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New state import: Thai farmworkers

By Lornet Turnbull
Seattle Times staff reporter


The 170 Thai workers imported into the Yakima Valley to harvest apples and cherries last season were a curiosity in this part of the state where Latinos, not Asians, have been a familiar presence.

The men, mostly poor farmers from rural Thailand, were the first foreign workers brought to Washington to pick fruit under a decades-old federal guest-worker program meant to fill labor shortages in agriculture.

The Thais' sudden appearance in the orchards of Eastern Washington could signal the start of a shift in the state's agricultural work force.

Fruit growers and farm-labor contractors like California-based Global Horizons, which employed the Thais, are expected to bring at least 1,000 workers from overseas into Washington this year.

Global said as many as a dozen growers in Eastern Washington are interested in using the company's workers this year.

Controversy over continued use of illegal immigrants, coupled with what some growers believe is a looming labor shortage, make the imported temporary workers increasingly appealing, some growers say.

"I think foreign guest workers are the answer for now, until the next big thing comes around — like mechanization," said John Verbrugge, orchard manager at Valley Fruit in Wapato. "I'm getting far better results with the legal workers and not having the hassle of the paperwork." But the new arrivals worry unions and advocacy groups that represent local farmworkers.

Some predict that Thais and other guest workers will take away local jobs held predominantly by Latinos — in essence, pitting one set of laborers against another, and possibly one ethnic group against another.

And critics of the guest-worker program question whether there is a real labor shortage: It is the number of farm jobs, not farmworkers, they say, that is shrinking.

Jeff Johnson, organizing and research director of the Washington State Labor Council, said the importation of Thai workers "totally flabbergasted us."

"We have no labor shortage in the state of Washington, so we question the need for these foreign workers to begin with."


"Please help us"

Under the federal H-2A program, growers or labor contractors such as Global can bring foreign workers into the U.S. only after proving the jobs can't be filled domestically.

Mordechai Orian, president of Global, said his company is providing the labor-force stability that growers increasingly are demanding. His company has filed applications for up to 640 workers to fill job openings with three Eastern Washington growers.

"They're not coming to us because we're asking them," Orian said. "They're coming to us saying, 'Please help us.' "

Using imported farmworkers isn't a cheaper option for growers. They pay contractors a premium for the foreign labor.

In return, they say, they get workers whose immigration status and loyalty are not in question. And when the harvest is as big as it was last year, they know these workers — their English limited and their movements largely controlled — will show up to work.

Yet, it's questionable whether a farm-labor shortage, the rationale for H-2A workers, actually exists.

Even during the height of the growing season, unemployment in the Yakima area is higher than in most regions of the state.

Agricultural jobs in the state fluctuate from year to year depending on the size of the harvests, but generally have declined as farms have consolidated or disappeared, state Employment Security Department figures show.

"I can't remember a year when growers didn't say there was a labor shortage of some sort," said Howard Rosenberg, an agricultural-labor management specialist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dan Fazio, labor specialist with the Washington Farm Bureau, whose members include fruit growers, said growers with a reputation for being fair and honest don't have a problem getting good people.

"The markets are able to correct for the tightness we experienced with last year's big crop: People have to pay more for workers," he said.

Changes within the industry are also creating complications. Growers have been planting more cherries, with harvesting that coincides with California's. With the loss of its asparagus crop, Washington also lost some leverage in competing for those workers who used to come early for asparagus and stay for cherries.

They also say that young Latinos, who have wider job options than their elders, are less likely to follow their parents and grandparents into the fields and orchards.

"Farmworkers chase the American Dream like everyone else," said Rosenberg. "I've spoken to fathers in the field who say, 'I'm doing this work so my kids don't have to.' "

Growers also say many local workers "cherry pick" the orchards for the best jobs and pay, leaving some farmers guessing whether they'll have enough laborers, especially in a big year.

Gary Hudson, human-resources director for Zirkle Fruit, one of the region's biggest growers and a Global client for H-2A workers this year, said, "Because this is a 10-month-a-year job anymore, you want to find those good-quality people who will stick with you.

