conditions facing undocumented farmworkers in Arizona

[Guest guest]

>Why you need 'La Perra Flaca'

>By Ignacio Ibarra

>© 2002 Arizona Daily Star

>WILLCOX — The dogs start barking just after 4:30, and within a few minutes,

>lights flick on in an old travel trailer that is home to Abel .

>

>It's daybreak in a subdivision called Winchester Heights on the Cochise

>County planning maps. But to the people who live here, mainly illegal

>immigrants like , this crowding of trailers and ramshackle houses

>on garbage-strewn lots with illegal cesspools goes by the name La Perra

>Flaca. Skinny dog.

>

>Life in Perra Flaca is finally paying off for , 26, who arrived

>penniless two weeks earlier from the Mexican jungle state of Chiapas with

>friends Arvay , 21, and Alberto Macario, 19.

>

>The three men step into the brisk morning air from the cramped trailer they

>share with two others and pile into a beat-up van for their first trip to

>work. They join a dawn parade of vans and cars through Perra Flaca's

>potholed streets, stopping and honking to gather up workers for the fields,

>orchards and nurseries of southeastern Arizona.

>

>Hoeing weeds and thinning endless rows of green chile plants under a

>blistering Arizona sun earns $41.20 by the end of the day.

>

> " The work here is hard, and the bosses push you. They're very demanding, "

>said , back inside the sweltering trailer watching video movies on

>an ancient TV that doubles as a kitchen table. " But the work is hard in

>Chiapas, too, and there you earn just $3 a day. "

>

>Perra Flaca is paying off, too, for Cochise County farmers who have seen

>irrigated cropland fall to just a third of what it was three decades ago and

>who have come to depend on the cheap and willing labor force that Perra

>Flaca represents.

>

>And Perra Flaca is paying off big time for American consumers. The cheap

>labor helps keep food expenses to less than 10 percent of our monthly income

>- half or less of what the rest of the world spends.

>

> " To be perfectly honest, if I could, I'd work no one else, " said Mark

>s, who farms 600 acres near San Simon and knows that fake IDs and lax

>enforcement ensure illegal workers in the labor force.

>

> " They're up here for one purpose - to do a job and make money. And they do

>it better than anyone else. "

>

>That's why Perra Flaca, complete with hidden Mexican minimarts and

>clandestine beer dispensaries, is growing in squalor - in the midst of an

>army of Border Patrol agents and more than 10 years after Cochise County

>first tried to clean it up.

>

>Places like Perra Flaca - trailer towns, rundown apartments and desert camps

>- are home to a growing share of the 65,000 to 100,000 migrant workers based

>in the state.

>

>Despite a 1986 U.S. amnesty program meant to help better the lives of

>illegal migrants, unauthorized workers comprise a bigger share of the

>nation's farm workers than ever before - from an estimated 25 percent in

>1980, to 8 percent after the amnesty in 1989, to 60 percent or more in 2002.

>

>The reason in this new century is the same as it was on Thanksgiving 1960

>when R. Murrow's TV documentary " Harvest of Shame " drew the nation's

>attention to the plight of migrant laborers. Farm work provides the lowest

>pay and least protection of any type of work.

>

>The desperate people who choose it - even migrant workers granted amnesty -

>will climb up the social ladder as quickly as they can to escape.

>

>Today, with the summer harvest coming to Cochise County, it is and

>other undocumented workers who are clinging to the bottom rung.

>

> " When we got word last night we would be working, we were happy because now

>we can start to earn money instead of just spending and waiting, "

>said. " That's why we're here - to make money to send to our families and to

>make a better future for ourselves. "

>

>Behind the squalor

>

>A Mexican village might be a fitting tourist attraction for Cochise County,

>where leaders are building the region's reputation on the dripping

>stalactites of Kartchner Caverns, the Wild West re-enactments in Tombstone

>and the balancing rocks of Chiricahua National Monument.

>

>But Perra Flaca isn't the village of tourists' dreams.

>

> " It's a mess, " said County Planning Director Jim Vlahovich. " I was shocked

>by what I saw. It looks like you're right on the border. It was really sad.

>Not just from a planning standpoint, but the social issues it raises. "

>

>Vlahovich said about a third of Perra Flaca's 300 lots are occupied and

>estimates that 300 people live here.

