American Farmers Are Crossing the Border for Labor
Roger
By JULIA PRESTON
September 4, 2007
CELAYA, Mexico - Steve Scaroni, a farmer from California, looked across a
luxuriant field of lettuce here in central Mexico and liked what he saw:
full-strength crews of Mexican farm workers with no immigration problems.
Farming since he was a teenager, Mr. Scaroni, 50, built a $50-million
business growing lettuce and broccoli in California's Imperial Valley,
relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexicans and many
probably in the United States illegally.
But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields
here. Now some 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk
of deportation.
"I'm as American red-blood as it gets," Mr. Scaroni said, "but I'm tired of
fighting the fight on the immigration issue."
A sense of crisis prevails among American farmers who rely on immigrant
laborers, more so since legislation in the United States Senate failed in
June and authorities announced a crackdown on employers of illegal
immigrants. An increasing number of farmers have been testing the
alternative of raising crops across the border where many of the workers
are, according to growers and lawmakers in the United States and Mexico.
Western Growers, an association representing farmers in California and
Arizona, conducted an informal telephone survey of its members in the
spring. Twelve large agribusinesses that acknowledged having operations in
Mexico reported a total of 11,000 workers here.
"It seems there is a bigger rush to Mexico and elsewhere," said Tom Nassif,
the Western Growers president, who said Americans were also farming in
countries in Central America.
Precise statistics are not readily available on American farming in Mexico,
because growers seek to maintain a low profile for their operations abroad.
But Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat, displayed a map on
the Senate floor in July locating more than 46,000 acres that American
growers are cultivating in just two Mexican states, Guanajuato and Baja
California.
"Farmers are renting land in Mexico," Ms. Feinstein said. "They don't want
us to know that."
She predicted that more American farmers would move to Mexico for the ready
workforce and lower wages. Ms. Feinstein favored a measure in the failed
immigration bill that would have created a new guest worker program for
agriculture and a special legal status for illegal immigrant farm workers.
In the past, some Americans have planted south of the border to escape
spiraling land prices and to ensure year-round deliveries of crops they can
produce only seasonally in the United States. But in the last three years,
Mr. Nassif and other growers said, labor uncertainties have become a major
reason why more farmers have shifted to Mexico.
While there are benefits for Mexico, as American farmers bring the latest
technology and techniques to the rich soil of its northern regions, American
farm state economists say that thousands of middle-class jobs supporting
agriculture are being lost in the United States. Some lawmakers in the
United States also point to security risks when food for Americans is
increasingly produced in foreign countries.
Tromping through one of his first lettuce crops near Celaya, an agribusiness
hub in the state of Guanajuato, Mr. Scaroni is more candid than many farmers
about his move here. He had made six trips to Washington, he said, to plead
with Congress to provide more legal immigrants for agriculture.
"I have a customer base that demands we produce and deliver product every
day," he said. "They don't want to hear the excuses." Without legal workers
in California, he said, "I have no choice but to offshore my operation."
The Department of Labor has reported that 53 percent of the 2.5 million farm
workers in the United States are illegal immigrants, though growers and
labor unions say as much as 70 percent of younger field hands are illegal.
As American authorities tightened the border in recent years, seasonal
migration from Mexico has been interrupted, demographers say. Many illegal
farm laborers, reluctant to leave the United States, have abandoned the
arduous migrant work of agriculture for year-round construction and service
jobs. Labor shortages during harvests have become common.
Some academics say warnings of a farm labor debacle are exaggerated. "By and
large the most dire predictions don't come true," said Philip Martin, an
agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis. "There is no
doubt that some people can't count on workers showing up as much as they
used to," he said. "But most of the places that are crying the loudest are
exceptional cases."
