Mexican laborers from WWII-era settle backpay case

By GARANCE BURKE

FRESNO, Calif. After years of political pressure and legal wrangling, a court settlement reached Friday allows Mexican laborers brought in to stem World War II-era labor shortages to collect on pension funds they earned decades ago.

The class-action suit brought on behalf of the workers was settled in a federal court in San Francisco. It will allow thousands of graying former guest workers who manned U.S. farms and railyards to collect earnings withheld from their paychecks and sent to Mexican banks under an agreement between both countries.

Gonzalo Trejo, a 76-year-old grandfather in Irwing, Tex., said he hoped the money he made as a young man thinning sugarbeets in Colorado would help him grow old a little more comfortably.

"We went back to Mexico when they kicked us out of this country, but we never knew what happened to the money," said Trejo, who came up from the Mexican state of Chihuahua to work four grueling seasons in the fields. "Who knows why it took so long, but I'm really happy."

In October, Mexico's Foreign Affairs Ministry agreed to pay about $14.5 million to the first wave of workers, provided they or their immediate family were living in the U.S.

Attorneys for the laborers - called "braceros" - said they were heartened that as a result of the settlement, the Mexican government had allowed all those who worked between 1942 and 1964 to qualify rather than only those dispatched to the U.S. in wartime.

Some 6,100 former braceros, or their family members, will be able to collect about $3,500 each in lost wages from the Mexican government, said Chicago-based attorney Josh Karsh.

"This is a tribute from the court to everything the braceros endured and it's woefully overdue," Karsh said. "Along the way many, many people told us this case was a fool's errand, but we persisted."

It is unknown how many braceros are still alive, and activists estimate hundreds weren't able to reclaim their money because they lacked the original paperwork or proper identification.

Still, Karsh said he was relieved at the settlement, since lawyers had to negotiate California, U.S. and Mexican law to prove the men were entitled to the money.

The ruling comes only weeks after the Bush administration's revisions to the current guest worker program went into effect. Both farmers and farmworker advocates say the program must be fixed to meet growers' seasonal demand for labor.

But growers have called the Bush administration's new regulations inefficient while immigrant rights supporters say they are exploitative.