Another Farmworker Article

[Guest guest]

Everyone,

Here is another article from the San Express on the H-2A Program

Josh Shepherd

Resource Center Manager

National Center for Farmworker Health

(512) 312-5463

____________________________________________________________________________

Controversy engulfs H-2A visa program for seasonal workers

Web Posted: 10/31/2004 12:00 AM CDT

Express-News Business Writer

Guadalupe deftly laid a lattice of dough across a pie in

the peach stand's kitchen as the morning sun heated up the Hill Country

air outside.

After preparing a half-dozen pies and cobblers, he joined his two

cousins pruning trees in the adjacent orchard at Bacon's Wild

Boar Farm. A few days later, all three boarded a bus to Mexico, loaded

with clothing and gifts for family in southern Guanajuato, home in time

for the festival of La Virgen de Guadalupe.

They were traveling on H-2A visas, which they can obtain once a

year for seasonal agricultural work, as long as they have an employer

lined up in the United States.

The visa is a source of controversy and has given rise to

allegations of abuse by employers and recruiters. Farm worker advocates

say immigrant labor isn't needed and that the visa is a strategy to

keep farm wages low. A bipartisan immigration bill that would

streamline it is stalled in Congress.

Getting workers with the visa involves three federal agencies,

inspections and a mind-numbing mountain of paperwork.

And it's absolutely worth it to Bacon.

"It does not intimidate me now," said Bacon, a ruddy-faced farmer

with seemingly endless energy. "It used to."

When Bacon bought what became Wild Boar Farms near Stonewall three

years ago, the previous owner recommended that he also take over the

paperwork required to get , who already worked there, to return.

The process started with a three-page application, but by the time

he got into it, Bacon felt like he was trudging through the federal

government's version of "War and Peace."

The first inch-thick bundle of paperwork he sent in was mailed back

to him because he had placed his phone number on the wrong line.

He was flabbergasted as to why the clerks couldn't just retype the

number in the right spot.

But the bureaucrat he reached saw it differently.

"She said, 'Mr. Bacon, if we move that, then we have tampered with

a federal document,'" Bacon said. "Everything has to be just right."

As part of the application process, Bacon was required to advertise

in the local newspaper and post his job opening with the Texas

Workforce Commission to ensure that no American workers were denied

jobs.

In the three years he's used the program, Bacon said, not one U.S.

citizen has applied for the job.

The Hill Country may be a particularly tough area to find low-wage

labor, because unemployment rates are relatively low. Also, an influx

over the past decade of urban commuters and retirees means not only

that incomes are high, but that when those high-income people hire

help, they're able to pay more than the average farmer can.

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 27,700

people entered the country with H-2A visas in 2001, the most recent

year for which data is available. That's a little more than 10 percent

of the work force employed that year in farming, nursery work and

ranching, earning an average of $7.45 an hour.

Bacon must pay his workers at least $7.29 an hour, based on an

annual federal wage survey for the region.

Another hurdle Bacon faced was the Texas Workforce Commission's

inspection of the house he would provide his employees. The inspector

told him a window was too small.

"Nit-picky stuff like that makes you think, 'Now, why are they

picking on me?'" Bacon said. But he enlarged the window and stuck with

the process, and after three years of filling in the right blanks on

the right forms, he's got it down.

"Just do what they ask," he said, "and it becomes a lot easier."

That's how it often works with local farmers, said immigration

lawyer Shivers. She and other immigration lawyers often help

larger businesses deal with the paperwork to import skilled labor. But

for small farmers, the profit margins are generally too slim to make it

worthwhile.

"Usually, it's the wives who persevere and get these knocked out,"

Shivers said.

Sometimes the professionals aren't much help.

Verstraeten owns a cotton harvesting business and, starting

in the spring, travels slowly north across the state clearing out

farmers' fields. Last spring, he paid a Houston lawyer $3,000 to help

him get six H-2A workers from Mexico.

He kept expecting them any time, but as the months crawled by and

he had to make do with what he said was unreliable labor, the lawyer

kept telling him that the government had not moved on his paperwork.

"We've been working, but not like we could be if we had the right

people here," he said.

A reporter's calls to the lawyer's office were not returned, but

shortly afterward Verstraeten got word that his workers were on the

way.

There are recruiters and brokers who charge less than law firms do.

One farmer, who did not want to give his name or details, said he had

paid a local company called Head Honchos for help. Representatives of

that company did not return repeated phone messages left with an

answering service.

Some brokers have been accused of milking the system, charging

laborers far more than the $100 they must pay at the consulate when

applying for a visa. Growers also have been accused of abuses.

Legal Services of North Carolina has sued the growers association

in that state over its use of a blacklist of workers who caused trouble

— in some cases by complaining about bad living conditions.

