Migrant headaches

Between racial profiling and harassment from immigration officials, migrant workers face more than back-breaking labor when working in Maine’s blueberry and apple fields

By Noah Bruce

The apple picking season in Maine begins around the second week in September. The air starts to turn crisp and cool, and the apple orchards are filled with workers from countries to the south of the US. On many orchards the patois of Jamaican voices predominates, but on Cooper Farm in South Paris, it’s Spanish that emanates from within the apple trees.

A few of the mostly Mexican workers on the farm work there year round, but most, like Hugo, come only for the harvest. This is Hugo’s second season at the farm. Before the apple harvest he rakes blueberries in Maine’s blueberry barrens. All told, it’s only two months of work. Add to this a few months in the orange groves in Florida, and Hugo is away from home half the year.

“I am away from my wife in Mexico for six months every year,” he says in Spanish. “It’s difficult, but I like Maine. It’s quiet here.”

But it’s not for the pace-of-life that Hugo makes the Mexico-Maine-Florida journey and endures the separation from his family. Hugo, like the estimated 20,000 other foreign workers who come to Maine

each year, are here for the work — here for the money.

Apple picking doesn’t pay too badly. “Depending on how fast they pick, the guys make anywhere between $80 and $120 dollars a day,” says Lourelei Cooper who, with her husband, owns Cooper Farm.

The blueberry harvest in Maine pays even better. Though the work is more difficult than picking apples, due to the bent-over position workers must assume to rake the low-to-the-ground blueberries, in a good season (which this season was not) able blueberry rakers can fill 150 boxes in a day, says Juan Pérez-Febles director of the state of Maine’s Migrant Labor Standard Division. At $2.50 a box that’s a (for some of us, whopping) $375 per day.

That’s good money in the United States, but “this is tremendous money in Mexico,” says Pérez-Febles. “I’ve known guys who have built ranches and bought cattle down in Mexico with the money they made in the States.”

The arrangement seems to benefit the farm owners as well.

“[The immigrant workers] are necessary to our business,” says Cooper. Fifteen years ago, before Cooper married into a farm-owning family, she used to pick apples herself. “Women used to pick apples then. Now, no one’s doing it.”

No one, that is, except immigrants. Cooper doesn’t know the reason for it, but she says native Mainers don’t want apple-picking work. Aside from two tractor drivers, all her employees are immigrants from Mexico or South America.

Pérez-Febles says native Mainers, unlike immigrants, are simply not willing to do the arduous, seasonal work. “[The migrants] will work from sun-up to sun-down seven days a week . . . The growers tell me that Americans want to take a day off and go to the lake. These guys, they do not come to party. They come to work.”

Benjamin Giuliani, who works with the South Portland-based Maine Migrant Advocate Group, agrees.

“Locals don’t want to work 60, 70, 80 hours per week,” he says. “The Mexicans do.”

Seems like a good situation — the farmers like to use the immigrant labor, the foreign workers like to work hard, and native Mainers don’t want the work anyway. Everybody should be happy.

Everybody, that is, except the government. The problem is, some of the immigrant workers come to this country illegally. It’s up to the border patrol to capture these undocumented workers. (Migrant advocates don’t like to call them “illegals.” “To me, no one is an illegal,” says Pérez-Febles, “they are workers without papers.”) And this year, the Border Patrol, a branch of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), has been doing a particularly good job.

According to the INS, through July of fiscal year 2001 (October 1 through September 30) there have been 459 apprehensions of undocumented workers. With September yet to be tabulated, Border patrol is on target to break last year’s total of 489 and 1999’s total of 461.

John Connors, state director for the League of Latin American Citizens (LULAC), says Border Patrol has utilized the illegal practice of racial profiling to help them achieve these numbers. “There’s no question it was racial profiling,” says Connors. “We have a lot of undocumented non-Latinos [in Maine]. I’m not aware of any of them being picked up. That’s profiling.”

