In Carbondale this morning, the venerable Village Smithy restaurant had closed its doors. On the outskirts of town, four members of the kitchen staff at the Red Rock Diner were out, forcing owner Bob Olenick to man the grill in order to feed hungry customers.
Olenick started work at 4:45 a.m. — joined by his son, and his son’s friend from Boulder — and said he expected to work until sometime after 11 p.m.
Olenick and his customers were experiencing a nationwide phenomenon – a massive immigration-rights boycott, called the “We Are America March.”
From Alamosa to Greeley, from Grand Junction to Fort Morgan, schools, restaurants and
other businesses planned to run with skeleton crews or to shut down for at least part
of the day. Some of the nation’s largest meatpacking companies pared production or
shut down entire plants, including facilities in Fort Morgan and Greeley.
On the Western Slope, several hundred people gathered in Glenwood Springs for a noontime rally at Sayre Park. Police did not have a formal crowd estimate.
As with demonstrations elsewhere, the majority wore white T-shirts and many waved American flags.
A lone counter-protester, Sunny Stapelman, from Glenwood, walked on the sidewalk around the perimeter of the gathering.
Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with an American flag, she carried a sign that said “No amnesty for illegals.”
Said Stapelman: “I love my country very much, and I’m afraid for its future and its safety with so many illegals coming in.”
About 70 percent of the workforce stayed away from the job today at the Gallegos Corp., a Vail-based masonry company that is considered a community leader in supporting immigrant workers.
“We were planning on that,” said Lisa Ponder, the human-resources director for the company, which polled its 520 workers last week and allowed them to take the day off without pay. “Although we discouraged them from taking off work, we support their right to do that.”
For each summer’s construction season, Gallegos hires between 150 and 200 Mexican laborers on H2B work visas – in addition to a cadre of those foreign nationals with permanent-resident status – and provides them with housing and transportation in addition to jobs and standard benefits.
“We can’t get American workers,” Ponder said. “Let me tell you, if I could advertise and get American workers, I would do it.”
Because the company is so large that it could be a target for immigration raids, however, officials go beyond the legally required minimum for screening job applicants to ensure that they are eligible to work in the United States, checking the validity of Social Security numbers in addition to inspecting work permits.
“Do some get by us? Sure. What we hope is that it’s under 10 percent,” she said. “Of the people who walk in, we probably have to turn away 90 percent.”
Ponder notes that the company pays taxes and Social Security on behalf of its employees, even though many of them never will tap the retirement benefits, and it works to gain legal residency status for its longtime immigrant workers who return to Mexico for three months every year.
“They’re contributing quite a bit,” she said, noting that about 50 immigrant workers even joined an annual effort on Saturday to clean up Interstate 70 through Eagle County. “People think they’re just taking from the system, but they’re contributing, too.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