>

>The village north of Willcox, near the Graham County line, first came to the

>attention of Cochise County government in the early 1990s. At the time, the

>county helped some people clear up clouded land titles and begin to bring

>their properties into compliance with county codes. But a county site visit

>in December showed the problems have grown with the population - among them,

>lots overcrowded by dilapidated trailers and unsanitary sewage systems.

>

>Vlahovich said the county plans to notify owners of violations and work out

>a schedule for voluntary compliance. If that fails, it will take steps to

>force compliance.

>

>Three trailers tie into a single septic tank on the lot where and

>his four roommates live. Water from a community well a few lots away flows

>in a thin trickle, or sometimes not at all, in the kitchen where

>makes his meals. Rats and flies share their living space, and garbage is

>burned in a backyard pit.

>

>For this, and the others pay $20 each per week.

>

>No one knows exactly how many seasonal and migrant farm workers are in the

>United States but estimates range from 2.5 million to more than 4 million.

>

>The Arizona Department of Economic Security estimates about 65,000 migrant

>and seasonal farm workers live in Arizona at least part of the year, but

>some service and advocacy groups put the population at more than 100,000.

>

>Most migrant farm laborers work fewer than 120 days a year and earn median

>incomes of $5,000 to $7,000 annually, according to the U.S. Labor

>Department.

>

>The 1986 amnesty legalized nearly 3 million foreign workers and their

>families, many in farm jobs. The percentage of farm workers who are illegal

>immigrants dipped to nearly nothing, but as those granted amnesty went off

>to find better jobs, the percentage swung back to surpass earlier figures.

>

>The Labor Department estimates the percentage at nearly 60, but advocates

>and officials in the field say it may be 75 percent or more.

>

>Federal policy aimed at keeping food prices down shares some of the blame

>for the concentration of illegal immigrants in farm work, said Demetrios

>Papademetriou, co-director of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington,

>D.C.

>

>Americans spend only about 9 percent of their annual incomes on food and

>drink, less than half the proportion spent by people in other developed

>countries, including France, Britain and Japan, according to the U.S.

>Department of Agriculture. Mexicans spend about 28 percent. In India, more

>than half of personal income is spent on food and drink.

>

>The low cost of food in the United States, said Papademetriou, is " truly

>heavily, heavily subsidized by the immigration system - through legal

>immigrant work in the field, but primarily and extraordinarily through the

>work of undocumented workers. "

>

> " Across the board it is part of the competitive reality of the U.S. . . . I

>don't mean just in terms of wages, but in getting people with the right

>kinds of skills at the right place and at the right time. "

>

>For the moment at least, there is no incentive on the part of U.S. farmers

>or policy makers to change the system, he said.

>

> " We have an immigration policy aimed at keeping these people out and an

>economic structure that encourages them to come in, " said Cecilia Muñoz,

>vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic

>issues advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

>

>Part of the solution, she said, is creating a special status for these

>workers, a form of " regularization " that offers them protection. Her group

>opposes one such alternative, though - expanding the existing agricultural

> " guest worker " program.

>

>The plan, also known as H2A, is criticized for placing too much control in

>the hands of employers and failing to protect the rights of more than 20,000

>agricultural workers allowed to spend up to a year working in the United

>States.

>

>Cracking down on illegal immigration at the workplace is a better answer,

>said A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration

>Studies, an immigration think-tank based in Washington, D.C.

>

>Hiring illegal immigrants holds down the wages of domestic and legal

>immigrant workers and suppresses technological innovation that could bring

>prices down, Camarota said.

>

> " In agriculture, it would make a whole lot more sense to reduce that flow, "

>Camarota said. " The farmer would have to pay people more, and I'd argue from

>an equity standpoint that that's a good thing. But he would also begin to

>substitute capital for labor by bringing in machines to do the work. "

>

>That view has some support from , 47, an unemployed farm

>laborer living legally in Cochise County. said employers prefer

>illegal laborers who don't complain about low wages and bad conditions out

>of fear of being deported.

>

> " They work longer hours for less money than we do because they're used to

>much less in Mexico, " said. " If there weren't so many undocumented,

>the farmers would have to hire us and pay better. "

>

>Farming globally

>

>Abel came to Perra Flaca to work as a laborer, but he knows

>firsthand the challenges his bosses face in a world where nature, laws and

>global competition can seem to conspire against them.

