A common perception is that people who hire illegal immigrants are necessarily exploiting them with below minimum wage pay and horrible working conditions. The story I linked to yesterday about the effects of illegal immigration crackdowns on some restaurants serves as a useful reminder that this need not be the case:

Mr. Malecot is an active philanthropist in San Diego, contributing to causes including Alzheimer’s and cancer research and education to help victims of torture. His employees describe him as a father figure who has paid for their dental work and babysitting, charters a fishing boat for the annual company party and provides every employee with a week’s paid vacation, extremely rare in restaurants.

Because of his financial troubles as a result of the case, he said, he can no longer afford some of these perks. The next court date is Nov. 29.

“He’s very generous,” Asunción Gallardo, a Mexican immigrant who has cooked at the restaurant for 16 years, said in Spanish, out of earshot of Mr. Malecot. “It’s like we’re all a family. We eat — he gives us three meals a day and food to go. And then he gives out food for the poor.”

People who favor crackdowns in illegal immigration often argue as if they are really looking out for the best interest of illegal immigrants, who are victims being exploited by greedy employers. And this may be true some of the time, but it is clearly not true all of the time. It is important to remember this when people try to overgeneralize about the working conditions faced by illegal immigrations in order to justify kicking them out.

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