But some recent studies suggest that strains on the farm labor supply are
real. Steve Levy, an economist at the Center for Continuing Study of the
California Economy in Palo Alto, compared unemployed Americans with illegal
immigrant workers in the labor market. "The bottom line," he concluded, "is
that most unemployed workers are not available to replace fired unauthorized
immigrant workers," in part because very few of the unemployed are in farm
work.
Mr. Scaroni said he started growing in Mexico reluctantly, after seeing
risks to his American operations. At peak season his California company,
Valley Harvesting and Packing, employs more than a thousand immigrants, and
all have filled out the required federal form, known as an I-9, with Social
Security numbers and other identity information.
"From my perspective everyone that works for me is legal," he said. But
based on farm labor statistics, he surmises that many of his workers
presented false documents.
An impatient man in perpetual motion, Mr. Scaroni marches through his fields
shouting orders to Mexican crew leaders in rough Spanish while he negotiates
to buy new trucks in Mexico on a walkie-talkie in one hand and to sell
produce in the United States on a cellphone in the other.
Frustrated with experts who say that farmers with labor problems should
mechanize, he plunges his hands into side-by-side lettuce plants, pulling
out one crisp green head and one that is soggy and brown. After his company
invested $1 million in research, he said, "We haven't come up with a way to
tell a machine what's a good head and what's a bad head."
He also dismisses arguments that he could attract workers by raising wages,
saying Americans do not take the sweaty, seasonal field jobs. "I know beyond
a shadow of a doubt that if I did that I would raise my costs and I would
not have a legal workforce," Mr. Scaroni said.
Still, transferring to Mexico has been costly, he said. Since the greens he
cuts here go to bagged salads in supermarkets, he rigidly follows the same
food safety practices as California. Renting fallow Mexican land, he
enclosed his fields in fences and installed drip irrigation systems for the
filtered water he uses.
He trained his Mexican field crews to wear hair nets, arm sheaths and
sanitized gloves, and held drills on the correct use of portable toilets. In
the clean-scrubbed cooling house, female workers in white caps scrutinize
produce for every stray hair and dirt spot.
By now about one-fifth of Mr. Scaroni's operation is on five farms
approaching 2000 acres in Guanajuato. A few of his Mexican employees came
from California, like Antonio Martínez Aguilar, a seasoned field manager who
worked there for fifteen years but could never get immigration documents.
"I tried everything, but there wasn't anything anyone could do to make me
legal," Mr. Martínez said.
Negotiated among growers and unions over seven years, the agricultural
measure in the failed immigration bill, known as AgJobs, had wider
bipartisan support than the bill as a whole, lawmakers said. Its supporters
have said they hope to bring it before Congress this fall, perhaps attached
to the farm bill. It was hurt by the resignation of Senator Larry Craig, the
Idaho Republican who was one of its chief sponsors.
Mr. Scaroni expects recover his start-up costs because of the lower wages he
pays farm workers here, $11 a day as opposed to about $9 an hour in
California, although Mexican workers are less productive in their own
country, he said.
"It's not a cake walk down here," he said. "At least I know the one thing I
don't have to worry about is losing my labor force because of an immigration
raid."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/us/04cnd-export.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
johnny@.
> American Farmers Are Crossing the Border for Labor
> By JULIA PRESTON
> September 4, 2007
>
>
> CELAYA, Mexico - Steve Scaroni, a farmer from California, looked across a
> luxuriant field of lettuce here in central Mexico and liked what he saw:
> full-strength crews of Mexican farm workers with no immigration problems.
>
> Farming since he was a teenager, Mr. Scaroni, 50, built a $50-million
> business growing lettuce and broccoli in California's Imperial Valley,
> relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexicans and many
> probably in the United States illegally.
>
> But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields
> here. Now some 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk
> of deportation.
>
> "I'm as American red-blood as it gets," Mr. Scaroni said, "but I'm tired of
> fighting the fight on the immigration issue."
>
He is a traitor and a liar, he built a 50 million dollar business using
slave labor, and whines like a baby, if he might have to pay the workers
a few dollars more an hour. He needs to take his ass to Mexico and stay
there.
