Thread: Migrant labor fears, perhaps overgrown, cloud Florida citrus

http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandfork ... 136387.htm

Posted on Thu, Jul. 27, 2006

Migrant labor fears, perhaps overgrown, cloud Florida citrus

TRAVIS REED
Associated Press

ARCADIA, Fla. - The endless miles of orange groves here aren't supposed to be busy this time of year - even in a state that produces three-quarters of the juice and fruit on U.S. shelves.

Central Florida's harvest is usually over by July, when droves of migrant workers typically head north to work in apple or tobacco fields.

But this year has been different, and no one is certain why. Far into the month, trucks were still making the axle-breaking drive to the groves over muddy roadways, retrieving trailers full of Valencias as fast as migrant workers on wobbly ladders could pick them.

Juice processors, which handle about 90 percent of all Florida's oranges, held the door open as long as they could to let them in.

The late harvest could mean many things. The one local folks repeat most is that tons of oranges will be left in groves because the illegal immigrant pickers have left, fearing a government crackdown.

Trouble is, the worker shortage may be a rural legend - and many of those missing oranges might never have existed, possibly blown away by last year's hurricanes or withered by a subsequent drought. Either way, the debate is illustrating how the congressional stalemate over what to do with the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants is playing out beyond Washington, with no end in sight.

"People are just terribly scared," said Barbara Mainster, head of the Redlands Christian Migrant Association, which provides child care and education for workers' children. "The uncertainty of all this hubbub over getting an immigration bill and the antics out there have made people more frightened than I've ever seen them in the 33 years I've been doing this."

The labor buzz started earlier this month, when a newspaper reported fruit boxes harvested and tallied were falling dramatically short of projections. Some growers and industry advocates said millions of oranges could rot on the trees because workers were afraid and no one was around to pick them.

A day later, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson said the entire $9 billion industry would suffer if Washington lawmakers couldn't reach a compromise. Gov. Jeb Bush said it was "interesting" amid so much talk about the problems illegal immigrants are causing in the country.

For obvious reasons, it's difficult to ever determine how many illegal immigrants and migrant workers actually are around. There's no census and, unlike other industries, no regular projections of employment. Most of the information comes from people like Mainster who help the workers.

She hasn't heard of any fleeing to escape immigration arrests or seen any evidence there are fewer this year. Neither have migrant worker advocacy groups in Immokalee and Dade City, two citrus-rich areas in South Florida and on the Gulf Coast, respectively.

"People are worried, but people are here to work," said Julia Perkins, a staffer with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, adding that threats of immigration raids is nothing new. "I don't think that's keeping people from the fields, those kinds of fears. They would have kept them from the fields all the years before now."

Ben Norris, a citrus grower with about 1,000 acres, doesn't know what's keeping workers from fields, but his checkbook insists something is. Norris said he was fortunate to get his late-season oranges picked, but it cost a 50 percent premium in some groves. Harvesting companies told him there weren't enough workers, and the ones they did have wanted better pay.

"You had to pay whatever it took almost, because if this crew left they didn't have another one to put in the space. It just boiled down to there wasn't as much labor to go around," he said.

Steve Sorrells, whose Sorrells Bros. Packing Co. Inc. owns 5,000 acres and manages another few thousand, said he definitely had trouble finding labor - even though he's able to use a legal guest worker program. He did find all 328 employees needed, but it was tougher this year.

However, as Sorrells notes, labor is always short this time of the season because migrant workers have already moved on to other jobs. It's not usually an issue because most years there's no work, but it matters this year because the late-maturing crops weren't ready to be picked until now.

"When you start getting into June (migrant farmworkers) have to start looking for a job," Sorrells said, adding that labor was also tight earlier in the season. "They follow the crops up."

The other variable is just how many oranges should be coming in, because the crops that may be left on trees are based on estimates, not actual counts. So if the U.S. government's production estimates were high - and they have been so far, resulting in several downward revisions - most of the fruit some think is still on trees never existed.

After two heavy hurricane seasons, this year's crop is the worst in more than a decade, but the U.S. government put it slightly better than last in final estimates.

But this late in the season, the Citrus Administrative Committee has already stopped keeping track of how much is arriving. Based on reasonable estimates of picking and hauling, by mid-month it could easily have been a quarter to half of the up to 6 million boxes of oranges feared to be wasted. (The entire state's crop is expected to be 151 million boxes, each of which weighs 90 pounds).

The scores of workers will keep shimmying up ladders and slinging 80-pound shoulder bags of fruit as long as the processing plants will take them.

But even with the harvest over, the immigration debate will continue.

Juan Penajero, a 34-year-old picker on a work visa from Guanajuato, Mexico, just hopes it will eventually open doors instead of raising fences.

"I think the situation with immigrants trying to stay here is no longer a political issue or a legal issue; it's a human issue for hard working people given the permission to live a better life for them and for their family," he said.

"As humans, we deserve that. Everyone wants that."

Harvesting companies told him there weren't enough workers, and the ones they did have wanted better pay.

Looks like cheap labor ain't so cheap any more

That being said it is a bunch of hogwash to say there are no workers because of the current debate in Washington. All the orange pickers are still here or one would have to assume since they have not been deported.

Not that I know much about orange groves...but I do have an orange tree as do many of my neighbors. I can attest to the fact that my tree and all of my neighbors trees have produced next to nothing due to 3 hurricanes moving through this area in the past 2 years. And in my travels around the state I see the orange groves and I have not seen oranges just hanging around on the trees waiting to be picked. The groves I have seen are picked and orange free.

"I think the situation with immigrants trying to stay here is no longer a political issue or a legal issue; it's a human issue for hard working people given the permission to live a better life for them and for their family," he said.

"As humans, we deserve that. Everyone wants that."

It is definitely a political and legal issue. As a human occupying a country you are in illegally you deserve to be deported.