Mar. 10--When it became clear the September terrorist hijackers entered the country through the soft underbelly of the nation's immigration visa system, restaurant industry lobbyist Lee Culpepper knew he had a problem. 

The restaurant industry is the single largest employer of immigrants in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than 1.4 million of the restaurant industry's 8 million employees are immigrants. And those are the legal ones. Countless more are working in restaurants illegally. 

Any backlash against foreigners is viewed as a threat by the industry, which relies heavily on workers from Mexico, China, El Salvador and many other countries to cook, wash dishes and wait on tables. 

"We face a very acute challenge" to fill jobs during the coming decade, said Culpepper, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Restaurant Association, which represents the $400 billion-a-year industry. 

The September attacks focused a laser on the sensitive issue, which appears destined to become thornier as the restaurant industry searches for workers in a labor market that is aging. 

Although the debate over immigration has heated up and could get hotter, Culpepper and other major industry representatives say they see reasons to be optimistic. 

"Given the nature of the attacks on September 11, it's heartening to see the immigration reform efforts are in as good a shape as they are," Culpepper said. 

Although details have not been released, Culpepper said, the Bush administration has pledged to craft some type of guest worker program by the end of the year that will help resolve concerns about access to foreign workers, particularly workers from Mexico, the main provider of the industry's foreign labor force. 

"They have made a commitment to do something this year. But there's no indication of exactly what form it will take," Culpepper said. 

The restaurant industry has not offered any specific reform proposals of its own, Culpepper said, to remain "as flexible as possible." 

Restaurants have a voracious demand for workers for two reasons: growth and job turnover. Last year, for example, despite the recession and the slowest rate of restaurant sales growth in a decade, the industry created 101,000 new jobs -- 22 percent of all new jobs in the country. 

"We hire a tremendous number of young people, teens in particular," Culpepper said. Demand by 2010 is expected to be 1.4 million new restaurant jobs. 

Adding to the pressure, restaurant job turnover is roughly 100 percent -- which means that restaurants on average must recruit all new employees every year, either from competitors or from outside the industry. 

And because most of the jobs are unskilled, restaurant pay is relatively low, averaging $9.02 an hour compared with $15.55 for all private industry employment. Restaurant workers who get tips average $12 to $15 an hour. 

Groups that want to slow or halt immigration contend that powerful lobbying groups such as the restaurant industry have a vested interest in keeping their labor pool as large as possible. 

Access to immigrants from poorer countries such as Mexico, particularly illegal immigrants who fear deportation, helps keep wages low, said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a lobbying group that for 20 years has tried and failed to slow the tide of illegal immigration. 

The organization is lobbying Congress and conducting grassroots campaigns to try to beef up the Border Patrol, tighten rules on visas, standardize methods of tracking who is in the country, and plug loopholes that the organization contends made it easier for the September hijackers to move about freely. Several, for example, had been issued Florida drivers licenses even though they had overstayed their visa time limits. 

Industries that want to maintain access to many foreign workers, Stein said, contribute to the security threat through their desire to keep wages as low as practical to maintain profit margins. 

"There are narrow-minded interests out there that exploit people," Stein said. "It's shameful." The restaurant industry's idea of immigration reform, he said, is to keep the pipeline as open as possible. 

Culpepper and other restaurant representatives argue that they are pro-immigration for legitimate, economic reasons. "It's not so much about increasing immigration, but trying to meet our needs with whomever," Culpepper said. 

Difficulty in meeting those employment needs is not just a matter of low restaurant-industry pay, said Joshua Rosenbloom, an economics professor and wage expert at the University of Kansas. 

Many teens increasingly view restaurant work as lower status jobs, Rosenbloom said, lower even than jobs with similar pay in malls and clothing stores. As a result, he said, "it's harder to get native-born workers." 

Armando Nunez, a veteran food industry executive in Orlando, said that restaurant work historically has been a common entry-level job for many immigrants with little or no English skills. 

