Thread: Immigrants turn down factory jobs

Immigrants turn down factory jobs
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times





Carlos Maass, left, and Sergio Ochoa Meraz work with an organization that helps repatriate Mexican citizens who have been deported from the United States. Ochoa is holding pamphlets given to people who wish to return home or to go to work in a Juárez maquiladora. (Victor Calzada / El Paso Times)

JUAREZ -- Each day, dozens of undocumented immigrants are returned to Mexico at the Paso del Norte Bridge in Downtown El Paso. They are drained and disappointed by their failure to emigrate but still dream of bettering themselves through hard work. Meanwhile in Juárez, where they land, maquila executives struggle each day to alleviate a severe worker shortage.
So it was a clever idea to offer the returning migrants a job on a factory line.

But so far, there have been no takers.

The program is called Repatriados Trabajando, or Deportees at Work, and it offers a job in a maquiladora, lodging in a shelter and 15 days worth of free food to immigrants who sign up.

"It allows us to offer a source of work for people to stay and work on the border, but on this side of the border," said Sergio Ochoa Meraz, the Juárez coordinator for the national employment office.

Ochoa has a desk in the Mexican immigration office on the bridge itself and also reaches out to immigrants at the Border Patrol compound on the U.S. side of the bridge.

Since the program started at the end of April, 80 men and six women have accepted $180 in bus fare and expenses to return to their home towns, another aspect of the program. Two people did ask for a job in Juárez but explained to Ochoa that they only wanted to save money to be able to try to cross the border again and the official declined to help them, he said.

Border Patrol officials said they apprehend about 106,000 people in the El Paso sector each year, 90 percent of whom chose to be voluntarily returned to Mexico. Immigration officials in Mexico reported that 98,000 people were deported to the state of Chihuahua last year.

The labor shortage in Juárez is due to the arrival of new, large plants, including Electrolux and Lexmark, and the expansion of existing plants.

The maquila association AMAC reported a shortage of 15,000 workers in May, but it is closing fast as companies and headhunters bring workers from the interior


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of Mexico, and AMAC president Tomas Mena is now speaking of a shortage of 5,000 to 8,000 workers.

The Deportees at Work program has had more success in the states of Tamaulipas, where Nuevo Laredo is located, and Sonora, where Nogales is located, officials said.

Sonora's Secretariat of Economy reported it has helped about 50 deportees since late April, but it wasn't clear whether any took a job, or whether they took the money to get back home.

On the Paso del Norte Bridge in El Paso this week, two people stopped by the Deportees at Work office but both wanted information on how to emigrate to the United States.

Ochoa thinks that one obstacle is that returning immigrants are often not from Juárez and don't have family in Juárez.

But there are other explanations.

The fee that immigrants pay polleros, or smugglers, is good for several trials, so immigrants are not likely to abandon their quest after one trial.

In addition, difficulties finding a job in Mexico is not what motivates migrants to cross the border in the first place, a Pew Hispanic Center study released late last year found. The great majority of the migrants polled in that study had held a job in Mexico, but not a good job. Researchers concluded that immigrants were not after merely jobs; they were after better jobs.

Wages at Juárez maquilas have not increased as a result of the shortage. They are between $6 and $10 a day.

Maquila officials say that workers should take into account benefits and promotion potential that exist in the industry.

Louie Gilot may be reached at lgilot@elpasotimes.com; 546-6131

http://www.americaneconomicalert.com/ne ... ID=2152685

Just got a new vacuum a couple of months back. Glad to say it NOT an Electrolux.

I can tell you that they are not turning down factory jobs here. They are pouring into our area because one of the main factiories here who's name is on the list that they do not hire illegals is bringing them in to work in that factory and every week there are more coming in than the week before. I don't know if it is true but someone who's husband works at this factory told me yesterday that this factory has billboards on the border saying they have work in this town. Our small community in the midwest that really doesn't have alot of jobs is being taken over by illegals while American that are being displaced from these jobs are having to travel as far as 60 miles to work now at a time when gas prices are so high.