Negotiating his work fee in a small Huntington Beach home in the 1980s, Scott Powelson suspected he would one day be replaced by workers from south of the border.

“Well you know, I can get this guy to do this for way cheaper,” the homeowner told him at the time.

The woman told Powelson his competition spoke Spanish but very little English. While she couldn’t quite comprehend everything the other man said, she understood the price.

Powelson, who had just given the homeowner his best bid to install ceramic tile, passed on the job. He would have had to take a 20 percent cut to match the price.

“I couldn’t compete,” the 59-year-old from Costa Mesa recalled on a recent weekday at a local diner where the food is cheap and plentiful.

“I realized flat out that I couldn’t compete with these guys in ceramic tile, eventually they’d move into my field of expertise,” he said. “I saw it coming way back. … I started realizing that I’m bidding against these guys who come in from Mexico … illegally.”

Powelson, who has labored in the hardwood flooring business for 30 years, said he is now feeling the full force of what he predicted decades ago.

Magnified by a crippling recession that’s left home improvements as a second thought, he’s resorted to taking odd jobs here and there. He’s essentially unemployed, more than six months behind on rent and seriously considering a move out of state. Most of his time now is dedicated to political activism aimed at curbing illegal immigration.

While his situation is dire, he said, he doesn’t blame the illegal workers who can afford to lower their fees, outbidding him on jobs. He doesn’t point his finger at the contractor or subcontractors who hire them.

The root of his situation, he said, is the American people’s addiction to cheap labor and products.

Powelson, a high school graduate, took some community college courses but didn’t quite know what to do for most of his young adult life. He happened on installing flooring and enjoyed how the work could take him from cottages to mansions — meeting interesting people along the way.

He started making $150 a day and eventually earned up to $500 for a day’s worth of work. He never married and lived pretty comfortably, working steadily in the 1970s and 1980s, he said.

The industry began to change in the mid-90s, Powelson said. That’s when a lot of the contractors stopped doing the work themselves, he said. Instead, they hired workers, dropping them off at work sites with tools before taking off.

“They would blast through jobs so quickly, taking up the work,” he said. “But as long as the economy was up, it really didn’t hurt me. I would still get my share.”

He’d get at least three jobs a week back then.

Soon, however, the economy soured and the work slowed.

When the economy tanked a couple years ago, Powelson said, it became economically impossible for him to compete against the six or seven other bids coming from contractors who hired foreign workers.

The bids would come down to $100 a day – lower than what he started out making decades ago. He was lucky to get a job a week. The last straw came when a shop owner Powelson knew well told him he may have work for him – fixing a botched flooring job one of Powelson’s competitors did.

“I wouldn’t do it,” he said, saying that job added insult to injury.

Powelson said he’s confronted contractors and shop owners he has relationships with and who now rely solely on people who are working in the country illegally.

“Hey, I have to,” he said, repeating what the contractors told him. “If I want to keep making the money I’m making, I have to keep hiring these guys. Everyone else is doing it. It’s the only way I can compete.”

Powelson says the employers “are ruining the country.” Still, he said he understands their position.

“They’ve gotten themselves into debt up to their eyeballs. The simple fact is that they can’t live on what they can earn themselves,” he said. “They need someone working for them making less than what they can charge for. He needs to be able to make enough to make that to cover his bills… They got hooked on using people at a lower rate.”

Powelson said he realizes he was in a compromised position.

“Anyone can learn to do a floor. It’s not rocket science,” he said.

He said he tried to learn a new profession and became a heavy equipment operator for some time but the local union’s way of doing things didn’t agree with him. He eventually got out.

Powelson said switching professions now that he’s older is difficult and something he’s not willing to do, He said he’s never been an ambitious man.

“I don’t do a lot… much more than I have to do,” he explained.

His only regret is not becoming politically active until later in life.

Powelson said he’s on a crusade to stop the flow of illegal immigration, joining Huntington Beach-based California Coalition for Immigration Reform a few years back and now becoming active in other similar groups.

“I could go out and ignore all this and go out and make a lot of money,” he said. “I could go work my butt off and pay my bills but… I’d postpone the inevitable.”

He offers a solution to what he said is a problem that will eventually bring down the nation.

He urges people to hire Americans and buy American.

“We shouldn’t be supporting slavery,” he said.

Powelson used to go out of his way to buy American products, religiously searching for tennis shoes made here.

However, the hat on his head emblazoned with the American flag is made in China.

“Like everyone else, I can’t afford it anymore,” he explained. “I want to buy USA but it’s hard.”

This profile is the first in a regular series of vignettes that feature local people describing how immigration—legal and illegal—has affected their lives.

Coming next: a local business woman who was once in the country illegally and is now a U.S. citizen who helps train others to start their own business.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7924 or ccarcamo@ocregister.com