ORANGEBURG (South Carolina) TIMES & DEMOCRAT

August 21, 2006

Solution to illegals must not ignore impact on farming, officials and farmers say

By GENE ZALESKI, T&D Staff Writer

Bowman dairy farmer Hugh Weathers, who co-owns a 650-cow dairy operation in the eastern part of Orangeburg County, understands the importance of having an available and reliable work force.

As South Carolina commissioner of agriculture, he also sees the importance of having a ready and willing work force to support the state’s agricultural industry.

As the battle of words and policymaking continues regarding the issue of illegal immigration, Weathers joins other South Carolina farmers and immigration law experts in calling for restraint in passing immigration laws. He warned that a wholesale crackdown on illegal immigration would adversely impact the state’s agricultural industry.

“It did not happen overnight and we can’t fix it overnight without the expense of doing something that would bring an upheaval in a great number of industries, agriculture included,” Weathers said in reference to the illegal immigration issue. “We need to secure our borders and acknowledge what we do have does not encourage illegal immigration but does not disrupt the industry now dependent on this labor force.”

Weathers echoes sentiments brought forth by farmers and immigration officials Thursday morning during a forum held at the South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation’s Cayce office.

The panel was a part of the South Carolina Ag Council meeting.

“We need to realize that the ag industry and other industries need workers,” Chalmers Carr, Ridge Spring peach grower and chairman of the South Carolina Labor Committee for the S.C. Farm Bureau told Ag Council members. “The bottom line of this thing ... these are unskilled jobs mainly that these workers are doing. The fact is we are going to need workers to do these jobs.”

To address this absence of an available American work force, Carr says there needs to be a program that allows farmers to bring as many workers as they need across the border without the time or expense of the current guest-worker program.

Carr, who ships about 1 million boxes of peaches from his 2,500-acre operation in South Carolina, has been using the existing guest worker program H2A to bring in up to 300 workers a year from Mexico. Under the program, workers are with the farm up to nine months. The entire program can be entered into for a three-year period.

But Carr said the program is expensive – he estimates it costs him about $500 in fees and transportation costs to bring in one worker for one season, not including the mandatory housing expenses. It’s also time-consuming. This past February, he asked for the workers he’d need in April and he was still waiting in April for approval.

Carr says also under the program the employer is required to pay $8.37 an hour as part of the adverse wage affect rate. The average prevailing wage in South Carolina in the peach industry is about $6 an hour.

“It makes it hard to compete with other farms around me when I am paying almost 25 percent more in wages than they are,” Carr said. “It is getting very hard to compete anymore. This should be market-based.”

Joining Carr on the discussion panel was Thomas Legare, a Johns Island nurseryman, who has worked with the Hispanic labor force during the last 20 years; Dr. Myriam Torres, director of the Consortium for Latino Studies at the University of South Carolina, and Joy Mandanas, a McNair Law Firm immigration attorney.

Panelists answered questions ranging from the possibility of tapping into the current welfare labor force for agricultural jobs to balancing secure borders and a guest worker program as well as current immigrant legislation.

“If we tighten our borders and we go to mandatory verification, you will have to have a guest worker program to go along with it that is usable. If not, you will see ag production go offshore where the people are,” Carr said, noting that if borders are shut down and undocumented workers are criminalized, it would be the end of agriculture in the state.

“You would see farms go out of business immediately,” he said, noting about 75 percent of the nation’s roughly 1.5 million Hispanic farm workers are considered illegal. “You are not going to replace these workers at all.”

Weathers said it is crucial not to examine a short-sighted solution (such as entirely cracking down on illegal immigration in one swoop) that could make the problem worse. He says a guest worker program that is fair – that does not displace American workers and requires a method to obtain legal status – is needed.

“We need a guest worker program that is thorough and that can verify that an American worker has not been displaced,” Weathers said.

Lagare echoed this sentiment, noting the importance of a balance between border security and labor security.

“There will have to be some type of system where we can keep track of them, who they are, where they are and where they are going,” Lagare said. “We need to find a workable program that works for everybody and brings in guest workers.”

Mandanas said according to current immigration law, it is difficult to get legal status for these temporary workers.

“There is no legal way for them under the current legal system to get work authorization,” Mandanas said. “There has got to be a way for the ones who are here to be able to convert their status somehow so the laws have to be changed.”

When asked about the work force potential from current welfare recipients or the U.S. work force, Carr said under his current H2A program, he needs to advertise to U.S. workers first for any employment. In eight years, 30 U.S. workers have applied for his position, with one staying more than a day.

“I don’t think there is an available labor force out there,” Carr said.

Lagare echoed that he has tried to hire U.S. citizens, but when an individual is getting government assistance, he or she will not want to enter the ag work force that entails “backbreaking and skilled labor.”

In addition to the panel discussion, Torres presented an overview of the Hispanic/Latino population trends and growth over the years.

Torres says both locally and nationally the Hispanic population is growing and is proving to be more of an impact on the U.S. economy.

She pointed to the latest 2005 U.S Census Bureau numbers that show the Hispanic/Latino population in Orangeburg and Bamberg County between .66 percent and 1.31 percent while in Calhoun County the population is 1.32 percent to 2.39 percent.

“There is not a point that we can say there are no Latinos living in South Carolina,” Torres said. “They are everywhere.”

Statewide, 2005 Census numbers reveal the Hispanic/Latino population comprises 3 percent or 135,000 of the population, compared to 29 percent African-American and 67 percent white.

Torres said Census numbers do not seem accurate with the Hispanic/Latino population in the state most likely closer to about 500,000, or 10 percent of the population.

Torres said many immigrants are coming to South Carolina because of its attractive economy, industrial recruitment efforts, migration networks and the state’s low cost of living.

Torres said the Hispanic buying power on the state’s economy is about 3.5 billion annually.

Following the meeting, attendees were able to sample the State Peach Recipe Contest dishes. The concert was sponsored by the Farm Bureau Roadside Market Program.