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FARM SCENE: Some say sealed border would hurt cotton industry

01/06/2006
By BETSY BLANEY / Associated Press

West Texas cotton ginner Larry Nelson foresees a struggle to find enough workers to process the fluffy fiber if immigration reform leads to shutting the border with Mexico.

"We couldn't survive without them," Nelson said.

His sentiment echoed comments made this week at a cotton conference by U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-San Antonio, who said sealing the border and charging the 11 million undocumented people in the U.S. with felonies would be "very dangerous" for agriculture.

"For agriculture industry, having workers is very, very important," Cuellar said after speaking to hundreds of cotton producers at the 2006 Beltwide Cotton Conferences. "If you make them felons, you have no workers."

The House in mid-December passed legislation that includes measures such as enlisting military and local law enforcement help in stopping illegal entrants and requiring employers to verify the legal status of workers. It authorizes the building of a fence along parts of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The bill also upgrades the civil offense of unlawful presence in the United States to a felony.

Workers typically come to Texas' South Plains, the world's largest contiguous cotton patch, after helping process cotton in the southern part of the state, which harvests the crop earlier, Plains Cotton Growers spokesman Shawn Wade said.

"There's a certain segment that are doing it without documentation," he said. "It's the nature of the beast. From an industry standpoint, there's a need to have that pool of employees available."

Texas, the nation's largest cotton-producing state, is on track to harvest 8.1 million bales for 2005, breaking the record set in 2004. Ginning of the 2005 crop continues.

While large machinery has reduced the amount of hand labor needed to harvest cotton, the same is not true of other crops, which would be more severely affected by immigration laws that would exclude undocumented workers, Wade said.

"It's not going to be near the issue as in (harvesting) fruits and vegetables," he said.

The House legislation put off consideration of a guest worker program, which President Bush and many in Congress say must be part of a lasting solution to illegal immigration. Other legislators, Cuellar said, are eyeing a formula that would be a "pathway to earn citizenship."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has said he will bring up immigration legislation in February and that it will provide a framework for guest worker ideas.

Nelson said the Bracero Program, a U.S. guest worker system negotiated between Mexico and America that last ed from 1942 to 1964, was "the very best." The plan began as a way for farm laborers from Mexico to help ease a worker shortage when young Americans entered the military.

"We're in trouble and, unfortunately, we're a very labor intensive industry," Nelson said. "We need good workers."