Hire them but what will happen when they get here?

Image from the State of Oregon Archives

It is no surprise that there is a shortage of farm workers - there have already been efforts in California, Arizona, and Colorado to arrange the recruitment in Mexico.

The workers entering the country with proper documents -but they are still bringing themselves, meaning they will mostly be identifiably immigrants - ready to be plucked off the street by a Sheriff's Deputy - especially if they go to Arizona. Why would anyone want to get a temporary job in one of these states? In Arizona they would be stepping into a war zone.

You can be sure that most of the recruits have desperate reasons to come here - most likely their families are barely (if that) making enough to survive. How else could the recruited workers justify taking such a risk?

here is an excerpt from the text that accompanied the picture above:

"Migrant workers from Mexico also eased Oregon's farm labor shortages. Their entry into the United States was made possible by a wartime farm labor agreement between the U.S. and Mexico that created the "Bracero Program." By 1943 these contract workers were garnering praise from Oregon farmers...One farmer's wife summed it up: "We sure like these new Mexicans. They want to work all the time." But the braceros also experienced discrimination, wage disputes, poor housing, and other problems. Some observers thought that the labor force should be changed yearly. Otherwise, they argued, the men could become "too lonesome for home..." From 1942 to 1947 over 15,000 Mexican men worked on Oregon farms, ranches, and orchards as bracero." *see below for citation

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Union and states try recruiting farm workers from Mexico

By GARANCE BURKE

The Associated Press
Washington Post
Tuesday, April 29, 2008; 4:55 AM

HURON, Calif. -- Weary of waiting for Congress to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, the United Farm Workers hopes to recruit Mexican laborers to pick crops on U.S. farms.

The union's efforts to import temporary workers under an existing government program follows similar moves by lawmakers in Arizona and Colorado, who are also trying to create new pathways to bring in foreign field hands without approval from Washington.

This month, UFW President Arturo Rodriguez signed an agreement with the governor of the Mexican state of Michoacan to help recruit local residents to apply for temporary jobs on U.S. farms, all of which would be covered under union contracts.

Under the new pact, government field staff in Michoacan will distribute information on U.S. labor protections, especially in rural towns known for sending a large number of their residents north.

In exchange, the union will negotiate contracts with U.S. growers willing to guarantee that legal workers' rights will be respected on both sides of the border, UFW International Director Erik Nicholson said.

The UFW got involved after hearing that Mexican recruiters were charging people as much as $5,000 for short-term contracts under the existing, but rarely used federal guest worker program, Nicholson said.

"Agriculture is a global industry, so we're building an international infrastructure to advocate for these global workers," Nicholson said. "Workers need to know about their rights on both sides of the border."

Immigration raids and employer penalties have led to a shortage of workers in the nation's largest farm states, leading many in the agriculture industry to conclude that growers can't get their products to market without a stable supply of workers from abroad.

But with Congress deadlocked over immigration reform, the question is under what conditions the workers will be hired _ legally or illegally.

The farm labor force in the U.S. currently numbers about 1.6 million people, 70 percent of whom are thought to be undocumented, according to people in the industry. Only about 70,000 farm workers were brought in from abroad last year for the short stints permitted under H2-A visas issued by the U.S. Department of Labor...

for complete WP/AP article click here

*Cited from Oregon Archives, "Life on the Home Front" - exhibition on labor and WWII. Source: Erasmo Gamboa, Mexican Labor and World War II.

More on the AgFarm program

"Working the Fields," 1956, photograph of Bracero workers by Leonard Nadel, NMAH, History of Technology Collections. Smithsonian Collection.

Feb. 8, 2008, 11:43PM
Some farms oppose changes in ag-worker program

By SUSAN CARROLL
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Bruce Frasier's family has been growing fruits and vegetables near Carrizo Springs since 1913, when Woodrow Wilson was president and a gallon of gas cost 12 cents. The farm survived the two World Wars, the Great Depression and the oil crisis of the 1980s.

But, Frasier said, a persistent shortage of workers may finally drive the farm out of business.

This week, the Bush administration proposed major changes to the nation's agricultural farm worker program — called the H2A program — aimed at helping farmers such as Frasier, who complain that chronic labor shortages are hurting harvests. The changes would relax some bureaucratic requirements that critics say make the program too costly and cumbersome to import foreign workers.

It would also ease worker pay and housing requirements, prompting serious concern from farm worker advocates.

Frasier isn't swayed. He said no matter how the program is tweaked, he still won't use it.

"I will shut my doors before I go to H2A," he said. "I will scale down or do something else."

For many in the farming industry, opposition to the program is fierce.

In its current form, H2A is administered by three federal agencies. Companies must advertise jobs in newspapers or on the radio to show that no U.S. workers are available. They must pay workers' transportation, housing, meals and an inflated minimum wage. In Texas, H2A workers make at least $8.66 an hour.

