Thread: WA-New guest workers fill empty Brewster orchard jobs

New guest workers fill empty Brewster orchard jobs
100 Jamaican men have arrived to take Gebbers Farm slots
.Post a commentPrint By K.C. Mehaffey


Monday, May 31, 2010



From thier farm worker housing complex near Monse, Clifton Brown, at left, and Leon Campbell, tell of their experience in the Brewster area after arriving from Jamaica. An estimated 200 Jamaican workers have arrived in Brewster and are working at Gebbers Farms through a guestworker program.

Related story
• Brewster’s guest workers: The wave of the future?
http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2010 ... -future-u/


Robert Webster, owner of The Music Store, has seen an increase in interested shoppers since Jamaican workers have arrived in Brewster.

Enrique Campos, owner of La Moda a clothing store in Brewster, doesn’t think his business will rebound from the recent Gebbers Farms firings.

Johnine Moore, a hair stylist at Kacena’s Style Carrefour in Brewster, talks about the impacts on businesses from the recent Gebbers Farms firings and the Jamaican workers that were brought in as employees.

At least 100 Jamaican workers have arrived in Brewster and are working
at Gebbers Farms through a guest worker program.

BREWSTER — The panic is over.

Five months after Gebbers Farms fired an undisclosed number of undocumented workers during a federal audit, Jamaican guest workers have started to flow into Brewster to fill some of the jobs.

That’s a welcome sign in this town, where residents who held jobs here for 10 and 20 years were suddenly let go following the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement action in December.

Months later, some say the impact wasn’t as great as they feared. Many people stayed, or left and came back. The school district — which prepared for a major drop in student numbers — reports that enrollment remained steady, currently at 912 students.

Even if some of those fired moved away to find work, some businesses believe the worst is over. And with new workers arriving, there’s a renewed hope that business will continue to pick up.

Long reliant on immigrant labor, Brewster is happy to see new faces in their grocery stores, and in the thousands of acres of orchards that surround this small Columbia River town.

People here are accustomed to migrant labor. This time, instead of workers from Mexico, they’re seeing Jamaican men who are all staying at a newly built Gebbers Farm camp a few miles northeast of town.

The camp is made up of rows of bright white buildings separated by walkways, and flanked by a large building where dozens of men eat, wash up after their evening meal, or sit at a long central table to watch a big-screen television at one end of the room.

Some were reluctant to talk late last week.

But those who did had few complaints, despite the cold and rainy weather so distant from their tropical island.

“I know it’s going to get hot, like, next month,â€

This is the way it used to be with temporary workers brought in from Jamaica. It worked out well back then as the farmer provided housing for these guys while they were here, then they went home to their families after the season was over. But then the illegal aliens came and not only took these jobs away from these workers, they brought their families who overcrowded our school and judicial system and raped our social benefit programs. This story is a good example of how things are supposed to work when our immigration laws are enforced.

People here are accustomed to migrant labor. This time, instead of workers from Mexico, they’re seeing Jamaican men who are all staying at a newly built Gebbers Farm camp a few miles northeast of town.

As long as workers are here legally and not sucking up welfare thru their anchor kids, it's all good.

For many years Florida sugar cane growers have brought Temp. Jamaicans in to harvest the crop. Works very well for everyone.

Maybe more farmers will finally start using Legal Temp. Workers.

I am OK with this as long as they go home when the job is over. And as long as they dont bring families. The only downside could be that some of them could become fathers while they are here. That could be a problem.