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Posted at 06:00 a.m. PDT; Wednesday, October 6, 1999
Scant labor prompts call for 'guest-worker' plan
by Steve DiMeglio
Gannett News ServiceWASHINGTON - Despite the nation's booming economy and the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years, a few clouds are hovering over otherwise prosperous portions of the Southwest.
"Help Wanted" signs clutter the windows in business districts from Phoenix to Los Angeles. Hundreds of hotel and restaurant jobs remain vacant for months from Tucson, Ariz., to San Diego. And farmers from the chili fields in New Mexico to the vineyards in California's Central Valley desperately scramble for workers to plant and harvest their crops.
Arizona Gov. Jane Dee Hull doesn't like what she sees. Looking for workers, she is urging Congress to make it easier to bring in foreign workers for seasonal work in agriculture and tourism, in a manner similar to the controversial guest-worker "bracero" program phased out 30 years ago.
Critics, however, say this latest call will increase illegal immigration and is a barely concealed attempt to revive the discredited bracero program that brought millions of Mexican workers to U.S. fields (in Spanish, bracero means "helping arms"). That program was scrapped in 1964 amid widespread allegations of abuse and exploitation.
"We need to match workers looking for jobs with jobs going unfilled," Hull said. "Arizona is growing at such a fast pace, we don't have the work force to sustain the growth."
Business leaders and agricultural groups throughout the country also back Hull's proposal, saying the program would control illegal immigration and fill jobs. They say the thriving economy - and increased immigration enforcement - is leading to a severe labor shortage.
But the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington "will fight tooth and nail" against any legislation calling for a larger work program, said executive director Dan Stein.
"This country should do its own work. We are more than a hotel for temporary workers," he said. "This will drive down wages. Living and working conditions will get worse. And it will just add to the millions of illegal immigrants in the United States. Taxpayers will end up paying for the services of those that would stay here and not go back to Mexico."
The bracero program - a wartime emergency labor program designed to fill a shortage of workers in agriculture after young men went off to fight in World War II - began in 1942 and was extended several times by Congress. Nearly 5 million braceros were granted temporary visas as seasonal workers throughout the Western United States in the next two decades.
Political support for the program ended in 1960 when Edward R. Murrow's documentary "Harvest of Shame" aired on CBS, exposing countless abuses by farmers, including poor housing and unpaid wages. By the time the program ended in 1964, critics said, illegal immigration had increased, the meager wages for farm workers had been driven down, and working conditions had eroded even further.
More than 600,000 illegal immigrants work on U.S. farms today - making up nearly 37 percent of all agriculture workers - according to the latest figures.
Proposals for guest-worker programs have been floating around Congress in recent years. The Senate passed legislation last year to create a new guest-worker program, but the House would not consider it after the Clinton administration complained it undercut current worker protections and threatened a veto.
Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz, is drafting the latest legislation and will introduce a bill later this fall.
Kolbe said farmers complain the rules of the existing guest-worker program, known as H2-A, are so complex that few have ever used it. Those provisions, including a required 60-day advance request to import workers, are unrealistic in the unpredictable business of farming, they complain. Currently, the Department of Labor has certified only 18,000 guest workers under this program.
Brian Little, director of government relations for the American Farm Bureau in Washington, said plenty of support will also come from owners of apple-packing plants in the Northwest, beef- and pork-processing plants in the Midwest, tomato fields in Florida and cotton fields in Texas.
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