ELKHART -- Ernie Ringo disputes the perception that undocumented immigrants take only the jobs that American-born people won't do.
Ringo, who is 60, says for years he has worked side by side in local factories with workers who made little secret of their illegal status. Co-workers knew the deal, Ringo says, and so did the companies.
Ringo remembers seeing three or four picture IDs in one fellow worker's wallet when the man would fish out his time card. The same man didn't go home to Guatemala for his brother's funeral because he feared not being readmitted to the United States after leaving, Ringo recalls.
In the end, Ringo blames illegal laborers -- and employers' willingness to hire them -- for his layoff from a forklift-driving job last summer. The end came after the manufacturer for whom he had worked for more than five years bought another company that Ringo suspects employed illegal immigrants willing to work for wages far less than their American counterparts would.
"If a company can get a white man, a Mexican or a black man, if they think they can hire that Mexican for less," Ringo says, "they'll hire him first."
"You've got people in Nappanee that can't find work," Ringo says, alluding to work stoppages in the aftermath of an October tornado. "If you take care of all these illegals, you'll have work for Americans."
In his blunt way, Ringo is expressing an opinion on one side of an ongoing debate -- whether immigrants are taking jobs from native-born workers.
Some research indicates that no, that's not the case.
In a 2006 report, the Indiana Commission on Hispanic/Latino Affairs concluded that Hoosier counties that have experienced unusual population gains from international migration have shown no corresponding spikes in unemployment during the first half of this decade.
Between 2000 and 2005, except in 2001, Elkhart County's average annual jobless rate remained below the state and national rates -- even though the county ranked third in Indiana for immigration-fueled population growth.
"The data is this report suggests the common myth on immigration, legal or illegal, adding to the unemployment rate and displacing workers is, for the most part, false," the commission concluded.
University of Notre Dame researcher Allert Brown-Gort says in general, immigrants and native workers compete for only two types of jobs: the most-skilled and the least-skilled.
"The vast majority of immigrants either have much more education or less education than the average American," says Brown-Gort, associate director of the university's Institute for Latino Studies.
At one end of the scale, he points to California's Silicon Valley, where older, U.S.-born, high salary-seeking technology whizzes for some time had a harder time finding work than did new arrivals from abroad.
At the other end of the job market, where the national immigration debate focuses on unskilled and undocumented employees, Brown-Gort says there is some truth to the argument that illegal immigrants do the work that Americans themselves won't.
Such work is found in the meatpacking plants of the agro-industry field, in rigorous construction trades such as landscaping or drywalling and in the hotel cleaning and restaurant dishwashing of the hospitality sector.
Brown-Gort says sociologists describe the jobs as "3-D": dirty, difficult and dangerous.
Among unauthorized workers who arrived in the United States between 2000 and 2005, about 40 percent were employed in either the construction or hospitality industries, a Pew Hispanic Center study found. Other major industries included buildings and grounds maintenance, retail and manufacturing.
"If employers are hiring these people, it's because these are the people who are showing up for the jobs," Brown-Gort says, adding that he also believes a small fraction of companies seek to exploit immigrants by paying cheap wages and providing unsafe work conditions.
"They are not finding the American employees to come in," he said. "American workers have better options."
For his part, Ringo, the laid-off forklift driver, says he's had few options.
Some factories have called him for interviews, but no job offers have resulted in the past five months. He says a rejection letter came a couple of weeks ago from a hiring executive who had told him he had the skills that her company was seeking.
His age doesn't help, he acknowledges. He's tried trimming his beard and dying some of the white out of it.
But Ringo also wonders if local companies are simply more content to hire immigrants who will work for discounted wages.
Authorities "ought to go through these factories, find out how long the illegals have been working there and fine the companies for the profits they made off hiring illegals," Ringo says.
He says Elkhart County and Indiana officials should follow the lead of communities in such states as Arizona, Oklahoma and Texas, which have adopted zero-tolerance policies against hiring and housing illegal immigrants.
Notre Dame's Brown-Gort suggests that the solution to illegal labor rests partly with American desire for particular goods and services.
"This is a choice that we're making as a society," he says. "We can't understand the problem fully until we think about our demand for certain types of labor."