's cousin, Correa , had worked on the H-2A

visa for a year picking tomatoes for a big grower in Tennessee.

The conditions were not as comfortable as at Wild Boar Farms, he

said. Thirty people slept in one house, 250 workers in all, picking

tomatoes as fast as they could. He was glad when told him Bacon

wanted more help, and he came to Texas two years ago.

Last year, they brought another cousin, Catarino Avila, who had

done H-2A work with tobacco in North Carolina. Avila said the

conditions in that job were all right, but he'd rather be here.

Like his cousins, Avila wishes he could bring his family to the

United States. Even if he had plenty of money in Mexico, he'd move here

and go back to visit.

"It's very hard, life in Mexico," he said.

Coming north on a visa means there are no hassles, no shakedowns at

the border, no punishing treks across the countryside that undocumented

immigrants face.

But some prefer to cross without the visa, Avila said, because they

can go where they want. He and his cousins are legally tied to Wild

Boar Farm.

In this case, it's OK with them, because the boss is required to

provide adequate housing, a kitchen, a way to wash clothes and a decent

wage.

The pay is well above the federal minimum of $5.15 an hour and is

an average of area agricultural wages. It's meant to keep farmers from

driving down area wages.

But that's one thing that agribusiness wants to change. The wage is

too high, said American Farm Bureau spokesman Austin .

"If you're trying to get a wage for strawberry pickers who live in

a remote area outside of San , what you're getting is a wage

that includes crop dusters," said.

A bill called AgJobs would freeze wages for three years at the 2002

level. Then Congress is supposed to come back and re-evaluate the wage,

but in case it doesn't, it will be adjusted upward for inflation. Right

now, it's adjusted upward based on average area wages.

AgJobs would also give immigrants — both undocumented and those

with H-2A visas such as , Correa and Avila — an opportunity to

apply for citizenship.

For that reason, it has the support of United Farm Workers, despite

the union's philosophical stance against importing agricultural labor.

"We believe it's another way to get slave labor or cheap labor,"

said UFW Texas Director .

The UFW is willing to compromise on that issue to see foreign

workers get a shot at citizenship and better protection of their

rights.

Others say the importation of agricultural labor should be as easy

as the importation of skilled labor, which is a more streamlined

process.

The enforcement of worker protections, they said, is a separate

issue.

"You're always going to get ugly and evil employers," said San

immigration lawyer Simon Azar-Farr. "The agency ought to clamp

down on those who do not live up to the promises they make."

But the application process should be "just like the person who

goes to the embassy and applies for a tourist visa to see Disneyland."

Azar-Farr said he no longer does H-2A visas, in part because it's

such a hassle and the cost to hire him isn't worth it to small

agricultural businesses in the way a skilled software designer is worth

it to a larger company.

But he sympathizes with farmers who are supposed to apply for the

workers up to four months before they need them.

"The very word 'seasonal' suggests changing needs," he said. And he

called the local advertising requirement "idiotic."

"You want to have a program with the presumption that there is no

local labor available," he said.

Lack of willing workers has been a common, and increasing,

complaint among San area farmers for years, and it's forcing

more to deal with an element they would rather avoid — the federal

government.

Peach grower Marburger has relied for years on Mexican

resident aliens who gained their status in the 1986 amnesty program.

Their pay works out to about $8.50 an hour, he said, but that labor

pool is thinning out. He's considering, with some dread, the H-2A

application process.

The last time Marburger advertised for help in the area, he got one

phone call — from an undocumented immigrant who declined to work for a

starting wage of little more than minimum.

"If I've got somebody who doesn't even have papers and doesn't

think that's enough money, then I'm surely not going to get anybody

else — and I live very meagerly," Marburger said. "I'm trying to stay

in business."

Verstraeten said labor has been an ongoing issue for his cotton

harvesting business.

"The people you find from here, they just up and leave," he said.

"It's kind of too hard a work, I guess."

UFW's said she doesn't believe local farmers can't find

local labor. She described a UFW effort to stop Idaho farmers from

bringing in H-2A workers. The union took a number of U.S. citizens up

to apply for the jobs in Idaho, but the interview process, she said,

was rigged.

Many applicants spoke only Spanish, while the interviewers spoke

English and used translators. They only interviewed a fraction of the

applicants, said, sent the rest home and got their H-2A workers

anyway.

"It was just a ruse, as far as I am concerned, in the way they

worked around the rules."

But she admits it's beyond her understanding as to why small,

government-shy farmers would rather deal with the mountain of

paperwork, submit to inspections, provide housing and pay well above

the minimum wage to bring in foreign workers.

"They all say American workers are lazy, and they don't want to

work. Right," she said. "I don't believe that."