney had changed companys last year when the Globe had their first stakeout then the Globe would have utilized the "undocumented worker" label, not the "illegal alien" label of this current article.
The worst part about all these “landscaper” problems for Romney.... is that he has landscapers.
Yeah, that’ll resonate with middle America.
I have seven of the Mormon Royalty traits. Crap@! I’m doomed....doomed...
Hmmmm I think YOU do too. LOL
You make $8.00 per hour and can afford to pay a lawn service $50.00 per week? What do you eat? Lawn clippings.
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