--
Tom Tancredo for President in 2008
For a Secure America
http://www.teamtancredo.org/
http://tancredo.house.gov/
Doug
"Roger" <rog...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:46dde488$0$28843$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
Send_Em_Back
> He is a traitor and a liar, he built a 50 million dollar business using
> slave labor, and whines like a baby, if he might have to pay the workers
> a few dollars more an hour. He needs to take his ass to Mexico and stay
> there.
Good idea. Since these traitor white farmers love the cheap mexishit
labor so much, they should move to Mexico and farm there! That would
kill two birds with one stone. We'd get rid of these whining farmer
bastards and maybe the mexishits would stay home.
ThePhisherKIng
news:hQlDi.6145$eD5.2778@trnddc07:
Yep, while you eat the produce grown there using that nice fresh water they
have down there. Mmm Hmm?
boycottyahoo
Who wants to live in America anyway with fucking jerkoffs like you
around.
We can all agree that this country is a sinking ship,
This is more business moving outside of the US because of lazy fucing
crackers like yourself.
Go to your Walmart and smile you inbred sheep.
And keep spending 12 billion a month in Iraq only for Iran to take
over eventually.
You people are about dumb as rocks.
you bitch and whine about losing jobs here but are too lazy to do them
yourselves.
Mexico is alot better than where this shithole is heading.
br...@pobox.com
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on our way out, loudmouth.
>
johnny@.
Since you call me a cracker, you must be a black motherfucker. Are you
to good to work the fields like your great grand daddy?
> Go to your Walmart and smile you inbred sheep.
> And keep spending 12 billion a month in Iraq only for Iran to take
> over eventually.
> You people are about dumb as rocks.
> you bitch and whine about losing jobs here but are too lazy to do them
> yourselves.
> Mexico is alot better than where this shithole is heading.
>
>
We would lose nothing if all the farmers that work illegal Mexicans
would move to Mexico.
--
Tom Tancredo for President in 2008
Xeno Chauvin
<johnny@.> wrote in message
news:nDlDi.80278$jH3....@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
> Roger wrote:
>> But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented
>> fields here. Now some 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they
>> run no risk of deportation.
AND he ducks ANY liability claims if as and when he sends tainted crops
north.
Xeno
Jim C.
"boycottyahoo" <yaahoorea...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1188949398.9...@o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
well then pack your trash and go Skippy... we won't miss ya.
----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----
Jim C.
"Doug" <no...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:sPlDi.1918$3Y1...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.net...
>> Mr. Scaroni expects recover his start-up costs because of the lower wages
>> he pays farm workers here, $11 a day as opposed to about $9 an hour in
>> California, although Mexican workers are less productive in their own
>> country, he said.
>>
>> "It's not a cake walk down here," he said. "At least I know the one thing
>> I don't have to worry about is losing my labor force because of an
>> immigration raid."
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/us/04cnd-export.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Well the fact is that Mr. Scrotum isn't losing his labor force to ICE
raids, he's losing them to higher paying construction jobs.
MURS radios
> "Doug" <no...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
>
> news:sPlDi.1918$3Y1...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.net...
>
> >> Mr. Scaroni expects recover his start-up costs because of the lower wages
> >> he pays farm workers here, $11 a day as opposed to about $9 an hour in
> >> California, although Mexican workers are less productive in their own
> >> country, he said.
>
> >> "It's not a cake walk down here," he said. "At least I know the one thing
> >> I don't have to worry about is losing my labor force because of an
> >> immigration raid."
>
>
> Well the fact is that Mr. Scrotum isn't losing his labor force to ICE
> raids, he's losing them to higher paying construction jobs.
... AND truck driving jobs.
