LAKE COUNTY — A bill that would reform U.S. immigration laws and contains a component known as AgJobs, which is seen by many farm groups as key to ensuring their crops will be harvested, stalled in the U.S. Senate early this month but is back up for discussion as early as this Friday.
Local farmer and owner of one of the two largest pear packing companies in Lake County, Toni Scully, supports the legislation, and says she thinks it is likely to pass this summer. Last year, 25 percent of Scully”s abundant pear crop lay rotting in the orchards because of the lack of workers. Scully attributed the issue to only having half of the 900 workers they needed.
“We need Congress to pass a law to regulate this workforce. All of these goals securing our borders and getting enough workers go hand in hand,” said Scully. “No one bill is going to make everyone happy, but we have got to compromise. The American people will not be able to keep up on the status quo if they close the borders and we can”t get seasonal workers.”
Supporters of the measure, including many labor groups who are trying to convince U.S. Senate conservatives to accept it say it would satisfy the business community along with the needs of immigrant workers. AgJobs would grant temporary status with the goal of legal citizenship to certain undocumented workers who have worked in agricultural jobs at least two years. No other guest worker program in the history of the United States has created a pathway for undocumented immigrants to become permanent residents.
According to the United Farm Workers, which endorses the bill, it is the best shot at improving the influx of laborers to the fields, especially in California, where 92 percent of workers are not born on U.S. soil.
But the bipartisan bill is far from a free ticket to citizenship for immigrant workers. The comprehensive reform measure, SB 319, which fizzled in the Senate on June 7, would also have established a points system prohibiting many low-skilled workers from ever settling in the U.S. legally in the future, shut off family immigration, and implement the most severe workplace and border enforcement yet, these and other issues are being brought back up for debate and possible amendments in the coming weeks.
Opponents include conservatives, who view the measure as amnesty for undocumented immigrants and want to concentrate on securing borders, as well as those on the pro-immigrant side, who fear the guest worker program could fall into mishaps like its predecessor, the Bracero program, and possibly block the road to citizenship for some workers who are low-paid immigrants but not agricultural workers. “Agricultural work” refers to farm work or the raising of livestock but does not encompass processing of agricultural products, meat, or poultry, according to the measure”s literature.
Diane Henderson, local farmer and owner of pear packing shed Adobe Packing Company said the ideal guest worker program would be one that allows workers to easily cross the border, and that many other issues need to be addressed for migrant workers, such as affordable housing. She said many of her workers are undocumented, and are virtually trapped here on U.S. soil, because despite years of attempts to become legal citizens, the process of obtaining a green card is extremely tedious.
“A seasonal guest worker program that allows them to work from late spring through the fall would be ideal. Many of the workers don”t want to be stuck here. They”re very proud to be Mexican citizens, and want to stay here. They are farmers, and have those skills, and for $16 to $20 an hour for picking pears, or $150 to $300 a day for picking pears, it”s a win-win situation, we take out their payroll taxes, and [under SB 319] they would be allowed to return home,” said Henderson.
Scully echoed Henderson in saying that it is a misperception that all agricultural work is unskilled and low-paid. Workers earn several thousand dollars in one summer picking pears, and Scully says their business is ramping up for a good, early crop this summer, but is straining to recruit enough workers. “The worker population is a migrant population, we can”t just go down to the EDD (Employment Development Department) and find someone who knows how to pick pears in a manner that is effective it takes skills to climb a ladder, people who do that are quite well-paid,” said Scully.
Because of the intense societal milieu that antagonizes against immigration, and the push to construct a fence to secure our borders, an irony exists that sends a message of “keep out” when in Lake County, there are an abundance of “help wanted” advertisements. “They”re seasonal and migratory, that”s the reason why Americans haven”t raised their kids to be farm workers,” said Scully.
Workers at Adobe Creek Packing confirmed the antagonism, saying they view legislation like AgJobs with a skeptical eye. “It seems like a trap, we don”t trust it. We don”t want to go back to Mexico and then find we can”t get back,” said Jose Covarrubias, who translated for Salvador Jimenez-Martinez, Leonardo Martinez, and Francisco Jimenez after they finished work at Adobe Creek Packing on Wednesday.
They said that the cost of $5,000, a fee to apply for a guest worker visa if the worker was here in the U.S. without documentation, was not too steep. “To pay a coyote costs $2,000 or more,” said Jimenez. A “coyote” is a guide that ushers undocumented workers across the border. Another worker, who preferred to remain anonymous because he has not yet obtained a green card said he”d like to be able to go home for Christmas, but for three years has not and would like to be able to go back and forth through a guest worker program. “We feel sad about it [the anti-immigration sentiments], a lot of people die trying to cross the border,” said Covarrubias.
