Carwash industry needs cleaning up

Re “Workers getting soaked at Southland carwashes,” March 23

Congratulations on your front-page expose of the shameful exploitation of illegal immigrant carwash employees. We taxpayers must demand more (bilingual) inspectors such as described in the story to hunt down and prosecute the carwash owners.

One criticism: Is it politically correct to mention that some of the owners are Asians who came here, learned English, created successful enterprises and now employ thousands? You write of their “cavalier” attitude toward the law. But what about their illegal immigrant employees who are, in fact, breaking the law?

William Goldsmith

Studio City

What irony! In the Opinion section you print an article detailing the continuing presence of slavery in the modern world more than 150 years after the conclusion of our Civil War. Simultaneously, on the front page of the paper you have an article about the carwash industry and its employment of thousands of predominantly illegal immigrants at slave wages.

It would seem that the carwash jobs are those described by President Bush as “jobs Americans won’t do.” His “wink, wink” ignoring of our immigration laws encourages Latin Americans to illegally sneak into the United States only to find that they have traded one kind of economic enslavement for another.

Rather than enrich the employers and further exploit the workers, I will wash my own car.

Roger Nicholson

Irvine

As an attorney having been involved in labor matters, there was specific law compelling businesses using tips for application to the minimum wage to publicly post this fact in a conspicuous place so customers could be made aware of the practice. Most businesses, unfortunately, “complied” with this requirement by posting the notices in out-of-the-way places where they could hardly be seen. As your article correctly points out, the victims in all of this are members of society’s most vulnerable and lowest economic group, who understandably hesitate reporting such activities for fear of economic reprisal.

Barry S. Rubin

Beverly Hills