Miguel Andrade is an immigrant who used to work for Texas State Sen. Dan Patrick before he decided to run for any public office. Patrick is known in the political community for his harsh stance on immigration which Andrade says is shocking since he used to employ undocumented immigrants.
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Miguel Andrade, of Missouri City, came to the U.S. in the mid-1980s with his cousin and two friends as unauthorized immigrants to find work. They were employed by Patrick who owned a sports bar. At the time, there were no laws against hiring undocumented immigrants, but Andrade makes it clear that Patrick had to have known he was undocumented. I
n response to these statements, Patrick replied, “We had literally hundreds of full-time and part-time employees. It’s a transient business and many young people come and go.” However, he does not deny knowing Andrade and says he faintly remembers him working at one of his establishments. Andrade says the men more than knew each other and Patrick had at one point offered to drive him to the border to see his mother. He calls Patrick “compassionate” and reminisces on the kindness he remembers Patrick showing not only him, but the entire Hispanic community.
This is the main reason why Andrade is surprised to hear of Patrick’s statements in office calling on Texas leaders to “stop the invasion” from Mexico. Several opponents are calling Patrick out for being a hypocrite when he previously hired undocumented immigrants, but critics say this is just a political ploy by his opponents.
The practice of hiring workers without proper papers was made illegal by the Immigration Reform and Control Act under President Ronald Reagan, so Patrick is not in trouble for hiring unauthorized workers at the time, but his negative statements about the Hispanic community have hurt Andrade’s feelings to which he replies, “You shouldn’t be one thing when you’re running for office and be something else when you’re not. Here we have the true…hypocrisy of the past versus present political endeavor.”
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