Thread: Texas economy braces for immigration bill impact

June 30, 2007, 11:48PM
Texas economy braces for immigration bill impact


By JAMES PINKERTON, SUSAN CARROLL and LORI RODRIGUEZ
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle


FOREIGN WORKERS

The program
• More than 59,000 foreign farm workers were certified to work in the U.S. through the federal H2A guest worker program in 2006.

The process
• Employers must file an application with the Department of Labor certifying that they have advertised a job locally and found no willing and qualified U.S. citizens. Employers pay a $100 application fee and up to $10 for each worker visa, up to $1,000.

Requirements
• Employers must also provide housing that meets government standards and provide food and transportation for workers.

In addition, employers have to agree to pay workers an "adverse-effect wage," designed to keep pay competitive for American workers. In Texas, H2A workers are guaranteed $8.66 an hour, well above the federal minimum wage.

Period of visa
• H2A visas are temporary; workers must return to their home country at the end of the season.

Sources: Department of Labor, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service
Many business leaders are lamenting last week's death of the landmark Senate immigration bill and predicting dire consequences for the Texas economy.

Already, labor shortages have caused onions to rot in the fields, delayed wheat harvests and docked Gulf shrimp boats because of a lack of crews, they say.

A wide variety of Texas industries expressed concern about the loss of the bill's provision to accept 200,000 foreign guest workers each year. The existing agricultural guest worker program is small, cumbersome and ill-suited for today's employers, some industry leaders said, worrying they will have to wait years for reform and relief.

The bill also would have allowed illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to apply for temporary work visas.

But labor leaders in Houston said the guest worker program in the legislation would have drawn cheap labor and depressed wages.

''The floodgates would have been opened to bring in these people from several different countries — China and the Philippines — and the intent would have been to drive the wages down," said Kenneth Edwards, business manager of Pipefitter's Local Union 211 in Houston. ''It's not so much that there's a labor shortage."

Still, Texas agricultural producers say a shortage of field workers will only get worse.

''Losing the guest worker program is going to be very difficult to my industry, the fresh fruit and vegetable businesses in Texas," said John McClung, president of the Texas Produce Association in McAllen. ''We have known for a long while that approximately 70 percent of our field labor is illegal."

Without an effective guest worker program, McClung said, Texas growers will continue to move production to Mexico.

''If we do not have labor in the United States, we will go elsewhere," he said. "That is outsourcing the fruit and vegetable production, and that's what is happening."


'First workable' program
Longtime immigration attorney Charles Foster, the pointman on the issue for the Greater Houston Partnership, said the group supported the immigration reform bill because it was the "first workable" temporary workers program.

"The idea of a guest worker program is to recognize the reality that we have large numbers of positions being created for which employers, in varying degrees of impossibility, cannot fill with the U.S. workforce," Foster said.

Today, those "positions now are being filled through a guest worker program called illegal immigration," he added.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy will continue to create large numbers of low-skilled, low-paying jobs, Foster said.

"As we become an older, aging population, there will be even more service jobs created that need to be filled," he said.

The current federal H2A agricultural guest worker program admitted about 59,000 foreign workers in 2006.

To qualify, employers are required to certify they couldn't find qualified U.S. citizens for the jobs.

On the Texas coast, the H2A program provides crews for the shrimp trawler fleet, which has trouble attracting U.S. workers.


Delay in visa process
But this year, government delays in processing visa applications have left many shrimp boats inactive. At Texas Gulf Trawlers in Port Isabel, 16 of the 23 shrimp trawlers are tied to the dock because visas for 46 Mexican workers have not been issued, company officials said.

''They're just sitting out there waiting," said Julissa Ochoa, an administrative assistant at the company. ''We're looking for people, U.S. citizens who want to get on our boats and work ."

The hardship and dangers of fishing trips up to two months in the Gulf of Mexico on 70-foot shrimp trawlers do not appeal to locals, Ochoa said.

"The response is not very good," she said of local recruitment efforts. ''Nobody wants to shrimp anymore."

Among the many business interests lobbying for a greatly expanded guest worker program was Texans for Sensible Immigration Policy, a coalition of construction industry interests. Included are Houston chapters of Associated General Contractors and the American Subcontractors Association as well as the Greater Houston Builders Association.

Dale Trevino, a member of the coalition, is president of The Trevino Group, a family-owned firm that built the grand entrance to Minute Maid Park. He said his company does not hire undocumented workers.

But while the current guest worker program does not apply to the construction industry here, Trevino said Houston's housing booms in recent decades would not have happened without illegal immigrants.

"As far back as I can recall, immigrants have literally built this country with their hands," Trevino said. "If the powers that be in the U.S. could do a sweep nationwide and pick up every illegal immigrant, it would cripple this country."

Tony Rattei, a contract harvester in Seminole, a town of less than 6,000 near the Texas-New Mexico border, said he was happy to see the Senate "amnesty" bill fail. He said the H2A program is clumsy but works fine.

