As Congress tackles immigration reform and resentment of laborers from Mexico swells, few are facing the real nature of the crisis.

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The stereotypical image of undocumented workers as brow-beaten and bent over picking crops is no longer entirely accurate.

Only about 15 percent of the country’s estimated 7 million illegal workers are employed in agriculture. The remaining 85 percent—nearly 6 million workers—perform major roles in construction, manufacturing, landscaping, restaurant and hospitality industries.

No one knows what percentage of the labor force they make up in those industries. But one study by the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that about 25 percent of all drywall and ceiling installers in the US are undocumented, as are 25 percent of all dishwashers.

State Assemblyman Simón Salinas, D-Salinas, says one of the main reasons undocumented workers are lacking in agriculture is that many switch over to work in construction and restaurants—where pay and conditions are better—as soon as they can.

“I was a farmworker, and I don’t look forward to going back,” Salinas says. “It’s an honorable job, but it’s a tough job.”

The difference between undocumented farmworkers and workers in other industries, Salinas says, is that the latter still aren’t openly acknowledged by society.

President Bush’s immigration bill, like many other immigration proposals, would tighten the screws on any employers who hire illegal laborers.

“A critical part of any temporary worker program is work-site enforcement,” Bush says. “My bill strengthens our enforcement capabilities by adding new agents and doubling their resources. We’ve got to crack down on employers who flout our laws.”

One way Bush’s bill aims to do that is by requiring employers to run a would-be worker’s Social Security number through a national database to verify if it’s fraudulent or not.

But many are skeptical, and with good reason. Even though it’s been illegal to hire undocumented workers since 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed a massive amnesty bill, enforcement is almost nonexistent today.

Last year, only three companies in the entire country were fined for hiring undocumented workers.

While Congress again winds up to crack down on employers who break the law, the need for cheap, low-skilled domestic labor will keep expanding, according to the US Department of Labor.

By 2010, about 24.7 million new jobs will be created for people who have minimal education. That’s about 43 percent of all new job openings in the US. A study by the American Immigration Law Foundation says the inevitable outcome will be a need for even more unskilled labor.

“With rising educational levels among native-born workers—90.5 percent had a high school degree in 2000 compared to 86.8 percent in 1990—immigrant workers are necessary to fill gaps in the labor force,” says the law foundation’s report titled Mexican Immigrant Workers and the US Economy.

And yet, in spite of a growing need for them, the US every year grants only 66,000 non-agricultural worker visas to low-skilled laborers from abroad.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, Central Americans and other migrants who every year dream of earning dollars don’t even bother applying for an American worker’s visa. They just come.

A union organizer in Pacific Grove says the hospitality industry would be in big trouble if they didn’t have these workers.

“They wouldn’t be able to function without undocumented workers,” says Sergio Rangel, vice president for Union Local 483. “That’s the case not only in Monterey County, but everywhere.”

Jerry Sandoval, owner of Sandoval Construction Co. in Salinas, regularly sees undocumented and unlicensed work crews building homes, painting walls and installing roofs.

“They provide a service that needs to filled at a reasonable price,” says Sandoval, who is also a developer and has worked on building projects across the county. “A lot of them even run their own businesses.”

While these workers should ideally be legalized and licensed, Sandoval admits that it’s thanks to these workers that consumers might pay $25 an hour to install a roof rather than $45 an hour.