WALL STREET JOURNAL

March 11, 2005

As Border Tightens, Growers See
Threat to 'Winter Salad Bowl'

Yuma, Ariz., Relies on Muscle
From Illegal Immigrants;
Security vs. Economics

A Job Americans Won't Do

By MIRIAM JORDAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
 
YUMA, Ariz. -- Shortly before Thanksgiving last year, Tom Nassif did something few law-abiding citizens would ever think to do: He called the U.S. Border Patrol here and suggested agents stop manning a highway checkpoint intended to keep illegal immigrants out of the country.

A former U.S. ambassador and currently the president of a powerful farming association, Mr. Nassif told officials that the agency couldn't have picked a worse time to beef up enforcement. Didn't they know it was lettuce season?

The checkpoint -- complete with drug-sniffing dogs -- was meant to stop the flow of illegal immigrants who might have slipped through the regular border controls. But it was also ensnaring busloads of undocumented workers who are critical to the task of picking lettuce and other vegetables during the winter growing season here. Border patrol Public Information Officer Joseph Brigman says he told Mr. Nassif that "we aren't targeting fieldworkers; we're conducting normal operations."

Mr. Nassif, head of Irvine, Calif.-based Western Growers, an association of 3,000 farmers who grow, pack and ship about half the nation's fresh produce, didn't buy that. The next day, he issued a public protest saying the ill-timed action was provoking an "acute shortage of labor" that threatened the harvest, which was just getting under way, and the economy of Arizona's richest agricultural region. Calling for the checkpoint to be moved, Mr. Nassif demanded a "reasonable application of enforcement now and in the future."

Few industries have come so close to admitting they cannot survive without the labor of illegal immigrants. In the process, the growers raised one of the trickiest issues in the widening debate over immigration: How to close the U.S. border to terrorists and drug smugglers without also stopping the flow of illegal workers who prop up big industries like agriculture.

At least half of the 1.8 million crop workers in the U.S. are undocumented, according to the Department of Labor. They sustain an industry valued at $30 billion annually. They also make lawbreakers out of thousands of employers who hire them to do work they say Americans are unwilling to do.

All told, about 10 million illegal immigrants live in the U.S. Without them, experts say, industries like construction, lodging and agriculture would be forced to radically change how they operate -- sharply boosting costs for consumers or curtailing the services they provide. An illegal work force "defines whole industries and whole sectors of the labor market," says Doris Meissner, the immigration chief under President Clinton.

Now, inflamed by security concerns, the debate over illegal immigrants is heating up as Congress considers proposals that would amount to the most significant change in immigration law since an amnesty in 1986.

In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Bush touted a guest-worker program that would grant temporary work permits to laborers already here. Western Growers, meanwhile, has backed bills in the House and Senate that would grant permanent residency to about 500,000 farm workers who have a work history in the U.S. and commit to stay in agriculture. Some conservative Republicans have vowed to block such plans, which they see as an amnesty that would draw even more illegal workers and undermine security.

U.S. agriculture "could not exist without a foreign work force," says Mr. Nassif of Western Growers, who acknowledges that a significant number of those workers are illegal immigrants carrying false documents. "If they come to us with documents that appear to be legal we will go ahead and hire them, unless and until we find out that they are false documents."

Since Texas and California received an infusion of resources to boost border security in the mid-1990s, Arizona -- despite its harsh desert terrain -- has become the gateway of choice for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants. Deputy Homeland Security Secretary James Loy said in written testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee last month that continuing investigations, detentions and emerging threats "strongly suggest" al Qaeda has considered using the Southwest border to infiltrate the U.S.

Eager to seal this last porous stretch of border, the government about a year ago launched a plan, dubbed Arizona Border Control Initiative, to increase personnel, as well as ground and air-surveillance equipment in the desert expanse. Besides stopping terrorists and drug smugglers, the plan also is aimed at deterring the growing number of Mexicans who die in the hot desert as they attempt to gain entry to the U.S.