"I'm not for that kind of stuff," said Rattei, who has taken advantage of the program to import laborers since the early 1980s.

Rattei brings in machinery and drivers to assist farmers from Texas up to North Dakota with a range of crops. He harvests and transports the crops to a distribution point, takes a portion of the profits and moves to the next farm.


Nothing wrong with system
He said he has about five H2A workers on his payroll during the peak season, including employees from South Africa and Canada.

Each year, Rattei starts the paperwork in November to import workers in February or March.

"This H2A program, there's nothing wrong with it, they just need to rework the wage deal," he said. "For the amount of money we get for what we do, the wages are high."

The "wage deal" is an issue for many of the employers, because they must pay an "adverse-effect wage," designed to keep pay competitive for American workers. In Texas, H2A workers are guaranteed $8.66 an hour, well above the federal minimum wage.

This year, Rattei said the harvest was slowed by a recent Texas law that prohibited H2A workers from getting commercial driver's licenses. The Legislature amended the restrictions to allow the H2A workers to drive, but the change won't take effect until September.

In the meantime, Rattei said, he and farmers across the state are losing money.

"The harvest should be complete in Texas by now, but we're at 50 to 60 percent," he said. "We don't have truckers to run our equipment. Fifty percent of the wheat in Texas is still in the field."

james.pinkerton@chron.com

susan.carroll@chron.com

lori.rodriguez@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4935092.html

Here it is Alipacers in all it's glory! I predicted this was coming. Why we should have given amnesty to illegal aleins and how we are going to suffer because we didn't.

Look at the fear moungering. We are going to starve and our economy will crash!!!!!!!

Expect more of this and the bleeding heart stories.

Dixie

What a total crock! If they think by giving them amnesty they are going to stay in the fields they are dillusional. When the become legal and leave the fields, then the traitors will be screaming again that they don't have enough workers and we will be going through all of this BS again.

In Texas, H2A workers are guaranteed $8.66 an hour, well above the federal minimum wage.

About the only people that can live on $8.66 an hour is the illegals. And we have how many of them in out country???? Of course as we all know it is illegal to hire an illegal. It sure must be cheaper to let the onions rot in the fields than to pay your workers a decent wage. What a waste.

How about some American ingenuity here? Here's an idea. Let people(citizens of course) come in get all of the onions they want and charge them for the onions they take. These entrepreneurs could sell them at farmers markets or to stores. They could also just use them in their own household or pick and share them with friends. Sounds like a win win situation to me. Anyone remember the old saying waste not want not? This would also be a great way for our youth to earn money for their organizations such as church groups, boy and girl scouts, school clubs etc.

Here it is Alipacers in all it's glory! I predicted this was coming. Why we should have given amnesty to illegal aleins and how we are going to suffer because we didn't.

Look at the fear moungering. We are going to starve and our economy will crash!!!!!!!

Expect more of this and the bleeding heart stories.

Henny Penny "the sky is falling..." what bullcrap...a day without an illegal and we fall
I don't think so...unless you mr.boosh and buddies want it to fall

WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME AS TO HOW IN THE BLUE BLAZES THERE COULD POSSIBLY BE A SHORTAGE OF WORKERS WITH SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 12 AND 30 MILLION ILLEGALS IN THIS COUNTRY???????????????????????????

And to add Girly


I passed so many freaking buses, full of people coming from South of the border...I lost count...that was between Texas and Missouri...so just what the hell are they doing? where are they going? this bus thing has only been like this, in the last 2 years...and completely tripled in the last year...

Here are few things I found when I did a search on on Tony Rattei.


http://www.uschi.com/board.php

http://www.aganalysisplus.com/champ/des ... background


A couple of names popped up when I was looking into this that might be worth digging into.

Kevin Dhuyvetter (this guy has something to do with the animal identification tags)

Terry Kastens

Originally Posted by girlygirl369

WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME AS TO HOW IN THE BLUE BLAZES THERE COULD POSSIBLY BE A SHORTAGE OF WORKERS WITH SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 12 AND 30 MILLION ILLEGALS IN THIS COUNTRY???????????????????????????

I would suspect that only a small percentage of illegals actually work . This is my belief and I stand waiting for PROOF That this is not true .

I KNOW WHAT I'M ABOUT TO SAY IS NOT PC.

That qualification made, here goes.

The USA has sooo many people in jail...why not pull a Sheriff Joe Arpaio?

Take the NON-violent offenders (no gang members) and if they volunteer and do a good job, contributing to our country, by picking, or working in the fields or aforementioned shrimp boats, etc., and behave themselves while working,...then they will have some time taken off their sentences.

Right now, they sit in jail, watch TV, get a jail house education, work out on equipment I can't afford, and cost us taxpayers a lot of money. Let them contribute for a change. Maybe it would raise their self-esteem!

OK, I'm dreaming!