'A Tyrannical Situation'; Farmers Caught in Conflict Over Illegal Migrant Workers By ANTHONY DePALMA The New York Times October 3, 2000 Section C; Page 1; Column 2; Business/Financial Desk (GARDNERS, Pa.) The sun rose majestically over one side of Mark Rice's hilltop field, and a brilliant harvest moon lingered over the other, as Mr. Rice warmly greeted the 70 Mexicans who had gathered to pick his 900 acres of apples. "The trees," he said in a halting Spanish, "are heavy with fruit." But by the time the workers had filled a few tractor-sized bins with golden delicious apples, both the moon and Mr. Rice's optimism had disappeared. "I've just got so much at risk here," he said as he anxiously surveyed a long row of trees that quivered with his newly hired hands. While all had working papers, experience suggested that most of the papers were falsified. "There's no way I could get my crop picked if I was legal." Another harvest, another year of playing a familiar game for Mr. Rice and thousands of other American growers. From strawberry fields in California to fruit orchards like these on the gentle slopes near Gettysburg, farmers say they are being squeezed by a system that makes them feel like criminals. "I'm an honest person, but if I want to stay in business, the only option I have is to follow an illegal course," said Mr. Rice, the seventh generation to be tied to this fertile land. An immigration raid would ruin his harvest, but it has been years since he was regularly able to hire any help except Mexicans. So he asks few questions, and keeps looking over his shoulder. "It's a tyrannical situation," he said. With the economy employing practically every American who wants to work, dependence on Mexican immigrants -- fully documented or not -- is inescapable, especially in agriculture. Recognition that something needs to be changed is growing on both sides of the border, but so is the opposition. In Washington, Republican lawmakers are pushing the biggest temporary-worker legislation since the Bracero program, which brought in waves of Mexican workers in the 1940's and 1950's. And Mexico's president-elect, Vicente Fox, says the United States should allow Mexican workers to cross the Rio Grande as easily as the products that make up the $196 billion in two-way trade. The Clinton administration has rejected both proposals. Still, Mr. Fox told Mr. Clinton it made no sense for the United States to spend almost $1 billion a year to guard the border with Mexico if American businesses need Mexican workers.
"I know many people in the United States want to see people as a burden, as a problem, but people are an asset," he has said. "If we have talented people, not only will Mexico progress, the United States will benefit and progress." Mr. Fox knew he would make waves. But he seems to have miscalculated American uncertainty about whether immigration helps or hurts. Despite record low unemployment, the presence of so many migrants angers some Americans, from the Arizona ranchers who have shot at newcomers, to the unidentified men in Farmingville, N.Y., who severely beat two Mexicans looking for work. More than three million undocumented Mexicans may be in the United States working in low-paying jobs. Nowhere is their presence more keenly felt than in agriculture. The General Accounting Office recently estimated that 52 percent of the nation's 1.6 million farm workers are here illegally, a formidable army whose presence openly violates American laws. They are not just in California and Texas, but in places like this, in rural Adams County, Pa. Officials with farm-worker service programs here say that as many as 90 percent of the 8,000 Mexicans who come into Pennsylvania each year to help with the harvest may be illegal. A nationwide amnesty in 1986 allowed 1.1 million undocumented Mexicans to gain legal residency. Another piece of legislation being considered in Washington would extend the amnesty and give more illegal immigrants legal residency. But that will do little to alter the underlying circumstances. With the economy booming, the United States is once again like a magnet, attracting over 340,000 new migrant workers a year -- most without proper papers. Temporary field workers can cross the border legally, through a federal program referred to as H2A, but few come that way. The paperwork is so cumbersome, and some requirements so rigid, that last year only 41,000 agricultural workers came in with these temporary work visas. Richard W. Pombo, a Republican congressman from California, has introduced a bill to revamp the H2A program to handle many more temporary workers and accomplish much of what Mr. Fox proposed. But the bill faces serious opposition from farm-worker advocacy groups and the Clinton administration, which has threatened to veto it. During hearings, opponents argued that the bill would remove some protections already in the H2A program. Among other things, growers would be allowed to offer housing vouchers instead of being required to provide free shelter for workers. It would also force workers to return to Mexico for at least two months a year, even if they have family here. The Mexican government supports the current program, and says it can be more widely used, but it says the proposed bill would hurt Mexicans.