"It's a way for them to be productive members of society, to be self-sufficient and pull themselves up, and there are opportunities for advancement depending on their own level of desire." 

Nunez's own family, for example, emigrated from Cuba in the 1950s and followed that path. "My dad's first job here was washing dishes in a restaurant in New Jersey," Nunez said. 

Nunez, who now is area manager for the Taza fast-food chicken chain in Florida, worked in a deli and as a short-order cook in New York. He worked his way into management and served for a number of years as a McDonald's human resources executive in Europe. 

Many immigrants see restaurant jobs as temporary stepping-stones. Anyuh Moriarty-Lin, who has worked as a server at a Red Lobster in Orlando since December 2000, is taking classes to become a nurse. 

A native of China, she immigrated to the United States in 1994 and holds a "green card," the common name for the Alien Registration Receipt Card, which the government issues to noncitizens to allow them to live permanently and lawfully in the country. 

Various federal agencies offer differing estimates of just how many people are living and working illegally in the United States, with current estimates generally ranging from 8 million to 11 million. 

Stein and representatives of other anti-immigration groups contend the failure to control borders and enforce immigration laws depresses wages for both native-born and foreign workers who are in the country legally. 

"We've got a crisis of legitimacy. It's dysfunctional at every level," Stein said of the nation's complex immigration system. 

Many in Congress agree. But Stein said he is not optimistic that the flow of illegal immigrants, particularly across Mexico's border, will be controlled even with heightened concern as a result of Sept. 11. 

Some economists argue that restricting immigration would hurt the economy and the restaurant industry in particular because higher wages would force restaurants to close, reduce the number of jobs, and force consumers to pay for increased restaurant wages through higher menu prices. 

"Consumers would suffer more than the individual employees would benefit," said Dan Black, an economics professor and expert on wages at Syracuse University. 

Advocates of immigration control disagree. Low-wage workers often are unable to buy insurance, homes or even adequate food without government assistance in the form of food stamps and other social support, said Roy Beck, founder of an immigration control advocacy group called NumbersUSA. 

"When you import low-wage workers, you are asking taxpayers to subsidize those businesses," Beck said. 

Pro-immigration groups, such as the National Immigration Forum, which has members ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the AFL-CIO, disagree and say that studies show immigrants pay their way. 

The immigration forum estimates that the average legal immigrant will pay $80,000 more in taxes during his lifetime than the amount he will receive in local, state and federal benefits. Illegal immigrants often avoid aid programs, even though they may be eligible, because they fear deportation. 

Many immigrants end up owning companies or starting businesses and contribute even more significantly to local economies. Charlie Tang, 32, owner of Viet Garden restaurant in Orlando, immigrated to the United States from Vietnam at age 14, and his first job was as a busboy in a New York restaurant. 

Tang, who became a citizen in 1990, dreamed of one day running his own restaurant. When he moved to Orlando in 1994 seeking warmer weather, he was broke. "I had $354 in my pocket and a broken down 1984 Trans Am," Tang said. 

Four years later, he had saved up enough from a sales job to buy the struggling Viet Garden restaurant in a section of Orlando lined with Asian businesses. Today Tang has seven people working for him, all Vietnamese immigrants with green cards. 

"We're accustomed to working hard, long hours," Tang said. "We're able to make a decent living and still send some money back home." 

Tang said he has feared a Sept. 11 backlash against immigrants and still worries the federal government will make it more difficult for people like him to enter the United States. 

Edward Beshara, an Orlando immigration attorney, said that while restaurants and many businesses rely on immigrants and will mount campaigns to maintain access, he expects some improvements will be made to the nation's complex immigration system as a result of the terrorism attacks. 

"There must be better record keeping of who is here," Beshara said. "You've got the move to globalization and you certainly need freedom of movement between countries. But right now, homeland security is a priority." 

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(c) 2002. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.