Thread: Senate's Failure to Agree on Immigration Plan Angers Workers

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/washi ... nted=print

April 9, 2006
Senate's Failure to Agree on Immigration Plan Angers Workers and Employers Alike
By ABBY GOODNOUGH and JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Until it collapsed on Friday, a compromise immigration plan in the Senate offered Rigoberto Morales a chance to reach his dream of becoming an American citizen.

Mr. Morales had worked eight years in the sun-baked fields of Immokalee, Fla., in the southern part of the state, picking tomatoes, evading the authorities, and sending most of his earnings to his mother and daughter in Mexico. The Senate plan would have allowed Mr. Morales, 25, to apply for permanent residency because he has lived here more than five years.

But as tantalizing as the possibility was, Mr. Morales said he never really believed Congress would solve his plight.

"It's a very bad thing because we're working very hard here and there's no support from the government," he said, standing outside a dreary shack where he lives with his wife and three other tomato pickers, all illegal immigrants from Mexico. "We're only working. We're not committing a sin."

Many of the nation's approximately 11 million illegal immigrants — as well as their employers — have long sought some of the major provisions in the Senate proposal, which failed amid partisan rancor.

In interviews, employers and illegal workers said the bill would have offered significant improvement, and several said the failure of the compromise was a lost opportunity.

"This is disappointing," said Edward Overdevest, president of Overdevest Nurseries in Bridgeton, N.J. "I think it is a setback for reason, it is a setback for common sense."

Mr. Overdevest said the Senate had failed to solve a problem that has been festering for years.

Mr. Overdevest and other employers who rely on an existing guest worker program that is smaller than what was proposed had hoped that the Senate would address the reams of red tape they say have plagued the program.

Antonia Fuentes, a Mexican who has picked tomatoes in Immokalee for two years, said legal status, even as a guest worker, would have allowed her to breathe easier even though life would have remained hard. "We live here in fear," said Ms. Fuentes, 18. "We fear Immigration will come, and many people just don't go out."

Yet she and others were wary of a provision in the Senate plan that would have forced illegal immigrants who have been here from two to five years to return home and then apply for temporary work in the United States. A million immigrants who have been here illegally for less than two years would have had to leave with little promise of returning.

Paulino Pineda, a community college custodian in Perrysburg, Ohio, outside Toledo, said any bill that did not provide amnesty to all illegal immigrants was flawed.

"It's not a democratic solution," said Mr. Pineda, 65, who moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1992 and sends money home to his 11 children. "If people come here, work very hard, do everything they're told to do, and then when they're not needed anymore they're told to take your things and go back, they might as well be slaves."

According to the Department of Labor, the United States economy will add about five million jobs in businesses like retail, food service and landscaping over the next decade, with not enough American workers to meet the need.

Many employers — especially in industries that rely on large numbers of unskilled laborers — had embraced the idea of a guest-worker program. They said it would stabilize the workforce, reduce the high cost of turnover and perhaps increase the number of workers available.

But others said an expanded guest-worker program would bring higher costs and more paperwork, and were cheered by the Senate bill's defeat.

"Yay!" said Jay Taylor, president of Taylor & Fulton, a tomato grower in Florida, Maryland and Virginia, who said that the bill was too hastily drafted and that Congress had not grasped the complexity of the issue. Mr. Taylor said guest workers should be able to come and go as they pleased, with freedom to earn wages in this country but no promise of citizenship or benefits.

"It was a dinner cooked in a pressure cooker," said Mr. Taylor, who employs nearly 1,000 immigrants. "What we need is something that comes out of a crock pot. We need something that is well thought out, well planned and well executed, and in the atmosphere we are in today on this subject, we're not going to get that kind of situation."

Judith Ingalls, a vice president at Fortune Contract Inc., a carpet maker in Dalton, Ga., did not find many of the provisions in the Senate bill practical, particularly those that would have required longtime immigrants to learn English and to pay fines.

"It is crazy to listen to this whole debate when you live here and see what is happening," Ms. Ingalls said. "Nothing I have heard out of Washington works."

Many employers, too, oppose any provision that would penalize them for hiring illegal workers, knowingly or not. Some expressed concern about the provision that would have granted citizenship to immigrants who had been in the United States for at least five years, saying it might have encouraged them to quit or be less productive.

"The illegals are probably better workers than the legal ones," said Mike Gonya, who farms 2,800 acres of wheat and vegetables near Fremont, Ohio. "The legal ones know the system. They know legal recourse. The illegal ones will bust their butts."

Some employers, especially in agriculture, say keeping full operations in the United States will not be viable without an overhaul of the system.

Jack Vessey, who runs a garlic-production company in El Centro, Calif., said stricter border enforcement and competition with other agriculture businesses had lengthened his harvest season by months and left him shorthanded.

"We don't have the people to work," Mr. Vessey said.

Agricultural businesses, with their mostly migrant workforce, are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine of immigration. With some local governments searching for ways to stem illegal immigration, other businesses fear that time is running out.

"Disruptions in agriculture could cause disruptions in our own workforce," said John Gay, vice president for government affairs at the National Restaurant Association, which said it did not have enough workers to deal with the industry's projected growth over the next few years. "We have been muddling through with this don't-ask-don't-tell policy we've had, but it's not sustainable."

Abby Goodnough reported from Immokalee, Fla., for this article, and Jennifer Steinhauer from New York. Terry Aguayo contributed reporting from Immokalee, Brenda Goodman from Georgia and Chris Maag from Ohio.

"The illegals are probably better workers than the legal ones," said Mike Gonya, who farms 2,800 acres of wheat and vegetables near Fremont, Ohio. "The legal ones know the system. They know legal recourse. The illegal ones will bust their butts."

TRANSLATION:

"How dare legal workers know the system and their rights, we want workers we can exploit and fire on a whim if they ever demand livable wages or decent working conditions. We want workers who we can use to get the crops in, then before they get paid, we can drop a dime to customs and get them all deported so we don't have to pay them at all, that's the American way, that's what we need to function in our economy, and we just can't do that to legal workers."

The headline alone is enough to set a person off since most of Americas workers are citizens or legal. Bringing in an unlimited amount of cheap competition is un-American anti-American. The workers who should be here are upset that all the Senate Bills were too generous.