Contractors in Oregon who were awarded contracts for work in national forests hired foreign workers even though one of the goals of the federal stimulus funds was to decrease unemployment in the United States.

Here is an excerpt from an article in the Oregonian:

In the Oregon case, contracts in the amount of $7 million were approved to clear and clean federal forests in central Oregon at a time when local unemployment was nearly 15 percent. Local officials said there where thousands of experienced workers were idle who could fill the need. When the contracts were announced in 2009, Oregon had the third-highest unemployment rate in the nation at 11.1 percent.

Even so, the contractors told federal regulators they could not find enough local workers for the jobs.

The federal investigation looked at 14 contracts to clear federal forests in central Oregon. The contracts were controlled by four Oregon companies: Medford Cutting Edge Forestry, Summitt Forestry, Ponderosa Reforestations, and G.E. Forestry. All hired foreign workers, according to the report, though they didn’t all handle hiring in the same way.

While legal, the hiring practices appear to violate the spirit and purpose of the $840 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus, which was designed to create jobs that would jumpstart the country out of recession.

The article does not say that any contract fire crews used foreign workers.

Members of the Oregon House of Representatives are scheduled to vote on House Bill 3315, which would require the Oregon Employment Department to report on any company performing “forest maintenance” work on federal lands that use foreign workers on temporary work visas instead of domestic workers.

Thanks go out to Kelly.