MEDIA GENERAL SERVICES June 5, 2007
Southern growers fear loss of workers
Gil Klein Media General News Service WASHINGTON - Edilberto Madrigal Valdez is something unusual in the farm fields of the South: He’s a Mexican farm worker who is legally in the United States. Growers and legislators concede that most farm workers in the United States, and nearly all in the South, are illegal immigrants. Even among illegal immigrants, only those who have recently arrived are willing to do the hot, dirty, seasonal jobs. As soon as they can find regular work in other industries, they move on. Growers say that as the federal government clamps down on illegal border crossings, their labor supply is disappearing. They fear their crops will rot in the fields and that agriculture will go overseas. “You sell it or you smell it,” said potato grower Maurice Berry, owner of M.K. Berry and Sons in Elizabeth City, N.C. Added Pat Gaskin, owner of Laurel Springs Christmas Tree Farm, “Nobody wants a Christmas tree on Dec. 26.” Growers are counting on Congress to overhaul the nation’s immigration law to ensure they can get workers. “Securing legal, reliable labor is an area where we need government help,” said Phil Glaize, a third-generation apple grower in Winchester, Va. “Without it, we could see the end of the domestic apple industry.” Workers like Valdez, who was cutting sweet potato plants on a farm in eastern North Carolina last week, are part of the existing “guest worker” program. Farmers can bring in as many workers as they want to work two to 11 months a year. The federal program is not working, growers say, because it’s too costly, too bureaucratic and too litigious. Critics say it gives growers too much power over their workers. The grower holds the worker’s visa so the worker must stay even when there isn’t much work. For Valdez, 44, who had just returned to a labor camp after 11 hours in the fields, starting at 7 a.m., the work requires “lots of focus to survive being away from your family and to survive doing this hard, hard work.” But, he said through a translator, the job “pays a lot better than anything I can do in Mexico. If I weren’t here, there are plenty of people in Mexico who would take my place.” While prospective guest workers may have to bribe a Mexican recruiter $400 to $500, he said, they get to come into the United States legally, avoiding the costly and dangerous illegal border crossing. His $9-an-hour base wage is much higher than the $5 a day a farm worker makes in Mexico. The jobs are attractive even to some Mexicans with advanced training. Valdez has a master’s degree in agricultural engineering. He says he makes more money picking sweet potatoes in North Carolina than he did in his former government job in Mexico. He has been a guest worker for 12 years and sends home about $6,000 for his seven months’ work, about $2,000 more than his job paid in Mexico. With that, he has been able to support his wife and two children and put his son through college with a degree in computer technology. Asked if the growers take advantage of his agricultural expertise, he said, “to the contrary, they treat us like we’re dumb.” The immigration bill being debated this week in the Senate envisions changes that would encourage more guest workers on farms to replace illegal immigrant labor. While senators are debating how many temporary workers to allow in other industries, it is leaving the door wide open for farm guest workers. But it will do so at a price for Valdez and other current guest workers. The legislation cuts the guaranteed minimum pay for guest workers by about $1.50 an hour. It streamlines the bureaucracy to make the program more predictable and less subject to delay. It limits lawsuits that guest workers and their advocates can file and sets up a mediation board to keep disputes out of court. “It opens the doors for more workers, but it could make it more exploitable,” said Leticia Zavala, who directs the North Carolina branch of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, part of the AFL-CIO. “It won’t help them understand their rights, it won’t let them move around to other employers and it doesn’t give them any retirement security.” The current guest-worker program provides a small fraction of farm labor. North Carolina brings in more guest workers than any other state - 7,803 workers of 59,112 nationwide in 2006. But growers in North Carolina employ about 150,000 farm workers in all, and many are willing to sign up anyone who can show some sort of documentation, even an obviously false Social Security card with the number 000-00-0000. “It’s humorous to hear talk of a guest-worker program that will expand to 500,000 workers a year,” said Stan Eury, executive director of the non-profit cooperative North Carolina Growers Association, which arranges for most of the guest workers in the state. “The bureaucratic bottlenecks will not allow it. The system was collapsing at 50,000.” Under federal regulations, guest workers in North Carolina are paid a minimum of $9.02 an hour - tax free - plus they are provided with free housing that meets state and federal standards and transportation to and from Mexico. Other farm workers are guaranteed only the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. They can make more if they pick more. “It doesn’t work,” Eury said. “The wage is way too high. It is driving people away from legal guest workers to illegal workers.” Getting a guest worker first requires advertising to see if native-born Americans want the jobs, Eury said, then filling out long applications that must be approved by state and federal labor officials before being submitted to the Department of Homeland Security for visas. The visas go to U.S. consulates in Mexico where prospective workers undergo background checks. When they get to the U.S. border, they are checked again by immigration agents before they are allowed to head in buses or vans to the farms. As the sun begins to set at the labor camp, Valdez and his fellow guest workers - all men - wash up in the communal shower room, cook their food in the common kitchen and settle in for the evening. They sleep 10 to a cabin, cooled by window fans. “I would love to be able to do something else in my home country,” Valdez said. “Here, I’m in a country that’s very unfamiliar, with a language that’s very unfamiliar. Nobody understands us.” He says he’s unaware of what’s happening in the Senate.
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