Under the proposed changes, which will be under review for 45 days, farmers and growers would be able to pay workers different wages based on their specific jobs. The changes also would allow more industries to participate in the program.

This week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called the current H2A program "so unfriendly that, frankly, most people choose not to use it." According to the Labor Department, about 75,000 agricultural workers participated in the program in 2007, while the number of undocumented farm workers ranged between 600,000 and 800,000, though industry estimates of the illegal work force are often higher.

Protections at risk
In Texas, 279 employers applied for certification to hire H2A workers, and were approved to import a little more than 2,000 workers. During the past year, Texas growers — from nurseries in Tyler to onion farmers in Uvalde — have reported widespread worker shortages that have led to fields of spoiled crops. Stephen Pringle, legislative director for the Texas Farm Bureau, called the system "unworkable."

Labor advocates fear that the attempt to improve H2A may strip workers of protections.

Dolores Huerta, who co-founded United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez in the 1960s, called the proposed changes "terrible" for workers.

"There is no reason for them to dilute the provisions of the H2A program to import more foreign workers," Huerta said on a visit to Houston this week. "We're trying to get legalization for the undocumented workers we have here right now. "

Huerta favors a piece of legislation called "AgJobs," which would have offered farm workers a path toward legalization and revamped the H2A program. After the failure of the immigration legislation, the Bush administration announced plans to revamp a number of legal immigration programs administratively, including H2A.

Despite the general unpopularity of the H2A program, Fermin Venegas swears by it.

Venegas, a sheep shearing contractor in Fort Stockton, diligently applies to import H2A workers each year. For the past five years, he's imported 20 to 25 Mexican sheep shearers. They work for 10 months, then return to Mexico for two.

'I want a legal work force'
"It's a lot of paperwork," he said. "It's a process and it takes time. I'm not speaking for the general public, but it works for me. If it wasn't because of that, I would have been out of business a long time ago."

Venegas said shearing is a skill that few Americans have.

"I'm 100 percent for it," he said of H2A. "If I had President Bush in front of me, I would ask him not to take it away, but to expand it, streamline it, so we can bring people in to work."

Frasier, 52, the president of Dixondale Farms near Carrizo Springs, is asking for a slightly different solution than the H2A program.

Since his farm is 50 miles from the border, he would like to be able to get workers who can cross the Rio Grande legally for a day's work and then go home to Mexico at night.

"I need more workers, and I want a legal work force," he said.

He said he's lucky to have some workers who have picked fruits and vegetables near Carrizo Springs for decades, some dating back to the U.S. government's original guest worker program of the 1950s. But his workers are getting older, he said, with an average age of 55.

"What are we going to do in the next generation?" asked Frasier. "I don't know that there will be a next generation of Dixondale Farms."

susan.carroll@chron.com

Dreamers No, Guest Workers Yes

The priorities of the Bush administration will be shown today when they announce a an ambitious new guest worker program. With their support, the DREAM act was easily thrown out the window, yet a significantly revamped guest worker program has been "many months in the works."

Workers at the lowest rung of the employment ladder will be welcome, while highly educated DREAMERS languish. In a subtle (or not so subtle) move, the administration is encouraging immigration by less educated migrants - but ignoring those who have obtained a hard earned U.S. college education.

What a good way to maintain a large group of immigrants that can continue to carry the label of poor and uneducated. I realize that the growers need workers, but so do our school districts and other industries that require bi-lingual employees*

*Just a reminder that many large school districts, including Houston, recruit (very expensively) in other countries because they cannot find enough spanish speaking teachers - while ironically they would have all the teachers they need if the DREAM act were to be passed.


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Overhaul set for guest-worker plan

Bush administration to make dramatic changes to increase numbers of legal foreign workers to harvest crops.
By Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 6, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The Bush anounced a 26-step plan to tackle immigration issues through administrative fixes. Altering the legal-farmworker program would mark the most significant achievement to date.

"There is huge potential here to replace the massive illegal workforce with a legal one," said Leon Sequeira, an assistant secretary at the Department of Labor.

The greatest effect would be in California, the nation's largest agricultural state. Some farmers have had to plow rotting crops back into their fields for lack of workers at harvest time. But lawmakers and growers said Tuesday that more than an administrative fix was needed to solve the state's chronic farm labor shortages.

The proposed changes to the program, which would relax the requirements for the H-2A visas granted to foreign farmworkers, come against a backdrop of growing anger over illegal immigration and tension among the presidential candidates over the issue.

The new regulations could be a boon to growers, who have long complained that the program is too cumbersome and leaves them little choice but to turn to illegal immigrants.

The simplified rules are certain to generate outrage among anti-immigration activists, who say the program steals jobs from Americans. At the same time, advocates for farmworkers charge that under the new rules, growers could exploit workers by paying them less than they do now.

The proposed changes, which would take effect after a 45-day period of public comment, would modify how foreign laborers are paid and housed, and slightly expand the types of industries that can use the program. The administration would also ease the standards farmers must now meet to show they have tried to hire U.S. citizens first.

