GRAND JUNCTION (Colorado) DAILY-SENTINEL June 14, 2007
Agency helps migrant workers find a place to call home To earn a yearly wage of between $7,000 and $10,000 Salvador Alvares paid a guide, commonly called a coyote, $2,000. The coyote took him across the Mexico-U.S. border. From there they walked through the Mojave Desert for three days. Alvares, who understands just enough English to know when to smile and nod, now works nine hours a day or more in the fields of Talbott Farms in Palisade. When the workday is done, Alvares retires to one of a handful of bunkhouses situated within the orchards. The accommodations are meager and crowded, but he says they are “good.” Recently, Child and Migrant Services in Palisade, an agency that assists migrant workers with everything from transportation to housing, was awarded a $102,810 grant from the State Housing Board to build more housing like Alvares’ bunkhouse. Child and Migrant Services will be able to acquire two 10-man, pre-built modular bunkhouses with that money. One will be used for workers at Mesa View Orchards and the other for workers on Talbott Farms. The orchard owners will lease the homes from Child and Migrant Services. The housing is a requirement of the H2-A visa program, which allows employers to import foreign agricultural workers on temporary visas. As participants in the H2-A visa program, employers are required to pay workers at least $8.64 an hour, provide transportation across the border and supply on-site housing. “There just isn’t enough housing, period,” said Mark Harris, co-owner of Grand Valley Hybrids, a seed corn company in Palisade. “These people (immigrant workers) have literally and figuratively put food on our tables. We owe them something.” Harris’ comments came despite his rejection of the H2-A program, and his company’s long-standing policy of not building any worker housing. “This year, due to the (federal government’s) failure to pass any kind of comprehensive immigration reform, we will be hiring no summer help,” Harris said. Grand Valley Hybrids would employ up to 160 seasonal workers in years past. The company would pay more than other growers, about $10 an hour, so that workers could find their own housing, he said. It would also employ seasonal workers that lived on other farms when the workers’ main employers didn’t need them for the day, Harris said. Currently, Child and Migrant Services says there is a need to house 779 agricultural workers during peak season, and anywhere from 86 to 174 of these workers have traveled here with their families. “About 10 years ago, there used to be a lot more migrant families,” said Christine Mok-Lamme, executive director of Child and Migrant Services. “How that number is going to change depends on how the immigration laws change.” There currently is a growing need for family housing and decent housing for single men. An appropriate mix of housing for farmworkers, according to Child and Migrant Services, is 6 percent one-bedroom, 20 percent two-bedroom, 49 percent three-bedroom and 25 percent four-bedroom. Kathy Lamb, her husband, Victor Hodges and their 7-year-old son Cody Waite is one family that could benefit from improved housing. At the end of a dusty drive on Talbott Farms sits a small house where Lamb stays with her son while Hodges busies himself as a handy man during the day doing a variety of odd jobs around the orchards. They have lived here for the past year in what looks like a tin shack, roughly 60 feet by 20 feet. It’s enough room for two tiny bedrooms, a small bath, a walk-in kitchen and a sitting area furnished with a love seat and a radio that barely qualifies as a living room. It’s comfortable and it’s home, Lamb said. “It helps us out a whole lot right now with just one income coming in. Rent is expensive,” she said. Without the free housing, she said, “we would struggle.” Even though their home is of minimal standards, she said their home is much nicer than the ones workers of yesteryear had to endure. Talbott Farms orchards manager Bruce Talbott can point to some of the older farm houses that are still standing, including bunkhouses from the 1940s. Even smaller than Lamb’s shanty, they would hold eight men on double-stacked cots. The homes have two long windows for ventilation that can be opened by propping up their heavy wooden covers. “A wind and rain shelter is all it really was,” Talbott said. Many growers and orchard owners, including Talbott, work with Child and Migrant Services to house field hands. The new modular homes come with a kitchen and bath, a four-man bedroom on either end and a two-man bedroom in the middle. One will be going in next door to Lamb’s home. Some of those that will be living here arrived in the country illegally but are in possession of legal identity documents, Talbott said. Because Talbott uses the H2-A program, he pays non-H2-A employees the same as participants. Some of the workers have Social Security numbers and photo identification, but some are phony, he said. “Their documents will not stand scrutiny,” he said. “Let me put it this way: If I am audited I will not be penalized, but I will lose some workers.” Those workers, according to Talbott, for the most part range in age from 30 to 35 years old. “They are here for really only one reason: To make money,” he said. There are actually fewer of these workers than a decade ago because of the decline of apple production across the state, he said. In 1985 Talbott had 110 acres for apple trees and workers had to work longer into the season to bring the crop in. Today that acreage has dropped to 40. “Apples used to be 90 percent of the revenue in ’85,” Talbott said. They are just 10 percent today. From Mok-Lamme’s perspective, the need for agricultural workers in Mesa County will remain relatively flat for the next several years but the need for adequate housing remains. “Quality housing and affordable housing is very, very important for the economy,” she said. “You can’t ensure a dependable crew unless you have good housing.”
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