CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE-PRESS

September 30, 2007

Film shows problems of farm work immigrants

By Perla Trevizo
Staff Writer

Every year thousands of immigrant workers legally come to the United States to work on farms across the country. But a new documentary film says that although their immigration status is secure, their future is not.

Charles Thompson, one of the creators of "The Guestworker," said the H-2A guest worker visa program for farm laborers has advantages and disadvantages.

"One of the advantages of the program is that you can come across the border in a bus and have a visa to work," Dr. Thompson said. Once the work is done, the worker returns to his country.

"The disadvantages are that you may work in the program for multiple years and receive no citizenship. There's no way to retire after working for years in the program; you don't pay for Social Security in the USA or for any system in Mexico," he said. "So you end up having people who can't retire because they don't have any savings."

"The Guestworker" tells the story of a man from Durango, Mexico, who has been employed at the same farm in North Carolina since the program began in 1986.

Don Candelario Gonzalez Moreno, who was 66 when filming started in 2002, is the oldest worker Dr. Thompson said he has seen. In the film, Mr. Gonzalez Moreno said he keeps working because he still has a family to support.

America Gruner, president of the Coalition for Latino Leaders in Dalton, Ga., said the guest worker program is an option for a lot of people because they want to have an income. But at the same time, she said, they don't earn much money and never acquire any legal rights.

"They invest a lot of time, many years, and they never reach a permanent (legal) status," Ms. Gruner said in Spanish.

She also said she believes a lot of the workers are exploited through the program, starting with the way they are recruited and their working conditions.

Dr. Thompson agreed the guest worker program lacks regulations and that many decisions are left to the conscience of the farmer.

But Ray Tidwell, owner of Tidwell's Berry Farm in Dayton, Tenn., said the H-2A guest worker program is more regulated than other guest programs.

Employers who can't recruit domestically ask the Department of Labor to certify their need for workers. Then the Department of Justice receives and approves employers' petitions for laborers. The Department of State issues the H-2A visas and the Department of Agriculture supervises the program, according to Dr. Thompson.

According to its Web site, the Department of State issued about 37,000 H-2A visas in 2006.

Mr. Tidwell, who's been using the program for about eight years and who hires about 60 workers during the strawberry season in late April, said the program works fine and it's not a burden on the taxpayers.

"As the employer, we provide transportation, housing, pay their utilities," he said. "The only burden on the taxpayer is that they (the workers) use the highways."

Mr. Tidwell said that without the guest worker program his crops wouldn't get picked.