http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/ ... 88839.html

Potato growers struggle without migrants


By JOHN MILLER Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho — While Washington politicians spar over who has the best election-year border control and immigration plan, Jack Hoopes wonders who will harvest his seed potatoes. He needs 50 workers for the three-week harvest starting next week. He has just 35, including students who get a week off from school in the Teton Valley, a farming region northeast of Idaho Falls.

Hoopes said his Hispanic workers tell him President Bush's plan for 6,000 National Guard troops on America's 1,951-mile southern border and the intensifying spotlight on illegal immigration have had a chilling effect on Mexicans willing to come north.

Adding to the famers' dilemma is Congress' failure to adopt immigration reform.

On Thursday, the U.S. House voted 283-138 to build a 750-mile-long fence along the Mexican border, part of a Republican Party effort to keep the illegal immigration issue before voters. A similar bill passed the House in December.

The "emergency measure" now goes to the Senate, which in May approved a broader immigration bill with provisions for guest workers and 370 miles of fencing.

With the debate unresolved, Hoopes and other farmers say they're suffering.

"It's going to take longer to harvest the potatoes," he told The Associated Press. "I've spoken with other neighbors, and they're having the same problem. Something needs to be done with immigration reform. We depend on (immigrant workers)."

Thirty years ago, Idaho's women and children provided enough labor for harvest season. Now, Hoopes says, women have jobs and some teenagers aren't interested in the work _ and farms are larger. Furthermore, with the construction boom in Idaho and neighboring Wyoming's vacation areas, residents are pounding nails, not looking for seasonal jobs such as potato harvesting, which pays only a few dollars an hour.

Idaho's unemployment rate is 3.3 percent, and just 2.3 percent in eastern Idaho's potato country.

Migrant laborers are needed, the potato industry says.

"I wouldn't for a minute argue that we should just have an open border," said Keith Esplin, director of Potato Growers of Idaho, a lobby representing 250 growers. "But I think what this does show is that we really need to have a guest worker program. There really are people in Mexico who would like to come up for a few months and work."

It's unlikely Hoopes and Esplin will get what they want before the Nov. 7 elections.

A spokesman for Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who has been pushing the Senate's immigration bill, said the focus in the two-month election run-up will be on border security, as Thursday's House vote indicated.

Only after that will reform efforts with guest-worker provisions stand a chance, said Dan Whiting, Craig's spokesman in Washington.

Craig knows how rancorous the issue is: In August, the senator was screamed down by foes of immigration reform in Coeur d'Alene.

"There's not the political will in Congress right now to pass comprehensive reform," said Whiting. "The anti-immigration argument is a 10-second soundbite, but when you talk about the need for guest-worker programs, it takes you a good 10 minutes just to calm the crowd down."

U.S. Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter, R-Idaho, who is running for governor, voted Thursday in favor of the fence measure. Had the Senate acted on the House's plan approved last December, he contends, debate over guest workers could have long since begun.

"The congressman has always said we need to streamline the process of bringing workers here legally that our employers need," said Mark Warbis, Otter's spokesman in Boise. "But right now, our first priority must be securing the border. If your boat is leaking, you don't start bailing until you plug the leak."