Fernando Carpio, a Mexican worker at Cooper Farms, says border patrol waits on the side of Maine highways like I-495 and I-95 and pulls people over “because you have brown skin.”

Carpio, who is a legal resident with a green card, says he has been stopped by border patrol on the highway solely on the basis of his appearance and skin color.

WORKIN’ HARD FOR THE MONEY: a crate full of apples is worth $12.75 to a worker.

Jose Martinez, who like Carpio works year round at Cooper Farm, describes one of the many times border patrol agents have come to the farm to check papers. “I was driving a tractor and I did not see [the agent] at first. I almost hit him. He had his hand on his gun and he held his other hand up to say stop.”

Cooper says that this year’s harvest has been unusual in that it is the first time in several years that border patrol has not raided the farm at all. She believes border patrol has been busy securing the borders with Canada in response to the terrorist attacks. “The season began after September 11,” she explains. “I think they are busy with the terrorism.”

In years past, border patrol has apprehended anywhere from two to eight undocumented workers from Cooper farm. One year, they detained 10 of Cooper’s workers, and though border patrol eventually discovered the men had their documents in order and released them, the farm lost two crucial harvest days. “They lost two days of work and they messed us [the farm] up,” she says.

Mark Finnegan, a Michigan civil rights attorney representing migrant workers in a class action suit against the Ohio State Patrol, says that stopping people on the highway based on the color of their skin and showing up at the farm to check everyone’s papers are illegal activities.

“You can’t just stop people for immigration violations because they look different,” he says. “You need more training than that . . . It’s one thing if you have information. But the idea, ‘let’s go down to J and B Tomato and see if everyone has papers,’ that’s illegal. ‘Let’s just go out on the highway between blueberry fields and camp X’ — it works, sometimes they find illegals, but sometimes they stop fine, upstanding citizens who have been stopped four times in two months and that’s where the Constitution says ‘knock it off’. . . The courts have said this is illegal.”

Rowland Richardson, assistant chief border patrol agent in Houlton, Maine, says that, since September 11, border patrol agents have been instructed not to speak with the media. However, in an August 4 story in the Portland Press Herald, Richardson is quoted as saying “It [racial profiling] is illegal, and we don’t do it.” In the article, however, Richardson does not explain what criteria border patrol do use to stop vehicles or how raiding farms filled with Latinos is not racial profiling.

Though most apprehensions of undocumented workers in Maine are made by border patrol, some police departments in the state, like the state police in Ohio, do stop Latinos and check their papers, contend some Cooper Farm workers. “In West Paris, if the police stop you they ask you for your papers,” says Carpio. Martinez says he has been stopped by local police and had his papers checked in both Fairfield and Norway, Maine.

According to Captain Russ Gauvin of the Portland Police Department, “it’s not generally the job of local police departments” to check for illegal immigrants. Lieutenant Loughlin adds that “you have to have probable cause to do something like [check papers.]” He says the Portland Police run across undocumented workers in the course of investigations of other crimes, but they are not out looking for them.

Still, according to the migrants themselves, the reality of the situation is, if you are undocumented, you must beware border patrol and, in some parts of Maine, the local police. And if you are in the US legally, but you look like what the police or border patrol think a migrant looks like, it seems quite possible you will be subject to harassment on the highways.

Pérez-Febles claims that compared to other states on the Eastern seaboard where migrants work during the year — Florida for oranges, Georgia for peaches, North Carolina for tobacco, and New Jersey for high-bush blueberries — Maine is the most dangerous for an undocumented migrant worker. “There are workers who have lived in this country for a number of years undocumented. They tell me, ‘We come to Maine and we get arrested, and we haven’t even been looked at cross-eyed in North Carolina and Florida.’ ”

The reason, explains Pérez-Febles, is that, in the other states, migrants must only contend with state and local police, who, with some exceptions, are not usually looking for undocumented workers. Because Maine borders Canada, we have the border patrol, whose job description includes apprehending undocumented workers.