- Stewart (San Diego Minutemen)
Roger
news:nDlDi.80278$jH3....@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
From
http://www.cfbf.com/agalert/AgAlertStory.cfm?ID=59&ck=093F65E080A295F8076B1C5722A46AA2
Republican lawmakers turned up the heat last week on efforts to reform the
state's out-of-control workers' compensation insurance system. They helped
kick off a signature gathering drive to qualify a reform initiative for the
November ballot.
.
.
.
Steve Scaroni, who owns Valley Harvesting & Packing Inc. in Heber, said he
donated $10,000 to the initiative campaign because he feels strongly that
reforms are badly needed. Scaroni has a supply of initiative petitions that
he is delivering everywhere his company does business.
"We've basically driven all the profit out of operating a business in
California," said Scaroni, who has 1,500 employees in 100 different job
classifications. "The system is in dire need of reform. Our workers' comp
rates have tripled during the past five years and we're now paying more than
$4 million a year in premiums.
"What's happening is that many businesses that were once profitable are now
only marginally so because of workers' comp premiums," Scaroni said. "That
means less tax dollars for the state, less money to invest in new equipment
and technology, no new employee benefits. The way the system is now, it's
very unpalatable to do business in California."
Flanked by Republican lawmakers on the steps of the State Capitol last week,
Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, said, "We want a legislative
solution to the workers' comp crisis, but short of that, we'll support the
governor's initiative.
T Jr Hardman
> American Farmers Are Crossing the Border for Labor
> By JULIA PRESTON
> September 4, 2007
>
> CELAYA, Mexico - Steve Scaroni, a farmer from California, looked across a
> luxuriant field of lettuce here in central Mexico and liked what he saw:
> full-strength crews of Mexican farm workers with no immigration problems.
>
> Farming since he was a teenager, Mr. Scaroni, 50, built a $50-million
> business growing lettuce and broccoli in California's Imperial Valley,
> relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexicans and many
> probably in the United States illegally.
>
> But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields
> here. Now some 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk
> of deportation.
[ ... ]
> "I have a customer base that demands we produce and deliver product every
> day," he said. "They don't want to hear the excuses." Without legal workers
> in California, he said, "I have no choice but to offshore my operation."
That was the whole idea of NAFTA in the first place, to export
tomatoes, not tomato-pickers. This is a step in the right direction.
[ ... ]
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/us/04cnd-export.html?_r=1&hp&oref=s...
Tim Crowley
Awww, the wit and wisdom of the core of the anti-immigration movement.
It's REALLY all about hate and ignorance. Everything else is just
white-wash - no pun intended.
Tim Crowley
still polling at LESS than 1%. hint: your agenda has NO support in
America.
Send_Em_Back
> Awww, the wit and wisdom of the core of the anti-immigration movement.
> It's REALLY all about hate and ignorance. Everything else is just
> white-wash - no pun intended.
There's obviously many reasons to oppose Mexican immigration and I don't
speak for anyone else but myself. I oppose it because Mexicans have a
lower IQ, they're not white, they commit crime at a high rate, have a
high drop-out rate, commit high rate of bastardy, under-cut wages,
bankrupt medical systems, are generally obnoxious, arrogant buttholes,
and that's just off the top of my head! Those reasons ALONE are more
than enough to be against mestizo immigration, both legal and illegal.
There's no argument at all for illegal immgration.
Tim Crowley
> Tim Crowley wrote:
> > Awww, the wit and wisdom of the core of the anti-immigration movement.
> > It's REALLY all about hate and ignorance. Everything else is just
> > white-wash - no pun intended.
>
> There's obviously many reasons to oppose Mexican immigration and I don't
> speak for anyone else but myself. I oppose it because Mexicans have a
> lower IQ
In other words, like some many anti-immigration kkkk00ks, you are just
an ignorant racist pig. Thanks for making that so very clear.
Question? Why are all you racists such cowards. I mean, your so
superior, have a high IQ, your so proud, yet you can't even express
your opinion without hiding behind some silly handle. Why not be a man
and stand up proud for your hate and ignorance?
