ROCHESTER (New York) DEMOCRAT & CHRONICLE

February 18, 2010

Farmers, activists push for immigration reform

MATTHEW DANEMAN – Staff Writer

SODUS — Phil Wagner grows apples, sweet cherries and peaches on his 157-acre Wayne County spread. The retired Army colonel has worked 12 years as a fruit farmer. And none of it would happen without the immigrant labor, mostly Hispanic, who pick that fruit for $9 to $15 an hour, he said.

That is why the Wolcott farmer stood shoulder to shoulder Wednesday with immigration activists, Wayne County elected officials and clergy members pushing for sweeping changes in federal laws dealing with the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

"I rely entirely on seasonal employees," Wagner said in a snowy parking lot at St. John's Episcopal Church in Sodus as part of an immigration reform tour crisscrossing the state this week.

The road trip, which also had stops Wednesday in Greece, Henrietta and Batavia, was organized by the New York Immigration Coalition and Reform Immigration for America.

With many of the Wayne County Sheriff's Department deputies having grown up on farms, "We know the impact of farm workers in Wayne County on the economy," Chief Deputy Bob Hetzke told the crowd of more than 50.

And while the department does not actively go out looking for illegal immigrants, he said, "We do need reform on immigration issues, just to make my deputies' jobs a little easier."

The precise number of such immigrants working on the Rochester region's farms is unknowable. But a figure often thrown around is 18,000, said Ami Kadar, director of the Centro Independiente Trabajadores Agricolas, also known as the Independent Farmworkers Center, in Albion, Orleans County.

"We need to bring people out of the shadows" by allowing illegal immigrants to obtain some kind of legal status, Kadar said. "There's so much exploitation going on — landlords, some farmers."

The rallies being held around the state are not backing any one piece of legislation.

Kadar said she wanted to see an approach where farm workers in the United States are registered, pay taxes and the nation's borders are strengthened. She pointed to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 introduced in the House late last year.

The nation's current immigration system "is untenable the way it is," she said.

Wagner said he'd like to see passage of the Ag Jobs Act of 2009, which would give temporary resident status to workers who have spent a number of years in the U.S. agriculture industry and don't have a serious criminal record and would open the door to permanent resident status.

But U.S. Rep. Chris Lee, R-Clarence, Erie County, said anything that gives such legal standing to people already in the United States illegally isn't going to fly. Lee is a co-sponsor of the Dairy and Sheep H-2A Visa Enhancement Act introduced in Congress last year. The bill would open up the nation's H-2A temporary agricultural work program to dairy workers and sheep herders.

"Those migrants who come to this country need to do so in a legal manner," said Lee, whose Greece office was among the stops Wednesday of the immigration reform tour. "The first (priority) is ensuring the securing of our borders and enforcing immigration laws so we know workers coming in here are doing so in a legal manner."

Lee also is a sponsor of the Ag Jobs Act.

Despite a regional unemployment rate of 8 percent, Rochester-area farmers have to rely on migrant labor, said Wayne County Farm Bureau President John Sorbello, because the area's permanent residents rarely apply for farm work and those who do frequently quit soon after starting.

"Farmers need good, reliable help that can put in eight, 10 hours a day picking apples, cutting cabbage," Sorbello said. "It's very demanding work. We don't seem to have the local folks who want to do that kind of work."