Pérez-Febles tells the story of a an undocumented truck driver from El Salvador who lives with his family in California. “The man has a house. His kids go to public school. He has his truck driver’s license.”

For years, the man drove his truck all over the country and had no immigration problems. Things changed, however, when he tried to drive his rig into Canada via Maine. Border patrol asked for his papers, and discovering he had none, arrested him. The man was sent to the Cumberland County Jail and was eventually deported back to El Salvador. However, a few months later, Pérez-Febles received a call from the man saying he had once again immigrated (illegally) to America and was back with his family. Pérez-Febles’ advice to him: “Don’t ever come back to Maine.”

Both border patrol’s and Pérez-Febles’s salaries are paid with taxpayer money. Juxtaposing border patrol’s modus operandi — “snag the illegals” — with Pérez-Febles’ advice to undocumented workers — “avoid the border patrol” — a picture emerges of our country’s schizoid stance on the issue of immigration.

On one hand, small farmers, and more importantly the agriculture lobby — a powerful influence in Congress which “makes the gun lobby look like a walk in the park,” says Michigan attorney Mark Finnegan — say they need these foreign workers. The government has responded. According to the INS, more people — 8 million — immigrated legally to the US in the ’90s than any decade previous. And for those who entered the country illegally, the federal government has offered three amnesties — opportunities for undocumented people living in the US to receive green cards — since the mid-’80s. There has been speculation, since Mexican President Vincente Fox visited the US, in early September of this year, of another amnesty.

On the other hand, we have a vigilant border patrol showing up at apple farms, stopping documented and undocumented Latinos on the highway, even, says Pérez-Febles, checking papers in the parking lots of supermarkets near migrant work locations.

Why hassle these folks if they need the work and we need the labor?

For starters, not everyone believes we need the labor. Jonette Christian, a member of Mainers for Immigration Reform, believes Americans would pick fruit just as they have in the past, if the work paid a living wage. Brushing aside the at least semi-lucrative examples of Maine blueberry and apple picking as unrepresentative of agricultural jobs on the whole, Christian says migrant jobs are “hard, miserable work.” By using foreign labor, she argues, the agricultural business is avoiding paying a living wage that would attract American workers.

Though the foreign work force benefits the agricultural business, it “artificially expands the labor market” and not only lowers the wages of agricultural work but “depresses wages in all entry-level jobs,” she says.

The fact that immigration has hurt the bottom line for American dropouts, who help to make up the class of low-level workers is supported by a 1997 report from the Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences entitled “The New Americans”: “based on previous estimates of responses of wages to changes in supply, the supply increase due to immigration lowered the wages of high school dropouts observed between 1980 and 1994.”

Since its inception, the US has averaged 250,000 immigrants per year. Now, including legal immigration, amnesties, and anchor babies — the children of undocumented immigrants who are granted citizenship — the country accepts around one million people per year.

Christian believes the root of the immigration “problem” is the dichotomy between rich and poor nations. Keeping the immigration floodgates wide open, as they were throughout the ’90s, “encourages people [from poor countries] to run from their problems,” she says. Thus, she believes allowing people from poor countries to come to America is a band-aid solution to the deep, long-term wound of poverty. “The goal,” she says “should be to encourage other countries to emulate our example, not to encourage their people to come here.”

President Fox, and apparently the US Congress who gave him a standing ovation after his speech in early September, disagrees, at least in the case of Mexico. Fox’s message was summarized in a September 9 article in the New York Times, by Tim Weiner: “[The] political language can be boiled down to a nugget: The answer is to increase the legal flow of Mexican labor to the United States — and the flow of American capital to Mexico. That could begin to close the great gap in wealth between the two nations. And that will take decades.”

Fox, of course wants more legal workers in the US because the laborers send much of their pay (as much as $10 billion annually, says Christian) to family in Mexico where it then enters the Mexican economy. While Christian sees this as money that should be used in local American economies, it is ironic that, in Fox’s view, these funds will, over time, help enrich Mexico to the point where not so many Mexicans are clambering to enter the US in the first place.