Lamont Cranston
"Send_Em_Back" <deport...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:phBDi.7058$3R5.3880@trnddc05...
Another ignorant racist moron slithers out from under his shitpile.
Send_Em_Back
>>There's obviously many reasons to oppose Mexican immigration and I don't
>>speak for anyone else but myself. I oppose it because Mexicans have a
>>lower IQ, they're not white, they commit crime at a high rate, have a high
>>drop-out rate, commit high rate of bastardy, under-cut wages, bankrupt
>>medical systems, are generally obnoxious, arrogant buttholes, and that's
>>just off the top of my head! Those reasons ALONE are more than enough to
>>be against mestizo immigration, both legal and illegal. There's no
>>argument at all for illegal immgration.
>
>
> Another ignorant racist moron slithers out from under his shitpile.
Nice try, but I notice you can't dispute my reasoning.
Salad
There's no reasoning with a moron like you. The only reason you're an
American is because your mother spread her legs and your father fucked
her and you were born in some marsh located in a state of the US. Then
your parents proceeded to raise a whiner.
Roger
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
"they're not white"
Roger
"they're not white"
Doug
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"they're not brown"
"Roger" <rog...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:46df38ce$0$28849$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
strabo
Hate and ignorance, ignorance and hate...is that all you think
about?
Just what are you doing in these NGS?
You offer nothing of substance, only insults. It doesn't matter why
an American may not want foreigners in his country. It is enough that
he does not.
Since you are so dismissive of American society and fond of Mexicans,
go to Mexico and live with them.
Raymond
Speaking of American Farmers:
Dead Farmers Paid Government Subsidies
We pay farmers who don't plant.
Part of tradition of payments not to plant
Inebriated Press
July 25, 2007
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) sent $1.1 billion
in farm payments to over 170,000 dead people over a seven-year period,
according to congressional investigators. The USDA directs money to
farmers who don't plant crops so prices will be higher for the crops
the rest of the farmers plant and sell. This "subsidy support system"
keeps farmers in business for future planting when the government
feels more crops are needed. The program has now been extended to pay
farmers who are dead so that they will be willing to come back to life
and grow corn when necessary.
Government Accountability Office (GAO) auditors reviewed payments from
1999 through 2005 and found that the Department was basically paying
anyone who thought they were a farmer. Iowa Senator Charles Grassley,
senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee requested the study
because he was worried that Iowa farmers weren't getting their fair
share. "If dead farmers are getting money, it's important that dead
Iowa farmers get what's coming to them too," said Grassley. "It's
really not so bad to pay dead folks; some of them are more productive
than live ones. You ever been at one of these Finance Committee
meetings?"
Congressional leaders aren't sure what to do about the study. Some
want the money back but others are more philosophical. "You really
can't ask dead folks to give the money back," said Iowa Senator Tom
Harkin. "Besides, I think these farmers will come back from the dead
and raise soybeans if we ask them. These folks have strong Midwestern
values."
Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns said the GAO was trying to
report on a program that it simply didn't understand. "The GAO is
made up of numbers people and not political people," said Johanns in a
prepared statement. "The USDA gives food stamps to people who don't
work, we pay farmers who don't plant, we pay the living and we pay the
dead, we pay an enormous staff - I don't know what half of these
people are supposed to be doing. This is no big deal."
© 2007 Inebriated Press
Jim C.
"Salad" <o...@vinegar.com> wrote in message
news:13dud0s...@corp.supernews.com...
OK, childish personal attacks aside, give a good response to the fact that
these people ignore the law just to get here and then again break it in
order to stay here and work.
Is this the kind of person you want to make a citizen ? Do you advocate the
breaking of law ?
Do you feel that only some people should obey the laws and regulations of
this country and others are somehow 'special' because they come form
somewhere else and so deserve to be allowed to pick and chose the laws they
will obey ?