Carpenters organizer faces prison, deportation
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
In a case that has brought immi-
gration controversy to the heart of a
local union, a Portland-area labor or-
ganizer is facing prison and deporta-
tion, stemming from the fact that he
was in the United States illegally.
José Alfredo Cobián, 36, known to
local union members as Jose Luis
Mendoza, or simply Luis, spent the
last five years working for the Pacific
Northwest Regional Council of Car-
penters.
As an organizer, Cobián visited
non-union construction sites to tout
the benefits of joining the union —
and fight for the rights of non-union
workers when their employers broke
labor and safety laws or failed to pay
wages.
Many of the workers on whose be-
half he advocated were illegal immi-
grants.
“He was fighting for people in the
same situation as him, and we didn’t
realize it,” said Pete Savage, regional
manager of the Pacific Northwest Re-
gional Council of Carpenters. “He
was taking a great risk.”
Cobián says his journey began at
the age of 19, when he left his native
Colima, Mexico, and made his way to
the Portland area. He found under-
the-table work doing carpentry for
construction contractors, putting up
new houses in suburban develop-
ments. Once, he returned from lunch
to find that most of his co-workers
had been arrested in an immigration
raid.
But he was determined to stay.
Every day he made a point to con-
verse in English with someone, and
every night he locked himself in his
room for two hours reading English
books, listening to English audio-
tapes, and watching English language
television. Within a few years, he was
a fluent English speaker.
Missing his family, he went home
and came back again in 1994, cross-
ing the border clandestinely.
Then in 1996, visiting family in
Compton, California, he says he met
some men on the street who offered
to sell him a valid U.S. birth certifi-
cate and Social Security number for
$800. It would mean fewer hardships
finding work — employers would
have the documentation they were
seeking, and wouldn’t have to risk
breaking the law to hire him.
The name on the birth certificate
was Jose Luis Mendoza. Mendoza
had been born a year after Cobián, in
Willows, California, and had died at
the age of four, without obtaining a
Social Security number.
To make it work, Cobián would
have to take on a new name, and forge
a new identity. Now that he had pa-
pers, he could put his skills to work
on the union side, and he joined Car-
penters Local 2154 in March 1997.
Later that year, while taking com-
puter classes at Clackamas Commu-
nity College, he met Maria de Rosario
Lucio, a native of Tampico, Mexico.
Lucio was in the country legally, vis-
iting relatives in the United States.
They soon married, and had a daugh-
ter, Alexis. A son, Dante, followed
four years later.
By then, Cobián had become an
active union supporter. When a call
came for Spanish-speaking organiz-
ers in 2001, he responded. The union
had decided to try to unionize the
mostly-immigrant nonunion workers
flooding the construction industry.
Cobián, fully bilingual and by all ac-
counts gutsy and hard-working, was
a natural fit.
He helped construction workers
press pay claims, and held nonunion
contractors to account. He was part of
a drive to organize general contractor
Swinerton of Oregon, and he helped
campaign against Sideco in the resi-
dential sector and drywall contractors
Ron Rust and Ramon Tapia. When
the Carpenters Union took a stand in
favor of federal immigration reform,
Cobián became an activist, speaking
at immigration rallies and even at a
press conference outside the Portland
immigration office.
Meanwhile Cobián had saved his
pennies, and in 2002 was able to real-
ize his lifelong goal of buying a home
— a tidy ranch house in Molalla, a
Portland suburb in Clackamas
County.
Lucio stayed home to care for the
kids. Alexis enrolled in Mulino Ele-
mentary School.
Despite a rough start, it seemed
Cobián, as Mendoza, had achieved
the American dream.
It was all about to unravel.
(Turn to Page 8)
Carpenters organizer Jose Cobián (aka José Luis Mendoza) awaits
deportation and a prison term on immigration-related charges. Cobián
and his wife Maria de Rosario Lucio, both 36, are Mexican nationals,
while their U.S. born daughter Alexis, 8, and son Dante, 4, are U.S. citizens.
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NOVEMBER 17, 2006
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
PAGE 7