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Collision Coming Over Farm Worker Legalization
News Analysis
By David Bacon,
Pacific News Service
Unions and farm workers are facing off with the Bush
administration over a bill in Congress that would legalize undocumented
agricultural workers living in the United States. The administration resists
legalization in favor of "guest worker-only" proposals -- a tenuous position in
an election year where every Latino vote counts.
SOLEDAD, Calif. - July 8, 2004 - Farm worker unions and the Bush administration are heading
rapidly towards confrontation over immigration.
After three years of arm-twisting, unions like the United Farm Workers, Oregon's
Union de Pineros and the Ohio-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee finally have
a bill in Congress -- called AgJOBS -- that would legalize over 1 million
agricultural workers living without visas in the United States. But immigrant
advocates say the administration, despite a proclaimed interest in Latino votes,
has instead played to its right-wing Republican base by launching a national
wave of immigration raids.
The unions have even agreed to expansion of already-existing guest worker
programs, widely condemned for the extensive rights violations of immigrants
imported as temporary workers. But they face the administration's "guest
worker-only" proposal, and Bush's declaration that he will not sign any bill
granting legal status to the country's 12 million undocumented residents.
Some immigration activists even believe that the raids are intended to send a
dual message -- placating anti-immigrant voters while threatening mass
deportations if immigrant communities resist a huge expansion of guest worker
programs.
Since the wave of raids began in June, the number of deportations has
mushroomed. They started in Ontario, Calif., on June 5, when 79 immigrants were
arrested and deported. The following day in nearby Corona, another 77 people
were picked up. The next raid, netting 15 in Escondido, near San Diego,
escalated into the deportation of 268 more by mid-June. Reports of raids spread
to urban areas in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, traditionally avoided
by the Border Patrol because of their long history of organized resistance.
In upstate New York, agents seized eight workers in a big General Electric
research facility in Niskayuna, where they were removing asbestos without
adequate protection. The fibers cause a virulent form of cancer, mesothelioma,
and the contractor employing the workers, LVI Environmental Services, is under
federal investigation for using illegal removal procedures.
The Border Patrol announced that the deportations were part of an ongoing
investigation into the asbestos abatement industry in upstate and central New
York. The Laborers Union has been organizing immigrant asbestos workers
throughout New York and New Jersey in one of the labor movement's most
successful unionizing drives. The raids will slow that movement by increasing
the fear of deportation among workers already risking their jobs by protesting
dangerous conditions.
That fear is spreading in California's farm worker towns as well. "It's no
secret that a very high percentage of farm workers are undocumented," says Efren
Barajas, a UFW leader. "When people are afraid of being deported, they don't
fight about bad working conditions and miserable wages."
In the week before July 4, the UFW organized six simultaneous marches through
California valley towns, including a five-day peregrination up the Salinas
Valley. They combined protest over the raids with a call for passage of the farm
worker AgJOBS legalization bill.
Unions have become some of the strongest supporters of legalization because fear
of deportation undermines the organizing efforts of immigrant workers. Two
decades ago, most unions saw undocumented workers as job competition and even
strikebreakers.
But in the 1990s that attitude changed, as immigrants became a large part of the
workforce in many industries and unions began organizing them. The UFW was a
leading voice at the AFL-CIO's Los Angeles convention in 1998, which adopted a
new pro-immigrant position, including a call for amnesty. "The way we see it,
they come to this country to make life better for their families," Barajas says.
"They're hard-working people, who pay taxes like anyone else. They're not going
away, and making people legal is the right thing to do."
But legalization for farm workers has a price. In three years of hard
negotiations with growers, farm worker unions got agreement to a broad amnesty,
but had to agree to relax restrictions on growers' ability to import temporary
contract workers.
East Coast growers have been accused of massive abuse of guest workers under the
existing H2-A program. The North Carolina Growers Association is being sued by
North Carolina Legal Aid for maintaining a blacklist of workers who protest bad
conditions.
Farm worker advocates say they've negotiated labor protections into the
compromise, giving guest workers the right to go to court, but doubt remains
that this will enable them to challenge their employers. And unions hope the
program won't expand out of the Southeast, where most guest workers are
currently employed.
"Our interest is legalizing people," Barajas says. "We had to swallow some
things in the bill to get that... If we legalize millions of farm workers, it
will be much better than what we have now, and we don't see any other way to get
that."
And there lies the coming confrontation with Bush. The administration proposes
vast new guest worker programs, and says it will not agree to any amnesty.
Unions say they've already lined up a veto-proof majority in the Senate, but
Congress' Republican leadership will undoubtedly protect the president in an
election year, and prevent a vote that might force his veto.
But because it is an election year, Latino votes count for legislators, even if
they've lost their importance to Bush. "If Bush doesn't see that," Barajas
laughs, "perhaps we should have a new president."
PNS contributor David Bacon (dbacon@igc.org) is a freelance writer and
photographer who writes regularly on labor and immigration issues. |