"That is increasingly tough."

Global said 95 percent of the local workers it hired for jobs at two orchards last year didn't show up on the second day. But some workers say they were placed in a position where they couldn't compete with the Thais.

Several of them, represented by Columbia Legal Services, are seeking to intervene against Global to stop further use of H-2A workers in the Yakima Valley.

One worker, who's toiled as a farm laborer for 20 years and was employed briefly by Global last year, said he thinks the company imposed unrealistic standards to get rid of local workers.

"The company wanted us to prune 100 to 150 trees a day and do a good job," he said, asking that his name not be used. "A worker could do that many trees, but not do them well."

After a few weeks, he said, he and other local workers were let go.

"The government should not give permission to bring workers from other countries to replace U.S. workers like myself," he said. "There are enough people here to do the work. Sometimes people need a way to get to work, but there are enough workers."

Orian, of Global, said many locals simply don't want to do the work. "Many of them come with their own terms: 'I don't want to do this or I don't want to do that,' " he said.

He said he also fired some Thais for the same reason.


Guest workers abused?

Farmworker advocates, meanwhile, have raised concerns about the treatment of the Thais who came last year.

Global is the target of a 2-year-old federal probe into wage-and-hour violations and came under fire from state regulators for how it paid and housed its Thai employees last year. (See accompanying story.)

And across the country, the guest-worker program has been dogged by allegations of abuse. The Labor Department last year concluded 89 investigations into H-2A employers.

"A guest worker is guaranteed and trapped," said Steven Camarota, director of research with the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that supports immigration control.

"You have more freedom as an illegal because you can move from one job to another. If you're a guest worker, your ability to change is very limited."


Chance at higher income

The Thai workers who came to Washington were men in their 20s and 30s, on H-2A visas that are often issued for up to three years.

Most are farmers from a country where agriculture employs half the population. Some told state government officials they paid amounts up to $8,000 to a recruitment company in Bangkok to get the jobs in the U.S.

They are paid at an hourly rate higher than the minimum wage to prevent their presence here from depressing locals wages.

For a 40-hour workweek, they can earn $349, or $14,000 over 10 months. That's far more than they can earn back home, where the average worker makes between $3,500 and $5,000 a year.

The workers follow the growing seasons from state to state. From Washington, many of the Thais were headed to Hawaii.

Unlike some foreign workers, Orian said, the Thais want to return home once their visas expire. To obtain the visas, they must prove strong ties to their homeland, such as a family or a house.

Erik Nicholson, United Farm Workers' Pacific Northwest regional director, believes the import of Thai labor is part of a historic cycle in farm labor that has seen one group of foreigners replaced by another.

"There's a subtle race card being played here, which is the legacy of agriculture," he said. "One hundred years ago, we were bringing Chinese workers onto our farms. They were replaced by the Japanese, who were considered harder workers. Then it was the Filipinos and then the Mexicans."

"We have a similar trajectory here. As Mexican workers become more organized, one of the responses is to replace them with workers from Thailand."

Orian says he isn't whipsawing one group against another and in the past has brought workers from Mexico and Central America as well as Asia.

He said the Thais have a lower runaway rate than the others and are more productive. "When I spend money, I don't discriminate," he said.


Legal worries

Growers have another reason for exploring the use of guest workers: With the current climate in Congress, they believe immigration changes will make it harder to hire illegal immigrants.

More than 60 percent of agricultural workers in Washington are believed to be undocumented, according to some industry estimates.

Still, for now, crackdowns against growers by the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, are rare.

But for Zirkle Fruit, one of the growers that wants to use Thai laborers, employing illegal workers is already a legal headache. Five years ago, a group of U.S. workers sued the grower, claiming its use of illegal workers was depressing wages. The suit was certified as a class action last year.

"We have to resolve this," said Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League. "It's poor management practice to continue to employ over the years people who don't have proper documentation."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420

or lturnbull@seattletimes.com