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Big push for guest worker program
The landscaping industry and others say they need immigrant labor as fight looms in Congress.
By Susan Ferriss -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, March 23, 2006
The California Landscape Contractors Association and other businesses are calling for pressure on U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other California representatives to support legalization for undocumented workers and a guest worker program.

This coming Monday, Feinstein, D-Calif., and other Senate Judiciary Committee members could vote on historic proposals for immigration reform and border security that would go to the full Senate and then to a conference with the House of Representatives.

The Senate is sufficiently divided over immigration reform - and what to do about 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants - that debate could erupt into a free-for-all on the Senate floor this month.

Construction and landscape business owners who met Wednesday in Sacramento listened to an update on federal proposals from Laura Reiff, a leader of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"It's incumbent over the next 10 days to get Senator Feinstein on board," said Reiff, who also lobbies for California landscapers.

Landscapers have asked the state's construction, janitorial, health care and other industries to also lobby for legalization and visas for future guest workers.

"You have a lot of (immigrant) people who would like to stay. I'm in favor of this," said Steve Lehtonen, executive vice president of the Plumbing, Heating and Cooling Contractors of California.

"This really opened my eyes today," Lehtonen said. "I naturally assumed we were working toward a compromise for business and the undocumented and what's good for the nation."

Many in those businesses say it is hard to attract enough U.S. citizens even with wages above minimum. Some say illegal immigrants have probably used fake documents to get jobs.

Feinstein supports the idea of a pilot program to legalize some undocumented farm laborers. But she has expressed reservations about guest worker programs, fearing they might increase illegal immigration rather than reduce it, said spokesman Howard Gantman.

Reiff said Feinstein seems to have warmed to the possibility of a bipartisan compromise that would include earned legalization for illegal immigrants in jobs other than farming. Several Republicans on the Judiciary Committee support various versions. Earned legalization, which opponents call "amnesty," would let illegal immigrants secure work permits and, under some proposals, eventual U.S. citizenship.

Ten California landscape business owners met with legislators this month in Washington, and three of them - all Republican voters - said Wednesday they were surprised that the lawmakers were not more sympathetic.

"I was most shocked at the Republican Party being against small business," said Cynthia Smallwood, who runs Diversified Landscape Management in Mission Viejo.

"They don't get that there is a labor shortage," she said, explaining that even with wages running up to $35 an hour for public contract work, she can't attract a lot of U.S. citizens.

Cathy Gurney, owner of Sierra Landscape and Maintenance, also complained of being snubbed by Republicans. "I can't believe I put this party in power," she said. "The Democrats get it. They took time with us."

Peter Dufau, who runs an Oxnard landscaping business, said he believes congressional representatives in his party aren't listening to businesses.

"It seems they are listening to a bunch of people who have the time to go out and sit in the desert, like the, quote, unquote, Minutemen," Dufau said, referring to a group that conducts self-styled patrols on the U.S.-Mexico border.


About the writer:
The Bee's Susan Ferriss can be reached at (916) 321-1267 or sferriss@sacbee.com.