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JOURNAL-NEWS (
Farmers: Immigration raids imperil harvests
Jay Gallagher and Leah Rae
ALBANY - With the harvest season beginning, farmers around the state say
crackdowns on immigrants are causing a widespread labor shortage that
threatens this year's harvest of some fruits and vegetables.
"Some farmers are flat-out short of hands," said Pete Gregg, a spokesman
for the state Farm Bureau. "They're worried about leaving fruits on the
trees and vegetables on the ground."
New York is home to a labor-intensive farming industry that expects this
year to produce 3 billion apples, second to Washington state, as well as
cabbage, corn, cherries, peaches, strawberries and blueberries. Most of
those crops have to be picked by hand.
At Cascade Farm in Patterson, David Frost is preparing to work harder
and longer hours when four of his employees return to high school and
college, halfway through the growing season. It's impossible to find
replacements, he said, even though there is no shortage of willing
laborers nearby.
"We've checked with a lot of day laborers, and none of them have
papers," said Frost, who runs an educational farm with a range of
organic produce. "And we're a not-for-profit, so we don't want to
jeopardize our status with any kind of problems. So we're doing it by
the book.
"They all need work. We need them. But they don't have papers," Frost
said.
About half of the nation's 1 million hired farmworkers do not have legal
authorization to work in the United States, according to the U.S.
Department of Labor. Earlier migrants have had opportunities to legalize
their status, but Congress has deadlocked over a proposed legalization
program. Of farmworkers who entered the United States since 2001, only 2
percent have legal status, according to the National Agricultural
Workers Survey.
Interviews with 113 Hudson Valley farmworkers in 2002, conducted by the
Migrant Labor Project at Bard College, found that 71 percent were
undocumented and 21 percent were foreign guest workers.
Gregg said a crackdown on illegal immigrants across the western part of
the state has led to a diminishing labor supply.
"They've gotten aggressive in the last couple of years," he said of
immigration officials. "We hire workers who to our knowledge are here
legally. Then a raid occurs, and we find out paperwork has been forged."
Mike Gilhooly, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
said he was unaware of any recent raids. He said that deportations
usually occur after an encounter with local police.
He said 2,755 people in the country illegally had been deported from
upstate (north and west of Westchester and Rockland counties) from Oct.
1 to Aug. 1. For the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the figure
was 2,917.
Two farmers contacted for this article said they didn't want to be
quoted for fear of retribution by ICE.
The enforcement issue looms large in western New York, where the Border
Patrol is present and federal detention beds are available. Still,
Hudson Valley growers have taken note of the fact some police
departments are moving to work more closely with immigration officials
and that the Orange County jail has agreed to house ICE detainees.
In the Hudson Valley, most farmers have found the workers they need, but
some were short at the start of the season, said Chris Pawelski, an
onion farmer in Pine Island. He serves on the New York Farm Bureau's
labor task force and on the board of the Orange County Vegetable Growers
Association.
"Year after year, it's been getting more difficult," he said.
A number of local apple growers, such as Orchards of Concklin in
Rockland County, said they've been able to handle the harvest through
their year-round staff and the "pick your own" business.
Some growers are tapping the H-2A visa program. Cornell University
professor Max Pfeffer, who studies agriculture and other rural issues,
said more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws along the Mexican
border and within the state has diminished the number of immigrant
workers in New York, who typically number between 15,000 and 30,000
during the harvest season.
"There's a real cause for concern here," he said. "Clearly there is the
need for these farmworkers, and there are fewer of them arriving. …
There is no clear alternative to these workers."
Gregg said the jobs typically pay from $9 to $20 an hour, depending on
how skilled a picker is. But he said the temporary nature of the work,
two months or so, and the physical demands make the jobs undesirable to
most local workers.
Pfeffer said the solution is a more formal way to recruit and transport
workers from Latin America to New York - both to assure the farmers of
adequate labor and the workers a safe trip paid for by their employers.
H-2A has been helpful in doing that, Gregg and Pfeffer agreed. But it is
done on a relatively small scale. Last year, 276 New York employers and
just less than 4,000 workers participated.
The program gets mixed reviews. Farmers complained earlier this year
that the state Labor Department was gumming up the works in that program
by requiring farmers to first consider Puerto Rican workers before those
from other parts of Latin America could be hired. But the state reversed
its policy and has been helpful since farmers protested, Gregg said.
At Stuart's Fruit Farm in Somers, two men have come from Jamaica under
H-2A visas for 30 years to help with Bob Stuart's apple harvest. Except
for a glitch in the red tape earlier this year - Stuart said he needed
the help of Sen. Charles Schumer's office to sort out an error by the
federal government - the program has been satisfactory to him.
The problem could be solved if Congress passed a bill to overhaul the
country's immigration policy, but that's unlikely to happen soon, said
Rep. John R. Kuhl, R-Schuyler County. Congress has deadlocked over the
question of what should happen to illegal immigrants already in the
country. The AgJOBS bill, which would legalize hundreds of thousands of
farmworkers, has also stalled.
Kuhl, a member of House Agriculture Committee, said he favors as a
temporary solution a measure that would make it easier for farmworkers
to get into the country.
"We need some sort of a system that will allow people to come in on a
temporary basis, for maybe up to three years," he said.
Pawelski said it's essential to reform the existing guest-worker program
and make it a long-term source of seasonal workers. He considers the
AgJOBS bill a mere "five-year buyout" - one that would supply newly
legalized farmworkers only to see those workers move on to other kinds
of jobs.
"That's just the American way," he said.
In Patterson, Frost said he's focused on what he will do in the fall
with only three remaining employees.
"There's crops that won't get tended to, so the harvest won't be as
abundant as it would otherwise be," he said.
And if he were calling the shots?
"I would wish that our government would find a way to have a program
where individuals who are in this country already could work and could
be paid and could pay their taxes," he said.
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