ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION April 6, 2006
Debate over illegals roils onion country
But this year is different for Luis, a legal U.S. resident who has toiled on onion and cucumber farms for more than two decades. Luis' wife was stopped twice last month at police roadblocks he thinks were designed to intimidate immigrants. His 11-year-old daughter has had to deal with rumors at school that immigration agents were going to raid classrooms. And there has been a separate prom for Hispanics at Toombs County High School, just across U.S. 1 from the mobile home where Luis lives with his wife and four children. So instead of following his hardworking instincts Monday, Luis plans to stay home in observance of the "National Day of Action" called by Latino organizations concerned about a congressional crackdown on illegal immigration. "If we don't do the hard work," Luis said in Spanish from a front stoop surrounded by zig-zagging clotheslines, "then who will?" Luis said it's as if America wants immigrant labor but not the immigrants. And the friction between those two sentiments has led to a dishonest immigration system, one that has elevated tensions in the 20-county onion belt between Macon and Savannah. Take Operation Southern Denial, launched by federal immigration agents in 1998. When they began rounding up illegal immigrants on onion farms, Georgia growers and their legislators howled. Then-U.S. Rep. Saxby Chambliss accused the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service of using "bullying tactics" at the height of the Vidalia onion harvest. The INS backed off, allowing growers to use undocumented workers for the rest of the season in exchange for promises that they'd wean themselves off the illegal labor. Walt Dasher, whose Glennville farm was raided back then, responded by joining the government's guest worker program for seasonal agriculture. The so-called H-2A program requires farmers to widely advertise positions and assure that no native workers want them. Then they must transport laborers from their home countries, provide free housing and pay a predetermined rate — now more than $8 per hour — that is often well above the prevailing wage in an area. But Dasher said those requirements were crippling, and he pulled out after just one year. "It's extremely expensive," he said, "and paperwork-heavy." Today he is like most of the 110 growers and shippers in the $60 million Vidalia onion industry. They depend on migrant workers, many of whom are in the country illegally and use fake Social Security cards, labor experts say. Even farms that use guest workers for harvest often rely on resident immigrants to package and ship the onions. Now the experience of Vidalia onion growers offers lessons for Congress as it grapples with how to handle the estimated 11 million people already in the country illegally. A measure being debated in the Senate this week would allow those illegal immigrants to become guest workers. But the House already has passed a bill that includes no guest worker program. It calls for building a wall on part of the border and making it a felony to be in the country illegally. Onion farmer Delbert Bland favors the Senate approach. Bland's 2,200-acre farm near Reidsville is the largest piece of the 13,700-acre Vidalia onion harvest. He stuck with the H-2A guest worker program following the 1998 raids. "Now I couldn't survive without it," Bland said. The reliability of field hands who are arriving in buses this week makes them worth the higher wages, Bland said. "Those workers are here with one thing on their mind — to work," he said "They don't have vehicles. It's perfect." In fact, Bland liked the program too much. He was fined after regulators said he was using guest workers without giving locals a fair chance. The laborers are generally from the area around Monterrey, Mexico. Many return home to jobs as teachers or truck drivers once the harvest is over, Bland said. But the reality is that many immigrants, including those in the country illegally, don't want to be short-term guests. Dona Ciano, 22, paid a smuggler $2,000 to shepherd him across the Mexican border. Ciano gets paid $6 an hour packaging onions in southeast Georgia, more than four times what he says is typical back in his native Tabasco, Mexico. Now he has two children and plans to stay in the United Sates for at least a decade, maybe more. Ciano said he'd jump at the chance to be a guest worker, but only if he could stay year-round and didn't have to leave after only a few years. "If they sent me back," he said in Spanish, "I'd come again." To find a workable solution, many in Vidalia onion country are turning to the same man who spoke up during the raids of 1998. Chambliss, a farmer-friendly Republican from Moultrie, is now a U.S. senator. Chambliss supports the concept of a guest worker program. But he's pushing for several key changes designed to lighten the burden on farmers, including one that would let them pay the prevailing wage in an area. He reasons that if there's a large enough pool of guest workers, and the program is not perceived as cumbersome, then the need for illegal immigrants — and raids — will evaporate. "We don't want our farmers to have to worry about the government looking over their shoulders," he said. But Chambliss is fighting a portion of the Senate measure that would put guest workers on the path to citizenship. He proposed an amendment Monday that would require them to return to their home countries after two years and enter the United States legally. The public, meanwhile, is clamoring for a speedy solution. That includes the people of Toombs County, which sits in the heart of Vidalia onion country and was 9 percent Hispanic in the 2000 census. The growing population of immigrants from Latin America is putting stress on the local schools and health clinics, said Don Waugh, one of a dozen gray-haired retirees sipping coffee at a McDonald's in Vidalia last week. "They used to be all migrant workers," said Waugh, a retired golf course construction manager and longtime resident of the Sweet Onion City. "Now they're sticking around. That's what's killing us." Waugh accepts, however, that the "onions would rot in the fields" without immigrant workers. And he thinks it's unfair to tell those here illegally to go home after 20 years of winking at immigration laws. Mike Cochran, who owned a uniform-making company in Vidalia before retiring, compared the immigration situation to America's dependence on foreign oil. A lot of people complain about it, but the politicians don't have the backbone to fix it, Cochran said as he leaned back in his chair and addressed the McDonald's coffee club. Cochran said he suspects the same thing will happen in Congress this year. The only solution he sees is cutting more people off welfare. Hunger, he said, is perhaps the only thing that would make Americans harvest onions in 95-degree heat. "If it involves sweatin'," Cochran said, "we don't want to do it.”
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