MIDDLETOWN (New York) TIMES HERALD- RECORD August 24, 2007
Federal immigration rules upset apple cart
By New Paltz — If you thought the debate over illegal immigrants was a phenomenon limited to the Southwest, think again. New federal rules aimed at cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants have local apple farmers worried that their crops may be endangered because of a lack of pickers. "They're trying to make farmers de facto enforcers, to put more of the onus on the farmer to validate a worker's legal status," said Peter Gregg, spokesman for the state's largest apple industry lobbying group. The farmworker problem has been a chronic one for decades, but farmers and their lobbying groups say the issue is getting worse since the failure late last spring of an immigration reform bill in the Senate. Technically speaking, all farmworkers carry documentation, including Social Security numbers, that farmers are required to file with the government. In reality, many workers — an estimated 70 percent nationally — carry false documentation. Until recently, mismatches between a worker's stated information and the Social Security Administration's database resulted in a "no-match" letter to farmers well after the harvest. Now, Gregg said, that process is being speeded up so that a worker would have to be fired or the farmer could face fines of up to $10,000. In addition, there's the threat of government raids, such as happened in western New York last year. Margaret James is co-owner of Jenkins and Lueken Orchards on Route 299 in New Paltz. She's seen every variation of government regulations, good and bad, and the latest is "a definite problem." She says this year, she's one of the lucky ones because she'll be relying on workers moving up from Florida for the apple harvest, men who were born in Jamaica and have become naturalized American citizens, some descendants and friends of men who have worked her 200 acres for many seasons. She'd be happy to hire local workers but knows from long experience that "Americans don't want to pick apples." Ulster County is the state's second-largest apple producer, even though the number of farms has declined over the past two decades, from 104 covering nearly 12,000 acres in 1985 to 56 over nearly 6,000 acres in 2001, according to the Cornell Cooperative Extension. These days, it's estimated about 9,000 migrant laborers work the state's orchards. Although a picker can earn as much as $14 an hour, the season is short, (six to eight weeks) the hours long and the work is demanding. "It's a skilled job," said Gregg. "You've got to work fast. It's like picking eggs — you've got to be careful." James said she favored legislation that would have allowed "guest workers" to enter the country for a specified time. The latest orchard crisis comes at a time when farmer across the region are excited about near-perfect weather conditions that have yielded the promise of a great harvest. "And every single one of those apples have to be picked by hand," said Gregg. "We're entirely dependent on a migrant labor work force, and if they don't get to apples on time, they'll just hang on the trees and rot."
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