>

> was 21 when he crossed illegally into the United States for the

>first time - a nightmarish, six-day trek through the Arizona desert. He made

>the trip to help his family avoid defaulting on a $3,000 loan after the corn

>they had grown couldn't be sold - largely because of an oversupply of

>cheaper American corn.

>

>Without the journey to the United States, there would have been no farm to

>return to, said Abel's father, Sebastian , 55, who went back to

>Mexico in January after several years living and working in the Houston area

>and elsewhere.

>

> " Globalization has affected us greatly. I'm told that it will be a benefit

>to us someday, but from what I can see it hasn't been, " said Sebastian

>, whose 250-acre farm lies in the high mountain valleys of

>southeastern Chiapas.

>

> " We have good, productive lands, compared to the land I saw in Arizona and

>Texas. The soil is much better here, and we are surrounded by water. But

>these days there's no buyers for the corn and beans we grow. "

>

>Wells, tractors and highways are needed to develop the region and link it

>with the state capital at Tuxtla-Gutierrez, a trip of just 60 miles that can

>take more than three hours by truck.

>

> " There's no way for people to live, and that's why they leave, " Sebastian

> said.

>

>It's an economic lament that's echoed over the border in Cochise County.

>

>The square that forms Arizona's southeast corner, Cochise County moves

>through cycles of boom and bust in agriculture. Years of heavy rainfall

>brought a boom in the early 1900s, followed by a shakeout when it returned

>to normal, then another boom from rural electrification, irrigation and

>World War II.

>

>Just about anything farmers put in the ground flourished, including cotton,

>lettuce and beets, and the industry peaked at 170,000 acres of irrigated

>land in the mid-1970s.

>

>Rising energy costs and a falling water table combined to drive many farmers

>out over the next decade. Survivors switched to sprinkler and drip

>irrigation and high-yielding orchards of pecans, apples and grapes.

>

>Today, only 60,000 acres are in production - largely low-water crops such as

>corn, grains and alfalfa, and about 5,000 acres of chiles.

>

>San Simon chile farmer Lynne Moody, 48, complains that an American public

>outraged over labor and environmental abuses in the overseas production of

>sneakers has shown little interest in how or where its food is grown.

>

>Pesticides and herbicides that are banned or strictly controlled in the

>United States get little scrutiny when used in other countries, said Moody,

>who farms about 200 acres.

>

>U.S. farming practices are safer and can be more expensive than those of

>other countries, she said, since U.S. farmers are prohibited from using many

>of the chemicals.

>

>The pressure to keep down the labor costs paid to people in Perra Flaca

>comes in part from foreign competition. Chile producers in India, Pakistan,

>South Africa and China can pay as little as 25 cents an hour, compared with

>the $5.15 minimum wage in the United States, said Rich , coordinator

>for the New Mexico chile task force in Las Cruces.

>

>The chile-growing region in New Mexico is the nation's largest at 19,000

>acres and $200 million in annual sales.

>

>Still, these wage disparities fall within the terms of international trade

>treaties, said.

>

>So the chile task force has focused on improving efficiency through better

>equipment, thinning and weeding techniques, irrigation and more productive

>varieties of peppers, he said. One goal is to reduce the work that must be

>done by hand, which now accounts for 40 to 60 percent of production costs.

>

> " The idea in a free market system is that eventually this will all work

>itself out, " said. " But I'm not convinced it will. "

>

>Floyd Robbs has ridden the booms and busts of Cochise County farming for

>half a century, since carving his first farm from thick mesquite bosques

>near Kansas Settlement. Through the years, he has raised crops including

>milo, vegetables and lettuce, and today he employs up to 220 people from

>places such as Perra Flaca to ship about 9,000 bags of onions a day during

>June to markets across the country.

>

>He's begun to see a payoff, too, but it's coming from the 65 acres he

>planted 17 years ago in pistachios, a crop that requires little manual labor

>to harvest.

>

>Still, Robbs isn't sure he can keep adapting.

>

> " It's a shame that after all of the investment that's been made that it's

>gotten to where we can't hardly make any money, " Robbs said. " But I've been

>at this 47 years and I haven't known but one good year, and that's next

>year. "

>

>Safety inside

>

>Abel has returned to the United States more than 25 times since

>his first trip five years ago, sometimes alone, but usually as a guide for

>other Mexicans from his own impoverished home state. Sometimes he is paid,

>but often - as his companions attest - he does it out of family and

>community obligation.

