Wet Backs!

 

One senses a significant sea change in the ability of United States based AC syndicates to use 'lip-service mercenaries' to fight their design, boat construction and sailing battles. That change, another consequence of the September 11th hijacking disasters, will have an impact almost immediately and certainly affect teams who are relying on temporary foreign labor - the Braceros of the waterfront - to design, build and sail their boats.

Its been an issue bitched-about for as long as anyone can remember - an increasingly foreign and hostile wave of wetbacks entering and living in the States illegally. Add to that the long simmering resentment toward ethnic immigrants group who can't or won't speak English or assimilate and adopt American "values" and it's little wonder that the mainstream would just as soon abandon Constitutional liberties in favor of mass deportation of those who haven't jumped through the admittedly difficult and time-consuming process required to legally reside and work in the USA. While the focus is on Arabs and Mexicans at the moment, the net that will be tossed won't discriminate by race alone.

To design or sail on an America's Cup yacht requires nationality (and I suppose a bit of skill.) The most popular claim of qualification has its basis on the establishment and maintenance of "a permanent place of residence" in the adopted country for a period preceding the AC Match, the current nationality commencement date being March 1, 2001. Traditionally that has meant that someone gets into the country on a tourist or student visa, signs a residential lease for a place he'll never actually live in and then goes on his merry way. However, those types of visas confer no permanence or presence to the holder, nor any right or assurance that they will be renewed upon expiration. Moreover and of particular importance in an AC context, a student/tourist visa does not allow the permanent residency required by the Protocol nor does it allow the holder to work except in very limited circumstances.

Some teams try to solve this problem by obtaining H visas for their foreigners but those, too, grant no permanency beyond their term nor automatic renewal right. The only way to stay in the States legally as a permanent resident is through issuance of a "green card" or naturalization and that is a path rarely followed due to the time and expense involved, no one wants a job THAT bad.

Back to the point: there will be big crackdowns on foreigners in the US in the months and years ahead. The laws and regulations will change to make deportation easier and faster and it's equally likely that visa renewals will be less quickly granted. For those caught working in the States without the appropriate documentation, the impact will be worse - not only will there be deportation after immediate incarceration (forget bail, that's out the window), the deportee will be barred from reentry for a minimum of five years or more. The "snitch" factor too will be more pronounced and in the present atmosphere of fear and resentment of nationals and the increasingly desperate competition between Americans and foreign born for jobs in a shitty economy, you can expect seeing quite a few "dimes being dropped" . .

US syndicates will be pinched from at least two sides - those like One World and Oracle who are counting on Kiwi boat builders to build their race boats even though it is quite likely that they lack the appropriate visas required for such endeavors. The time required to process the application is too long to cure the problem at this point given the time remaining, and it wouldn't be too much of a surprise if a van load of INS officials suddenly marched into their respective boat sheds and took the build crew off in handcuffs for violating the terms of their visitor visas. Can you imagine!

The second problem is that even with the H visas allowing temporary work in America, these foreigners still don't qualify as permanent residents and without that box being checked, they can't design or sail for the locals. Maybe its time to clarify the rules in order to make it clear that pretending to be a tourist in order to get an America's Cup gig is no different than swimming the Rio Grande to pick strawberries: their both illegal, immoral and just plain wrong.