Immigration opponents don’t deny that the money sent home by Mexican workers in America is appreciated by Mexico. They do however argue that help to our southern neighbor comes at the expense of American workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. Christian characterizes this money as “a regressive tax on the poorest workers in our society.”

In addition to decreasing the wages for low-level jobs in the US, opponents say immigration costs the American taxpayer through the government programs that some immigrants access. “There are Medicaid costs and bilingual education,” says Christian “and I believe we should provide these things, but the fact is we are subsidizing cheap labor for business.”

Further, she argues, our immigration policies, in the long run, do not benefit low-level foreign workers who come here. “There’s no kindness to immigrants in our current society,” she says. “We’re forcing those who just arrived to compete with the next flood. Progressives talk about sharing the wealth. My response is, ‘you aren’t the ones doing the sharing, it’s the immigrants who just arrived.’ ”

But wasn’t this country built by immigrants? Don’t we celebrate the determination and strength of people who have the gumption to start a new, possibly better life in America? And what right do a bunch of people whose recent ancestors were immigrants have to cut off further immigration?

Christian’s response is that in the past, America had more empty land and needed more people. Now, it is quickly filling up — we are set to double our population in 60 years according to Christian. At a time, Christian believes, when we should be slowing down the flow of immigration, we are speeding it up. The increased flow, she says, does not allow the recently arrived to put down firm roots and climb the socio-economic ladder. “Recent immigrants are not entering the middle class,” she says.

This may be true, but on the other side of the coin are Mexican workers like Fernando Carpio, who come to work in Maine’s apple orchards. The workers, as their choice to come here shows, prefer their prospects in the US to those in Mexico, even if the opportunities are less than for earlier generations of immigrants.

FERNANDO CARPIO: says he has been stopped by border patrol because he has brown skin.

Most of all, Christian wants America “to have an open debate about immigration.” At this point, she says, people who speak out against immigration are labeled “xenophobes and racists,” and get you “lumped in with the most conservative politicians like Pat Buchanan.” Christian insists she is neither a racist nor a xenophobe; in fact, she has Latin American immigrants in her family. Her views, she insists, are based on an analysis of facts.

However, the media, she asserts, “has not given us fair or balanced coverage of the issues.” She blames news reports that feature the story of one immigrant family from keeping the focus off the effects of immigration on the country and the world as a whole. As proof of how Mainers for Immigration Reform, and others who question immigration policy, are treated, she tells how she tried to get her group a table at the Common Ground Fair. He request was denied and accompanied by a “curt note” saying that the Fair did not want to associate with people who held such views.

While debate on such an important topic as immigration should be free from labeling and preconceived notions, it seems unlikely that Christian’s views will be accepted by American policy makers in this increasingly global economy.

In Weiner’s New York Times piece, US ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow is quoted as saying “We cannot really run the hotel industry in Las Vegas without [the foreign workers.] Agriculture in California would be a lost cause if it weren’t for them.” In the same article, no less a figure than chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan says migrant labor allowed America’s economy to grow faster, with less inflation, in the 1990’s.

However, despite lots of talk surrounding Fox’s visit, President Bush and Congress made no firm commitments to either offer another amnesty to the undocumented workers or to increase the number of work visas (see sidebar). One week after Fox’s visit, the issue of Mexican immigration — like tapping the Social Security surplus, or the patient’s bill of rights, even where Gary Condit’s penis has been — fell off the political map entirely, replaced by the events and ramifications of September 11.

At the very least, talk of expanding the number of documented workers in the US will be postponed. President Fox’s goal to create a US-Mexico compromise on increasing the amount of documented workers by December 2001 was widely considered overly-optimistic before September 11. Now this goal is completely out of the question. As Pérez-Febles says, “[Immigration issues] will be delayed and put on the back burner.”