But the initiative is creating unprecedented problems for the lettuce industry.

The men and women who harvest the lettuce consumed in the U.S. are known as lechugeros, or lettuce people, in Spanish. Each November, about 45,000 of them descend on this border area, whose mild fall temperatures and river-irrigated land make it the perfect place to grow leafy vegetables. Growers in Yuma estimate that about one-third fewer workers reported to their fields this year.

Many laborers migrate here from California, where the lettuce season starts later in the year, to work the five-month Arizona harvest. Others illegally cross the border at the start of the season and leave when it ends. A minority of the pickers are green-card holders, who legally commute back and forth daily from neighboring San Luis, Mexico.

The fieldworkers -- virtually all of them Mexican -- are the backbone of the region's largest industry. It pumps $1.5 billion annually into the Yuma County economy and accounts for a third of Arizona's agricultural revenue, according to state agriculture-department statistics. Between November and March, 90% of the leafy vegetables produced in the U.S., including broccoli and cauliflower, originate here, giving Yuma the nickname of the nation's "winter salad bowl."

Most of the production is packed at local salad-processing plants and shipped to major supermarket and fast-food chains, like Safeway and McDonald's Corp. Each year, Yuma throws a weekend celebration called "Lettuce Days" to mark its agricultural prowess and showcase its products.

This year, Antonio Oseguera isn't celebrating. He needs about 350 workers, 40 tractors and a fleet of trucks to harvest lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower from 3,000 acres of land he controls around the area. He says he's had to scrounge for workers like never before in his two decades in the business. "The lettuce has to be picked; that's the cry of the land," he says. "But there aren't enough workers." He has lost $1 million in potential sales this season alone, he says. His business is operating $250,000 in the red.

Mr. Oseguera used to be able to find plenty of green-card holders to do the work. But these legal immigrants are aging -- their bodies injured or too worn out by the backbreaking work to keep it up. The old timers' offspring, born and raised in America, are educated enough to seek better opportunities. Those willing to do physical labor prefer construction or factory work, which offer higher pay and year-round income.

"So, who's going to do the work?" asks Mr. Oseguera, though he knows the answer all too well. Ahead of the harvest, he took out ads in the local papers for fieldworkers. The grower got one reply, he says -- from a mechanic. He didn't get the job.

Arizona officials also concede that growers have trouble filling field jobs with legal employees. Janine Duron, a senior official at the employment agency meant to match workers with jobs, says she gets requests all the time for fieldworkers, but she rarely fills them. She estimates seven out of 10 farm workers in Yuma are illegal.

The undesirability of the work compounds the problem. "I don't have any farm workers who tell their kids 'when you grow up, I want you to be a farm worker just like me,' " says Sonny Rodriguez, a local grower who supplies major produce companies. "Farm work is a stepping stone for immigrants."

The current winter lettuce-picking season is at its peak. On a recent morning, lechugeros were bent over, cutting, trimming and packing iceberg, romaine and red-leaf lettuce as far as the eye could see. In some fields, workers cut broccoli and cauliflower from the stalk, removed the outer leaves and tossed the heads onto a tray for packing. To guard against the sun, women wore scarves that covered their faces and necks.

Omar Vasquez, 29 years old, has been toiling in the lettuce and broccoli fields since his childhood. Five years ago, he underwent back surgery to repair a disk he injured in the fields. Despite his illegal status, Mr. Vasquez's experience has earned him seniority -- he is a field supervisor earning $700 a week, at least a third more than the average worker.

In Yuma, he shares an apartment with five other Mexican workers who have also migrated from the Salinas area for the season. It's Mr. Vasquez's third year working the Yuma harvest, and he is struggling to get the broccoli picked before it starts to rot. Some workers "got busted and didn't come back no more," says Mr. Vasquez, referring to spot enforcement that the border patrol has been doing in the area. "The migra [Spanish slang for immigration authorities] is stopping vans and buses on the roads, and even people walking on the streets," Mr. Vasquez says.