>

>His latest crossing, in April, was a grueling four-night walk through the

>desert. It ended when a friend from Bowie picked up and his group

>and took them to the Perra Flaca home of another friend.

>

>The Border Patrol coverage was tougher than ever this time, with more than

>500 of the agency's 1,600 Tucson Sector agents based in to sweep

>even remote mountain paths on horseback and ATVs and by military helicopter.

>

>The group was caught and deported on the first try. But on the second

>attempt it succeeded, making its way to Interstate 10 near San Simon along

>'s favorite route - a trail from Cerro Gallardo, about 15 miles

>east of Agua Prieta, across the San Bernardino Valley and over the

>Chiricahua Mountains.

>

> " We walked at night, so sometimes you can barely see. You're falling over

>rocks, and everything you touch has thorns, " recalled. " We could

>see the helicopters in the valleys below us, but they didn't fly into the

>mountains where we were. "

>

>Once he'd reached the San Simon area, had little to fear from the

>law. He got a lift from a friend to Perra Flaca, within 80 miles of the

>Mexican border. He quickly found a place to live there and eventually got

>work in the fields.

>

>Federal policy emphasizes border enforcement, and the Immigration and

>Naturalization Service has only 1,950 agents assigned to interior

>enforcement nationwide. The Phoenix office has only eight agents assigned to

>this duty, so mounting an investigation of illegal migrants in rural Arizona

>farm districts " would be very difficult, " said Ahr, an INS spokesman

>in Arizona.

>

>The Border Patrol at Willcox, which covers northern Cochise County, hasn't

>mounted an enforcement action aimed at migrant workers since December 1999,

>said Rob s, a spokesman for the agency in Tucson.

>

>The prospect is even less likely today, Ahr said, because people assigned to

>interior enforcement are being diverted to the agency's anti-terrorism

>efforts.

>

> " The fact that we do not have significant resources in the interior of the

>United States is well-known, " said Russ Bergeron, INS spokesman in

>Washington. " The fact that smugglers, illegal aliens and employers would try

>to exploit that manpower shortage is not the least bit surprising. "

>

>Court restrictions driven by civil-liberties concerns have also eliminated

>most work-site enforcement that Border Patrol agents once performed - the

>raids on factories and other sites employing large numbers of illegal

>immigrants. Employers now receive three days' notice of a visit by INS

>agents.

>

>What's more, interior enforcement has been hampered by the growing use of

>fraudulent identification.

>

> " It's become standard operating procedure, " Bergeron said. " Fraudulent

>documents are so readily available and so cheap that the use of counterfeit

>documents by illegal workers has become the rule rather than the exception. "

>

>The federal amnesty program of 1986, part of the Immigration Reform and

>Control Act, expanded the kinds of documents that could be used to establish

>residency in the United States. That's the year demand for counterfeit

>documents, such as Social Security cards, driver licenses and resident-alien

>green cards, began to spin out of control, Bergeron said.

>

>Local authorities don't enforce immigration law in the interior, either. It

>would be a full-time job, said Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever.

>

> " But something has to happen, frankly, to abate this situation, and if that

>means the sheriff . . . then frankly, I say bring it on, " said Dever, whose

>agency does make arrests for drug offenses and other crimes committed by

>illegal immigrants.

>

> " My preference would be for an INS solution . . . but they're not doing it, "

>he said.

>

>The risk of getting caught has never been high for workers in the fields,

>said labor contractor Rivas, whose crews from Perra Flaca and

>elsewhere are hired by farmers throughout Cochise County.

>

> " Agents don't bother the workers in the fields. But they have made it harder

>for people to get here, " Rivas said.

>

>Enforcement at the border near has created some short-term labor

>shortages, he said. They could become critical this month when as many as

>500 people a day are needed to work the county's chile farms.

>

>Labor contractor Mendez agreed. " If we're going to keep agriculture

>here in the valley we need these people from Mexico. That's the bottom

>line. "

>

>The shortages are temporary, though, and illegal migrants are finding their

>way to places such as Perra Flaca.

>

> " When I go out there and see a field with 100 workers, 30 to 35 are U.S.

>workers and the rest are undocumented workers, " said Merino, farm

>worker outreach specialist for the Arizona Department of Economic Security

>in .

