Guest worker program needed

For farmers and their employees, the reform of immigration rules is a patchwork process that is causing severe pain. It needs compassionate overhaul.

Agricultural businesses seem to be the favorite target of recent efforts by federal  authorities to tighten immigration procedures. No industries are immune, but the feds seem convinced, as many others are, that agriculture, especially in California, harbors the largest number of illegal aliens.

A common tool used by the feds is an audit of an employer’s records to determine if any employees have provided incorrect, counterfeit or out-of-date documents at the time of their employment or in subsequent filings. They look for cases where the information in the employer’s files differs from the federal portfolio. They focus on mismatches. Driver’s license details, birthdates and current addresses are scrutinized.

In the case of one California agricultural employer who was audited recently nearly 50 mismatches were discovered. A mismatch is more than a clerical oversight or slip of memory; it is cause for termination. Since the audit this employer has conducted more than 45 termination interviews.

In some cases the employees terminated had been on the payroll for extended periods, as long as 20 years. Some had risen from minimum-wage jobs to skilled work, even supervisory positions. The employer’s workforce was decimated, and so were the lives of those terminated.

Some of the terminated employees had purchased homes, had seen their kids through years of schooling, preparing them for responsible citizenship. Only a few were truly illegal aliens who had managed to cover their illegality for years. The others were victims of a careless or thoughtless mistake or oversight. Termination was their reward nevertheless.

Some are predicting that the rash of audits is only the first wave of a concerted and prolonged campaign by immigration authorities to detect and correct mismatches wherever they can find them. They expect the construction and service industries to occupy the feds’ crosshairs soon.

The farm community believes that immigration reform must be supported as a three-legged stool. 1) The border needs to be tightened. 2) Illegals already in the United States need a clear-cut means to attain citizenship, and official encouragement to do so.  3) A guest worker program is needed that allows workers from below the border access to jobs in the United States and safe return to their home country when those jobs are completed or not available.

Farmers understand the cultural preference of many workers to return to their homes and families in Mexico or Central or South America in agriculture’s lull each fall, and then to return to jobs early in the year. 

What they don’t understand is why lawmakers have wrestled with the immigration issue for nearly 15 years without a plausible solution, and why the only temporary fix they have come up with must result in so much upheaval and dislocation for them and their employees.

Don Curlee’s column appears biweekly. E-mail him at agwriter1@sbcglobal.net.