Mr. Vasquez believes he's shielded from the scrutiny of the border patrol because he drives a pickup truck and carries a walkie-talkie. He figures this makes him look more important than the average fieldworker, who relies on public telephones and public transportation.

Other workers seem to be easier targets for the authorities. José Rodriguez left his wife and two U.S.-born children near Salinas, where he has lived illegally for seven years, to work the harvest in Yuma for the first time this year.

About two weeks into his stay, he was talking to his family on a payphone outside a supermarket when two border-patrol agents asked him for his documents. Mr. Rodriguez says he was arrested, jailed and then dropped in Nogales, Mexico, where he had never set foot before. A few days later, he managed to sneak back across the border. "I missed two weeks of work," he says during a break from loading boxes of broccoli onto a truck. "But I'm back for the rest of the season."

Yuma County's border with Mexico extends 116 miles. A metal fence with countless holes, as well as a rugged, cactus-studded desert, separate the two countries. On a recent morning, the footprints of crossers from the previous night were still visible, as well as "foam walkers," sponge-like pads that some people tie to their feet to avoid leaving a trace. Mr. Brigman, the border-patrol agent, pointed at new 3,000-watt stadium lights going up. A secondary chain-link fence is expected to be built in coming months.

Thus far, high-tech equipment -- such as magnetic and seismic sensors embedded in desert and roads to detect foot and vehicular traffic -- has failed to stop the flow of those trying to enter the U.S. Entire families hide in citrus groves, sometimes for days, until they feel certain the border patrol is far away. "It's a jungle in there," says Mr. Brigman, as he drives past an orange grove. Not even air patrols can see through the maze of trees, he says.

Last year, 36 people died in the Yuma desert while trying to enter the U.S. The Yuma border patrol made 98,060 arrests, one-third more than in 2003, and expects to apprehend about 40% more crossers this year than last. The border patrol, now part of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency under the Department of Homeland Security, does not estimate how many people cross the border in the region.

Some of those who make it into the U.S. use Yuma as a transit point on their way to the interior. That's why checkpoints, such as the one on Interstate 8 heading east to Phoenix and beyond, are an important part of the security strategy in the area. "Checkpoints are the secondary line of defense," says Mr. Brigman.

The lettuce industry disagrees. It says that, in the past, patrol activities in Yuma were focused on the front lines, near the border. Highway checkpoints were further from the lettuce fields, and therefore less disruptive to the flow of workers. Buses carrying workers to the fields from various points around the area were rarely stopped, say growers and workers in Yuma.

"If they're picking up guys outside 7-Eleven, we have to think they're targeting farm workers," says Mr. Nassif of the Western Growers association.

Shortly after Western Growers issued the public protest in late November, the checkpoint on I-8 was closed. Mr. Brigman denies that it had anything to do with the complaint. The checkpoint, he says, has been reopened, on and off, during the winter, adding: "Any modifications are determined by field intelligence."

Regardless of the border patrol's intent, a cat-and-mouse game has developed between it and the transportation system that brings people to work. In December, the border patrol detected labor buses taking a circuitous route to reach fields east of Yuma. So it erected temporary posts, or "tactical" checkpoints, on a side road. Agents arrested 232 fieldworkers in two days. The border patrol points out that agents also arrested 15 illegal Mexicans heading elsewhere in the U.S., including seven concealed by a load of plywood in a truck.

On a recent morning, Stephen Johnson, the agent in charge of the Wellton border-patrol station in the Yuma area, was ecstatic after an overnight apprehension, thanks to ground sensors: 58 Mexicans in three off-road vehicles.

About 40 of the men awaited processing and deportation in an open-air pen, where there was standing-room only. Most had been living in the U.S. already and were trying to return after visiting relatives in Mexico. Only one had a criminal record -- for drunken driving in Oakland, Calif., the border patrol says.

Asked why they had risked the desert crossing, the men responded in unison: "Work! Pure Work!" One man yelled: "La lechuga! La lechuga!" (The lettuce! The lettuce!)