"The overarching departmental goal is to encourage the use of the H-2A program to provide agricultural employers access to legal workers," said the Labor Department's Sequeira.

Sequeira noted that, of the nation's 1.2 million farmworkers, more than half tell Labor Department surveyors that they are in the U.S. illegally. Many advocates believe the actual percentage of illegal workers is close to 70%.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was skeptical that the proposed changes would make much difference, noting that only about 2% of farm jobs are now filled through the notoriously bureaucratic program. "Growers frequently cannot get labor through the H-2A program when they need it. Simply tweaking regulations can't fix that problem," she said. "I'm afraid that these H-2A modifications make a bad situation worse -- by lowering wage rates and undermining existing labor protections for U.S. and foreign farmworkers."

Feinstein pushed for Congress to pass a farm labor bill that was negotiated over years by worker advocates, industry groups and unions, but failed to move forward this year in the politically fraught uproar surrounding immigration. That bill, called AgJOBS, would create a new guest worker program that would allow laborers to eventually become citizens.

"The key to real reform is AgJOBS. Growers support it. Workers support it. And bipartisan majorities in Congress support it," Feinstein said. "It would provide incentives for a stable, reliable agricultural workforce and provide long-term H-2A reform."



'A question of execution'

In addition to the Labor Department, the departments of State, Homeland Security and Agriculture have a role in the program. Labor and Homeland Security focused on making the program easier for growers to use, strengthening worker protections and improving enforcement, but critics questioned how these proposals would actually work.

"It's going to be a question of execution," said a Senate aide briefed on the changes. The aide, who was not authorized to speak on the record, expressed concern about some proposals, including a change to the way workers are paid.

One of the proposed changes would set wages based on a worker's occupation and skill level. "Depending on how it's done, it has the potential to lower farmworkers' wages, potentially significantly," said the aide.

Other changes would give workers more time to search for a new H-2A job after their existing one ends. Employers would have to certify under penalty of perjury that they wouldn't change the terms of work after they hired the temporary workers.

Tracking program

Homeland Security would create a pilot program to track whether H-2A workers leave the country when their visas expire.

Employers that violate the program's regulations would face substantially higher fines and penalties. Growers would also be forbidden from passing along to workers any costs incurred from participating in the program.

Farmworker advocates called those provisions promising, but harshly criticized administration proposals to ease regulations concerning U.S. workers, including one that requires growers to go through several steps to show they have tried to hire an American before they can bring in H-2A workers.

"These employers routinely violate the law already and we need more law enforcement under the H-2A program, not less," said Bruce Goldstein, of Farmworker Justice, an advocacy group affiliated with the National Council of La Raza. "They're just looking for some formula to lower wage rates of both U.S. workers and foreign workers.

"There is no economic or moral justification for these harsh changes."

But growers singled out the same proposal for praise and cautiously commended the overhaul.

"Government is infamous for having different agencies not work together well, not understanding each other's roles and not particularly caring," said Michael Gempler, current president of the National Council of Agriculture Employers.

"As a result the consumer suffers, so this is a very valuable thing to do."

nicole.gaouette@latimes.com


cartoon detail: http://www.bendib.com/labor/10-30-Waterboarding-Labor.jpg

Sheriff tells Guest Workers the Company "Owns Them"

Kidnapping?


The workers, from Veracruz, MX came to work for Southwest Shipyards in Channelview, Texas - just east of Houston. They paid between $1,500 and $2,000 to come to the U.S. on HB2 temporary visas. The company did not pay what they originally offered in addition to deducting much of their pay for room and board. They left Channelview and traveled to Mississipi, where they were told by the Pascagoula, Miss. Sheriff that Southwest Shipyards "owned them."

It has become common knowledge on the Gulf Coast that many immigrant workers (especially those in New Orleans) have been mistreated, not paid for their work, and even not given food by companies who recruited them.

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Workers Say Miss. Police Kidnapped Them
By HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, August 23, 2007

(08-23) 04:25 PDT Jackson, Miss. (AP) --
Thirty Mexican nationals with visas to work in the U.S. claim police in Pascagoula kidnapped and threatened them with arrest or deportation if they did not return to an employer.
The workers, backed by the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups, said Wednesday that Pascagoula Police Capt. George Tillman threatened to send them to jail if they didn't return to work for a recruitment company.

The workers plan to file a lawsuit accusing Tillman of "kidnapping, kidnapping with intent to enslave, false imprisonment, human trafficking, and violations of the workers' civil and constitutional rights," they said in a news release.
Enrique Garcia, 41, one of the workers, said Tillman told the workers the company "owned" them..

For complete article:
http://nuevomundo.revues.org/

Photo: Braceros registering in El Paso, ca. late 1940s. http://www.farmworkers.org/bracero5/contrata.GIF