>

>A rare appearance of police in Perra Flaca one recent weekend - sheriff's

>deputies cruising the streets after a drunk-driving arrest - so rattled Abel

>'s friends that one talked of moving out.

>

> " This thing with the police makes me feel like I have to go farther in,''

>said Arvay , here for the first time. " My family is depending on

>me. "

>

>But Pablo Miranda, living in a dilapidated Bowie motel room where 20 men

>will sleep at the summer harvest's peak, said he worries more about being

>robbed of his daily pay than being caught by the Border Patrol.

>

> " La migra, " he said, " doesn't really bother us much. "

>

>Another Perra Flaca

>

>Different people in Perra Flaca see different things when they look at newly

>arrived immigrants such as Abel . To some, they are unfair

>competition for jobs. To others, a chance to make money. And to people such

>as " La Tia, " they're refugees needing a hand.

>

> " They're good boys most of them, but they come here with nothing, " said La

>Tia, Felipa ez , an 88-year-old great-grandmother who moved to

>the area about 18 months ago.

>

> and his friends arrived in Perra Flaca with only the clothes on

>their backs and the shoes on their feet, both torn and tattered from the

>road, so they went rummaging for replacements in the shed behind ez's

>home.

>

>ez took them with her to the local food bank, where they got emergency

>food baskets to tide them over until their first payday.

>

> " I help them with this clothing and in other ways, " ez said.

> " Sometimes they pay me and sometimes they don't. "

>

>ez, born in Michigan, was deported as a girl when her Mexican-born

>father died of pneumonia.

>

>She made her way back legally, raising 10 children who live and work in the

>United States, but she still remembers the Border Patrol and police who

>harassed her as she tried to raise her family as a Texas cotton-field worker

>in the 1940s.

>

> " Many people here are undocumented, and many more arrive every day, "

>ez said. " The women who don't work in the fields stay home and clean

>houses, wash laundry or cook food that they sell to the men. Anything they

>can to make some money. None of them just stay at home and do nothing. "

>

>Home businesses also cater to illegal immigrants in Perra Flaca, including

>three small stores selling frozen meats, canned goods, soft drinks,

>tortillas and other food imported from Mexico. There are backyard mechanics,

>car salesmen, barbers and musicians. And at one Perra Flaca home, immigrants

>can obtain fake IDs. At least three businesses sell beer and cigarettes.

>

>Blas Segovia isn't so welcoming of his new neighbors.

>

>An illegal migrant worker in 1986, Segovia was living in Winchester Heights

>when he received amnesty under the federal program. Now 42, he has spent the

>past three months unemployed and unable to find work.

>

> " It used to be that there was so much work here that people came to you and

>offered you a job, but not anymore, " Segovia said, watching vanloads of

>migrant workers return from jobs where he once worked. " I don't want to

>leave my home. My eldest son was born here. "

>

>His job search has taken him to Casa Grande and to Marfa, Texas, where a

>tomato hothouse was opening. " But here I am, still waiting. "

>

>At least some of his competition is going away soon.

>

> and his two friends have decided they can't stay any longer.

>

>Boredom, isolation and depression have set in over their separation from

>family and the delay in getting work. has gone on a two-day beer

>binge, missing work and upsetting his roommates.

>

> " We've been here about 20 days and we've worked about eight days, and still

>none of us have been able to save anything that we can send to our

>families, " said 's friend .

>

>Other friends have already left Perra Flaca for farms in the Southeast,

>driven there by smugglers who recruit laborers with promises of stable work

>at better pay and fewer Border Patrol agents.

>

>For , who has never ventured beyond Phoenix in his years of

>crossing the border, the decision to leave is difficult.

>

> " I don't know what lies ahead for us on the road, " he said, as he and his

>companions sat outside the trailer in the darkness, waiting for their ride

>to Florida. " All I know is that I'm tired, and no matter what happens, no

>matter if they catch me and throw me back to Mexico, even if we are lucky

>and make it and I can work a few months or a year, I'm going back to

>Chiapas.

>

> " I'm going back to my own land to build my own home and be with my wife and

>family. There won't be any more norte for me after this. "

>

>The three steal away quietly, leaving clothing, food and a picture of Jesus

>for whomever moves in after them.

>

>A few hours later, the dogs start barking and the caravan of vehicles begins

>its dawn parade through the potholed streets of Perra Flaca, honking and

>stopping to gather up workers for the fields.

>

>

>

>

>_________________________________________________________________

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