"It sounds very good to say you are going to provide housing vouchers, but housing is not always available," said Jesus Reyes Heroles, Mexico's ambassador in Washington. American immigration officials have argued that there is nothing temporary about temporary visas, but Ambassador Reyes Heroles urged American lawmakers to take into account the success of a similar program run by Canada since 1974. This year, more than 6,000 Mexican field workers will go to Canada. They have binding contracts and will go home when the season ends. Critics oppose any attempt to expand H2A or normalize undocumented workers because of the burden such immigrants may place on social services. Some even argue that bringing in more Mexicans would ultimately hurt American agriculture by removing incentives for farmers to become more productive. Relying on cheap, plentiful Mexican labor, they say, has kept segments of American agriculture from mechanizing. "Interfering with the existing labor market is a form of protectionism and agricultural subsidy," said Mark S. Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington. Lee S. Simpson, a California raisin producer, also says the influx of workers threatens American agriculture, and the proof is in his own unusual farming operation. When Mr. Simpson started growing grapes in Madera County 13 years ago, he relied on 100 Mexicans to pick his 160 acres of grapes, lay them in the sun to dry, and then collect them. But immigration raids and the uncertain labor supply drove him to find a new way. Mr. Simpson, trained as an engineer, adapted a system used in Australia, growing his grape clusters on top of trellises. Ten year-round employees do the work formerly done by 100 farmhands. They cut the vines and leave the grapes on the trellis to dry into raisins. Weeks later, a mechanical harvester shakes them down. "If they closed the border," Mr. Simpson said, "and they built a wall long enough and high enough, and there was no more labor coming in, I would still survive, probably with a smile on my face." About a dozen raisin producers now use Mr. Simpson's method. But most growers say they cannot foresee a mechanical picker handling something as delicate as a bosc pear or an empire apple. Without Hispanic workers, "we would not be here," said William B. Lower Jr., a fourth-generation apple grower and president of the Adams County Fruit Growers Association. Mr. Lower said he would support Mr. Fox's proposal because legal workers are in short supply. When not enough Mexicans come to the orchards, the results can be devastating. Last year, Louy Kuntz, a nearby grower, let 30,000 bushels of golden delicious apples fall to the ground because he was shorthanded.
Orchards are an important part of the Adams County economy, and their success rests on the slim shoulders of men like Proceso Marquez, 50, who came from central Mexico without legal documents to pick apples for less than a penny apiece. "There is a lot of work here," Mr. Marquez said at the end of an 11-hour day. He made his way to the border last October and waited there until a smuggler offered to take him across for $1,500. "He told me I could go to work right away," Mr. Marquez said. "And I did." Many farmers say they would never be able to stand in the shoes of a Mexican who traveled 2,000 miles to pick apples in Pennsylvania. But Mr. Lower said he understood Mr. Fox's thinking about using jobs in the United States to raise the standard of living of Mexicans. One of the first Mexican farmhands Mr. Lower hired was Arturo Bermejo, who crossed illegally at Tijuana in the 1970's and then made his way to Pennsylvania. While working the Lower family's fields starting in 1983, Mr. Bermejo saved enough to open a small store in nearby Arendtsville. Mr. Bermejo died in 1995, but today his widow, Teresa, runs La Mexicana Store and restaurant, where local Mexicans gather after work. Her son Jesus is a sophomore at Penn State University, studying business administration. "My husband would have been very happy," she said recently. "He always said he wanted his only son to have a better life." The better life was what Samuel Contreras, 27, was seeking when he paid $1,300 to cross the border from Agua Prieta to Douglas, Ariz., where migrants had had violent confrontations with American ranchers. He was turned back twice, but on the third attempt he made it, and now expects to earn $4,000 or $5,000 in two months driving a tractor. "What Fox says would be good, because it would mean that we could cross legally and people wouldn't suffer the way they do now," he said. By midmorning on the first day of the apple harvest, Mr. Rice, the fruit grower, was a frazzled bundle of nerves. He drove his dusty pickup from field to field at stomp-thepedal speeds and once ran out of gas. He smoked and worried nonstop. He has already lost two stands of peaches to disease, and if it gets worse he may have trouble attracting workers because peaches, which are picked earlier, draw in apple pickers who want more work. Without peaches, Mr. Rice said, he could end up like some of his neighbors who lost parts of their crop. So he has investigated the H2A program, even though he does not relish dealing with recruiters and corrupt Mexican officials. That is one reason he, too, would have no problem with open borders.
"Fox is definitely going the right way," he said. Opening the border would not be without problems, he acknowledged. And he realizes that plenty of people who do not rely on migrant workers want to slam the border shut. But there is still his fruit to harvest. "His words just ring so true, around here anyway," Mr. Rice said. "But I guess it's just not politically acceptable to say that we need these people." http://www.nytimes.com