Agriculture veteran speaks on migrant labor issues

By Shannon Wells

East Multnomah County is home to no fewer than 90 nursery and greenhouse businesses, according to the Oregon Association of Nurseries. Their annual revenues of between $1 million and $5 million depend on a work force strongly composed of immigrant labor.

As nine-year president of the Oregon Farm Bureau and 20-year owner of Bushue Farms, Barry Bushue has a significant stake in the future of migrant workers. The Outlook asked for Bushue’s input in the immediate wake of a legislative vote requiring proof of legal residency to get a driver’s license. Here are excerpts from the interview:

What was your initial reaction to the recently passed law on driver’s license requirements?

We knew it was going to be addressed … The governor made a choice to do this without consulting through the normal policy-making process. … Our concern as an organization is this is a national issue.

Piecemealing (the solution) with ill-equipped state agencies, utilizing as a basis the Social Security card, when many of its (numbers) are flawed, I think, puts folks at risk who are legal from getting driver’s licenses. I think it puts the entire process under a cloud of doubt.

What about the idea that the identification problem would cease to exist if nursery owners wouldn’t hire illegal workers?

There are laws in existence right now that demand the types of identification we can use. There is a specified list from the government as to the types of documents we can utilize. Those are the processes we’re tied to. Those are the processes we use. Again, this is a national issue.

It’s incumbent on the national government, before they start cracking down on employees, to try and figure out a way to have the legalized work force, as opposed to enforcement, first. Think of the risks it puts a business in it can’t get the workers it needs to do the jobs to produce the product. That’s the position we’re in if we can’t get the workers because of government intervention …

This is a very complex, highly controversial issue … The way to solve this is not through localized methodologies, but by Congress addressing this issue as good public policy as a whole instead of responding to it politically.

You need a work force. Agriculture has worked for a legal work force for 15 years or more. It’s been one of our primary goals for 15 years. It seems like public policy is oftentimes thwarted by political science.

What immediate burdens will this legislation put on the nursery and agricultural industry?

It puts the agriculture industry in a real bind. People are used to cheap food. People are used to, especially in a place like Gresham, used to being able to visit farmers markets and local farms. They’re used to a broad selections in their stores. Those things frankly are all considerably at risk without a work force that maintains an agricultural industry that, with all things counted, brings in $9 billion to the state’s economy.

It’s been estimated that one in 11 members of the work force is tied directly to some part of the agricultural infrastructure. A lot of people are impacted by the necessity for a strong agricultural economy.

Are you aware of people in your business or local industry working illegally?

When you have as many people working in the agricultural industry as we do, there is certainly the potential for folks whose documents are not legal working in the industry. It would be foolish to assume it’s not occurring.

I do understand why this concerns those who have a concern about illegal workers. I would also say that crops went unharvested last year Oregon, in this area, for lack of workers. You hear a lot about (legal) folks who are available to do these jobs, but that kind of flies in the face of the fact that the crops did go unharvested.

It’s a trade-off. The public has the opportunity to try to help Congress come to some kind of a safe, secure, usable system by which we can have a legal work force; the trade-off of not encouraging Congress to do that is considerably increased costs of food, shortages of food, a real negative impact on the agricultural industry.

It needs to be done as a whole cooperative piece … as a national issue. When local entities try to address it, the problem just moves somewhere else.

How responsible are people in your industry for ascertaining the authenticity of worker documents?

The requirements on us are primarily to look at the documents and try to make as good a determination as we can as to whether they’re legitimate documents. We do best we can do within the confinements of the law.

Do businesses bear responsibility for verifying documents? Should they be able to look the other way?

I think there’s a collaborative effort that has to be done by all parties concerned. Certainly the agricultural industry is concerned about having to be a national police force for the immigration reform prospects of the United States. There are folks who spend their entire life dealing with fraud, counterfeit. They have a lifetime to do it. We have a moment in time where we try to look at documents to determine whether they’re legal.

If the government wants us to up our level of verification, we would like to see it be part of a package where they also have some form of legalized guest-worker program.