ELMIRA (New York) STAR-GAZETTE

March 20, 2008

Foreign workers key to success on S. Tier farms
Farm owners praise employees, but face many legal hurdles.

By Glenda Gephart
Special to the Star-Gazette

MONTOUR FALLS -- Foreign workers are a vital component of the Southern Tier's agricultural industry, but hiring foreign workers poses many legal challenges for employers.

Even just talking about hiring foreign workers can land farm owners in a load of potential trouble, Mark James, executive director of the New York Farm Bureau Finger Lakes Office in Seneca Falls, told a meeting of the Schuyler County League of Women Voters on Wednesday.

In Schuyler County, upwards of 40 foreign workers are employed on dairy farms and by grape growers.

In the tri-county region that includes Chemung and Steuben counties, the total number of foreign workers in agriculture is about 200, said Brett Chedzoy, Schuyler County Cornell Cooperative Extension senior resource educator, focusing on agriculture and natural resources.

Steuben County probably has the highest number of the three counties, he said.

Among those employed, James said, some are permanent employees and some are temporary, seasonal workers.

Big challenges on big farm

Bergen Farms, a large dairy operation based in Mecklenburg in the town of Hector, has about 40 full-time, permanent workers, divided about equally between local workers and foreign workers, primarily young men from Mexico.

Stephanie Bergen said her family's business could not operate without the foreign workers. She said she has been hiring foreign workers for about five years because Bergen Farms could not find enough local workers interested in the many necessary jobs, including milking cows three times a day.

"It's been a pretty positive experience for us," Bergen said, describing her employees as a "stable, reliable work force."

Most men work for Bergen Farms for two to three years, and when they leave they find their own replacements, she said.

Bergen Farms provides housing for its employees.

"They leave everything behind to get here. Their goal is to come here and do their job and then go home. The pay is good, but the work is dirty and hard," Bergen said.

"They're really doing us the favor by coming here and doing this work," she said.

But, like other employers who hire foreign workers, Bergen Farms is faced with the challenge of accepting that the people they are hiring are working in the United States legally. The burden is on the employers and little help comes from the U.S. government, James said.

Verification difficult

Employers do their best to verify the documents presented by any potential employee: a Social Security card, a driver's license, working papers.

But, James said, the U.S. government has no reliable verification system in place. If an employer errs and accepts documents that turn out to be false, the employer loses the employee.

"Just one raid (by immigration officers) can wipe out their labor force," he said.

Conversely, if an employer rejects documents that turn out to be true documents, the employer can be sued.

A verification system should be at the top of the list of necessary reforms in the nation's immigration policy, James said.

He said the Farm Bureau also would like to see a process that would allow people already in the United States to establish themselves legally.

"The notion of shipping 12 million people back to their homes is, quite frankly, ludicrous," James said.

The process should allow workers to register, go through a criminal background check, perhaps pay a reasonable fine and then be permitted to stay here legally, James said.

The government has a program in place that lets farmers bring in foreign workers temporarily. But, James said, it's a costly venture.

The employer must pay the transportation of the worker from and back to his home country. The employer must provide housing and must pay a wage higher than the prevailing rate, as well as benefits. The worker may stay only for 10 months.

And, if a local person decides he wants the job instead, the employer is obligated by law to give it to the local person and fire the foreign worker.

"They are not displacing local workers," James said. "People just don't want to go out and work on farms, for the most part."

Big attitude change in grape industry

The grape industry certainly has seen this change in attitude toward farm work. Sue Gigliotti, who with her husband, Frank, has 20 acres of grapes in the town of Reading, recalls when local women would work in the vineyards when their children were in school. The extra money was important to the families, she said.

However, as the job market opened up for women, fewer were interested in the tough work of the vineyards.

"We aren't big enough to have full-time workers, so we rely on the immigrants, and we have had positive results," Gigliotti said.

Gigliotti said she checks workers' documents "religiously," and if they don't have the proper paperwork, they may not stay.

James said false documents are readily available and are difficult to identify. The government should not be asking employers to be document experts, making decisions with legal implications without support from the agencies enforcing the laws, he said.

When farmers publicly talk about hiring foreign workers, they often set themselves up for intense scrutiny from immigration or Homeland Security, he said. James praised Bergen and Gigliotti for being willing to talk about their own experiences in a public forum.

The last comprehensive immigration reforms were in 1986, and there was little pressure from the government to see them enforced, James said. But the Sept. 11 attacks changed everything, he said.

For the sake of the agriculture industry, locally and nationally, something must be done, James said.

Simply "shutting the borders" is not the answer, James said.

"Then we're going to be in real trouble. It would cripple the economy," he said.

James said he does not expect much to happen in the arena of immigration reform until after the presidential election.