However, it’s possible that reaction to the terrorism will not only delay, but retard any deal- making between the two countries to increase immigration.

While Congress looks like it will not grant the Bush administration’s wish to have the power to detain any immigrant suspected of terrorism, indefinitely, on October 2, the New York Times reported, “support is building in Congress for proposals to permit military personnel to assist in patrolling the nation’s borders, to triple the number of agents on the Canadian border, to limit student visas, and to spend emergency funds for additional moves to tighten immigration rules and procedures.”

None of this may have any direct effect on the undocumented worker issue. Indeed, Boston-based Mexican consulate to the US Carlos Rico says, “I don’t see any connection between people being here from Latin American countries and Mexico and the unfortunate events of [September 11]. Of course, those events will lead to important decisions, and some of them may have to do with immigration. I don’t think these areas of immigration policy should be affected by this.”

On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine Congress moving too enthusiastically towards freeing up the border with Mexico in the current political climate.

If the prospect for increased legal immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries seems dim, what about the effect on Mexicans already in the US, like Fernando Carpio and Jose Martinez?

Some advocates worry that racial profiling will only increase in the aftermath of the terrorism. “I think [harassment of migrants] is going to get worse rather than better,” says Ben Giuliani from the Maine Migrant Workers Advocate Group. “The terrorists have the same color of skin that we do. I can understand being protective of Americans because I am an American also. But if advocates say it’s racial profiling, it’s not going to matter.”

Indeed there does seem to be an increased tolerance for stopping suspects based on their race. In a September 28 piece on profiling in the New York Times, Sam Howe Verhovek writes, “For many Americans who say they have deeply believed that it was wrong for law enforcement officers to single out members of minorities for special interrogation or searches, the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 have prompted a painful confrontation with the sudden anxieties they acknowledge feeling in the presence of one minority in particular. With all of the hijackers involved believed to have Arab backgrounds, these Americans say, officials have ample reason to zero in on that group.”

While this particular form of profiling concerns Arabs in particular, it is not hard to imagine this type of thinking increasing the amount of times Mexicans picking apples in Maine are stopped on the highway or in the local supermarket parking lot. And we may have to chalk that up as yet another consequence of the war on terrorism.

Getting papers There are basically two methods migrant labor advocates support to document the undocumented. First, the US could increase the number of temporary visas it issues. These visas are temporary in length, so they don’t increase the permanent population in the States. The downside is that they tie the worker to one employer. If the employer is abusive, the worker has only two options: endure or leave the country. Gabriela Lemus, director of policy and education at the League of Latin American Citizens (LULAC) national office in Washington, thinks more temporary visas are a good idea. “To be honest, I think they should give more temporary cards. From an economic standpoint it makes the most sense. These are not the kinds of jobs that even if you have a high school diploma you want to do.” She is, however, concerned about the employer-restrictive features of the visas. “If the visas tie the worker to an employer, it lets the employer be lord of the manor,” says Lemus. “The individual should have the right to move . . . We don’t seem to have a problem restricting the civil rights of people not born here.” Ben Giuliani, with the Maine Migrant Workers Advocate Group, points out that there is a mechanism within the temporary visa that allows the worker to change employers. However, Mark Finnegan, a civil rights attorney from Michigan, counters that the mechanism is so bound with red tape that it is very daunting to a foreign worker — unfamiliar with the system and often equipped with only a limited grasp of the English language — to attempt to leave an abusive work situation. Juan Pérez-Febles believes, ideally, “[the government] should increase the number of temporary visas and allow people to move [employers].” Others support giving green cards to many of the country’s undocumented workers through an amnesty. “How about amnesty for the people working here that can prove they are not causing mischief?” asks John Connors, director of the Maine branch of LULAC. “Blueberry picking is backbreaking work. You can hardly find any body to do that.” —NB

Noah Bruce can be reached at nbruce@phx.com.