BradentonHerald.com
Posted on Sun, Jun. 01, 2008
Manatee migrant numbers down
By MAURA POSSLEY
mpossley@ bradenton.com

Migrant workers aren't flocking to Manatee County during peak seasons as they've done for decades - possibly the start of a national trend in the wake of beefed-up immigration enforcement, a sluggish economy and dwindling farmlands.

These factors and others have depleted a once-thriving migrant community that relied primarily on agriculture work.

Experts say the trend began in 2004 when Hurricane Charley flattened homes of migrants and the fields in which they worked.

Now, immigration officials are tightening the border and cracking down on employers. Trips across the border several times a year - integral to a migrant's nomadic lifestyle - are no longer safe. Some decide journeying to southwestern states is easier, instead of the long trek to the Gulf Coast.

And economic conditions have left little work.

"The overall population of migrants in Florida . . . is certainly shrinking," said Walter Kates, Florida Fruit and Vegetable director of the Labor Relations Division. "The number of people at least working in agriculture of migrant background seems to be decreasing every year."

Migrants are likely tapping into communication channels that connect across the country and into their native lands, spreading the word that traveling to Florida is not worth it and to find work elsewhere. And it may be the beginning of a national trend, stemming from increased immigration policing, said Demetrios Papademetriou, president and board member of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank studying international migration.

"It's the difficulty of trying to cross into the United States," he said. "I think it has to do with people just not coming."

Whether these factors will continue to reduce the migrant farmworker population remains to be seen.

"You can tell there's not as many (migrants) in the church as there used to be," said the Rev. Teofilo Useche, pastor of Palmetto's Holy Cross Church. "It will be less and less."

Fewer migrants in schools

It's difficult for anyone to determine exactly how many migrants have left and not returned. But in the past year, local service providers and activists agree, fewer migrants are calling Manatee County home.

One clear measure is in Manatee County's schools. In the district's migrant program, funded by grant money apart from the school budget, there are about 1,400 students migrant students enrolled this school year. In the 1980s and '90s, there were an estimated 6,000 migrant students.

The migrant enrollment remained steady until Charley, says Maria Matos, a specialist with Manatee school district's migrant program. It since has shrunk about 20 percent .

The crackdown on illegal immigration has also affected the schools' enrollment.

More migrants are fearful of the increased policing and have decided to travel without their families, if at all, said Bruce Goldstein, executive director of Farmworker Justice, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C."Less and less are they people with children," Goldstein said.

Bradenton's Catholic Charities organization has also noticed there are fewer immigrants - migrant or not, said Yraida Contreras Alonso, its program director. Even immigrants who have waited a decade for visas, going through the process legally, are gone by the time the visas finally arrive at Catholic Charities.

"A lot of immigrants are leaving to their home country," Contreras Alonso said. "There's an anti-immigrant sentiment out there."

Fewer acres, less work

Affordable housing - from motel rooms to trailer parks - has dwindled, sending families north for work or back home, said Matos, an activist and former chair of the county's Latino Community Network.

"Not only because affordable housing is a big problem in Manatee County, but also before, housing was being provided by the people hiring them to do the job," she said. "Right now in our county, that is shrinking."

Instability for migrants has intertwined with agricultural struggles in Manatee County, a microcosm of a national crisis faced by the country's oldest industry.

This year, the brothers behind a local tomato institution - Taylor & Fulton - bowed out of the business, which once employed hundreds of migrants and farmworkers who lived here year round, leaving it to successors. With that came layoffs and the closing of a popular housing complex.

Its neighbor along 10th Street West in Palmetto, Pacific Tomato, packed up portions of production and relocated to northwestern Mexico. Its chief operations officer Billy Heller said earlier this year the move would provide a better profit and stable workforce.

Costs are rising for growers and farmlands are shrinking, leaving less work for migrants.

"The reality is there were probably less acres of tomatoes planted," said Bob Spencer, a vice president for the Palmetto-based West Coast Tomato. "When times are tough we tend to have plenty of workers for our industry. That isn't to say some people haven't given up and returned to other areas."

For an aging industry, it is also a business without a clear successor, further decreasing the amount of work, said Arturo Lopez, executive director of The Farmworker Association of Florida.

"What is happening for sure is that the amount of land that used to be farmed has diminished and a lot of the growers are selling land for development and construction of housing," Lopez said. "Some of the older people that have the land are saying they don't want to do it any more (and) their kids don't want to farm."

Immigration debate grows

A solution for growers and migrant workers, some say, would be to reform the government's temporary worker program. They say the current system does not allow for enough workers and is bogged down in red tape. Some advocate for a complete overhaul to the nation's immigration system.

But opponents to those measures say the migrants take jobs that belong to domestic workers, and immigration reform would grant legal status to immigrants.

As Congress considered the issue, lobbyists on one side pushed for reform and on the other for enforcement-only measures. Thus far, enforcement has been the only action taken in the debate that has captured the country's attention.

Activists insist without reform, the migrant community will continue to shrink, hurting the entire workforce.

"As it is now, they feel like there's not even a light at the end of the tunnel," said Holy Cross' Useche.

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