Thread: Pajaro Valley (CA) growers brace for federal raids

August 11, 2007

Pajaro Valley growers brace for federal raids
By TOM RAGAN
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER

WATSONVILLE, CA — In the absence of any semblance of immigration reform, federal authorities announced Friday they will step up raids on workplaces across the country in cases where workers don't have genuine Social Security numbers.

But growers who have come to rely on an illegal workforce in the fields of the Pajaro Valley say they aren't too concerned about the news of the clamp down. They say they've been doing their part to operate aboveboard, asking workers for the required documents and proper identification.

"I do what the law requires, and that's just about all I can do," said Alex Fernandez who, with the help of 35 field workers, grows strawberries and packages under Watsonville-based Well-Pict. "I mean, I ask them for their Social Security cards. I ask for their work permits. And they show them to me. I'm not an expert in what is real and what is not. Nor should I be"

In a crackdown aimed more at growers than field workers, at hotel and restaurant management rather than working staff, the Department of Homeland Security will start following up and enforcing what is called a "no match" letter. That's when employers have already been notified that the names and numbers of workers on their payroll failed to match those provided by the Social Security Administration.

Whether Santa Cruz County will figure prominently in the crackdown remains to be seen, but several growers, including Fernandez, said they had not received such warning letters and therefore weren't too worried.

Providing fake Social Security numbers has been going on for decades, and some of the chief violators are illegal immigrants, according to the Social Security Administration and Homeland Security.

At last estimate, there were 20,000 undocumented workers who make up the rooms in local hotels, cook the enchiladas and bus the tables at local restaurants or pick clean the strawberry fields of the Pajaro Valley, according to the Santa Cruz County Immigration Project in Watsonville.

Whether illegal immigrants have been cheating the system by providing employers with Social Security cards manufactured on the black market or whether employers have merely been turning a blind eye, is partly what has fueled immigration reform.

Under the regulations, employers would be given 90 days to shore up any sort of discrepancies between identity information provided by their workers and the records of the Social Security Administration.

If workers' documents cannot be verified, employers would be required to fire them or risk up to $10,000 in fines for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

Some say the new regulations are politically motivated, an attempt to appease conservatives on an issue that has divided the country in the absence of any kind of hard and fast solution.

"This is just a tactic by the Bush administration to deport people politely, but it's going to be done in a selective way," said San Jose activist Salvador Bustamente, a former official with the Service Employees International Union.

In some parts of the country, raids have already been carried out, most notably at slaughterhouses and chicken processing plants in the Midwest and the Northeast, notes Steve Bontadelli, the president of the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau and a third-generation brussels sprouts grower.

Depending on the season, Bontadelli hires anywhere between 20 and 100 field workers to harvest his crops on 300 acres of land. And every year, he said, he writes down the Social Security numbers and looks over the resident alien cards that allow his primarily Mexican work force to labor in the United States.

"We, as employers, are not detectives," said Bontadelli. "If these guys [Department of Homeland Security] were really serious about it, they'd give us ways to verify security numbers with a simple telephone call. But we can't. You'd think in this day and age of computers, we'd be able to punch in the numbers, but there's still none of that"

Officials with Homeland Security say they hope to eventually unveil a database that employers can use to verify an employee's legal status.

In the 1970s and '80s, work site raids were common place as immigration officials would descend on farms in the Pajaro Valley and workers would scatter at the sight of approaching sports utility vehicles or helicopters.

Whether that sort of scene is destined to to be replayed remains to be seen in the coming months.

"I remember when I was a little kid and working at the ranch, trucks would come running up the road, they'd deport them to Tijuana, then they'd be back in a couple of days," said Bontadelli. "I remember there was a wedding once in Mexico and some of the workers actually called the authorities on themselves to get a free bus ride back to the border, then they'd be back the next week"

As for Fernandez, a Watsonville High School graduate who now runs his own growing company with help from his father, he thinks the solution is a guest-worker temporary program.

"It's the only way to go," he said. "The agricultural industry needs the labor and they need us. I think it's time for some sort of compromise"

New employer regulations

The rules, which take effect next month, allow a business 90 days to figure out why an employee's Social Security number does not match the government database. If legal status can't be confirmed, the employee must be fired.

A company that ignores warning letters about employees with potentially fake Social Security numbers could be fined up to $10,000 per employee or face criminal prosecution.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that the fines would increase by about another 25 percent and that the number of investigators would also go up.

Chertoff also announced that the Bush administration would eventually require government contractors to use an employment system that helps them verify whether an applicant or employee is in the United States legally. He said it soon will include a feature to let an employer check photos on an employee's documents against 14 million images in Department of Homeland Security databases.

The system — previously known as Basic Pilot and now renamed 'E-Verify' — is now voluntary. Requiring contractors to use it involves changing federal rules on contracting, which could take months, Chertoff said.

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WHAT? SOMEONE IS FOLLOWING THE LAW? CAN THIS BE? AM I DREAMING?