"It took a mere day and a half to finish the job; I have no idea how much of my insurance money went to each worker, but I'm sure none of them pocketed even half as much as the adjuster who signed off on the deal or the roofing contractor who persuaded him to do so."

                  I had a weird cleanup job in California a few years back, so I hired this Mexican guy (American citizen with Spanish surname who identified himself as being Mexican) to do it on a time & material basis. The first day I came out, there were something like 15 or 16 people cleaning up the site, some of them were women, and some of them looked to young to work.
                  I asked the guy about the youngsters, and he said he would document everything. The second day, there were about the same number of people, but they weren't all the same people. He finished on the third day, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
                  When he presented me with his bill, which was very reasonable for the amount of work the folks had done, he'd only charged me for 5 laborers and a foreman. I knew there were something like 3 times that many people on the job, and I suspected most of them were illegal.
                   I think he hired these guys and paid them about what an American worker would make, and then each one of them hire two other people--wives and children, maybe--and then the money was spilt between them or not.
                   I didn't feel comfortable with what had gone on, and didn't get into any more contracts like that--what if someone would have gotten hurt or something--but I suspect this goes on all over California. I don't know about other places.