The Brownwood Food Chain and Undocumented workers !

Business wary of guest-worker bills
By BARRY SHLACHTER
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
(HARLINGEN) VALLEY MORNING STAR/JOE HERMOSA VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
About 60 percent to 80 percent of the state's agricultural workers are undocumented, the Texas Farm Bureau estimates.
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Texas employers who rely on immigrant labor are wary of some of the proposals being debated in Washington to deal with the runaway expansion of the underground work force, now crucial to a number of industries.
Half of the bills don't address their greatest concern: how to keep enough employees on the job while their legal status is settled. Three of the six bills would require foreign workers to return to their homelands before applying for authorization to work in the U.S., according to a review by the Migration Policy Institute. Two proposals would bar them for a decade if they don't leave, and the other would exclude them three years.
"We would not like to see any plan that tells people to go back home," said Glen Garey, the Austin-based general counsel for the Texas Restaurant Association. "It's a disruption to their lives, our businesses and the economy."
Steve Pringle, legislative director of the Waco-based Texas Farm Bureau, put it more bluntly.
"We are concerned that if you start taking away these [estimated] 12 million workers, start removing them, you are going to shut down the economy of the United States," he said.
Pringle said as many as 60 percent to 80 percent of agricultural laborers in Texas are undocumented.
"I asked a dairyman from the Stephenville area about the percentage of undocumented milking hands in Erath and surrounding counties," Pringle said. "He told me 99 percent were undocumented -- even some of the managers."
While Congress debates a new guest-worker program, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff is taking a tougher stance.
On April 20, immigration officials in Texas and 25 others states arrested 1,187 immigrants working for IFCO Systems North America. The Houston-based shipping-pallet supplier recruited foreign laborers and, in some cases, provided false IDs, officials said. The arrests surpassed the total made in 2005, and Chertoff announced the start of a crackdown on companies hiring illegal immigrants.
But the sweep isn't likely to prompt farms, packinghouses, landscapers, cleaning companies, restaurants and construction companies to shed employees with dubious paperwork.
Past high-profile cases haven't slowed the tide of illegal workers. Not a $1.75 million fine paid by Houston-based Pappas Restaurants in 1997 for training undocumented workers as chefs, then supplying false papers and hiding places at its Pappadeaux Seafood and Pappasito's Cantina eateries in the Metroplex. Nor the $1.9 million penalty shouldered two years later by Filiberto's, a Phoenix chain of Mexican restaurants, or the $11 million forked over last year by Wal-Mart for having illegal immigrants fill cleaning crews even though the chain said it was unaware of their status.
Although there's little consensus among employers on which legislative proposal is best, those interviewed acknowledged that from a national-security perspective, the current system isn't working.
Of all the current ideas being tossed about Washington, a proposed guest-worker program sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, comes closest to what the farmers organization would like put in practice.
"It would allow for individuals to go back to their countries of origin, get the appropriate ID card, then come back and work," Pringle said. "The only thing we disagree with is the length of time those individuals can be here. We want as much time as possible. As long as they are working and contributing to society, we don't see why they should be forced to go home."
The Cornyn plan, co-sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., allows for three two-year employment terms in the U.S. with at least a year abroad in between. Other proposals range from two to three years, most with just a single renewal.
A proposal by President Bush, another by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and a third by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., do not require a trip home.
"We just need a system that's workable, enforceable and able to get workers when they're needed, then have them return to their home countries afterward," said Matt Brockman, executive vice president of the Fort Worth-based Texas and Southwestern Cattleraisers Association.
Without abundant labor, ranchers will continue to find ways to rationalize their operations, Brockman said. "Years ago, one ranch hand might tend to 300 cows and calves, now it's 700 to 800."
Employers stress the importance of streamlining the process of checking prospective workers' identities.
"For national security, we'd like some way to document them so that we'd see their background," said Garey of the restaurant association. "From an employer's viewpoint, he'd see who is documented. And from a worker's viewpoint, he wouldn't live in constant fear of being caught and deported."
Garey declined to estimate the percentage of undocumented workers busing tables and staffing kitchens but said some jobs would be mechanized and menu prices would rise if those employees were forced back across the border.
He professes to see little difference between the Texas-Oklahoma border and the Texas-Mexico border -- "We are all people" -- and says many people don't understand that illegal workers pay taxes.
"There's a lot of rhetoric that has hardened hearts to immigrants that they are not paying taxes. That's not true," he said. "When they rent an apartment, they pay property tax through their rent. When they go to a store, they pay sales tax, and on the job, Social Security and income taxes are withheld -- without them seeing any benefit."
One North Texas landscaper would like to see a program that uses technology to verify a prospective employee's identity.
"I would like to see them have some kind of national ID card with a magnetic strip given them at the border," said Tommy Dye, 60, owner of Lady Bug Landscape Co. in Keller.
"This kind of card would let them come to any employer," he said. "The employer picks up the phone and reads off the number [to confirm authenticity] or swipes the card in some kind of device.
"Let them work one year, pay their taxes -- the whole nine yards," Dye said. "Let them go home six months and return for another year, which is basically what they are doing anyway."
That might work in landscaping, but the restaurant trade, construction, poultry plants and other industries say they need the cheap, unskilled labor year-round.
And like them, Dye said landscapers would be hard-pressed to maintain an adequate work force without undocumented workers.
"Anytime we ask for help, Mexicans are the only ones who show up. I wonder where all the black and white people have gone, even at $8.50 and $9 an hour," he said. "It's the hard work, not the pay. I had an Anglo come in recently. He worked one day and didn't come back. He was the first Caucasian I hired in eight or nine years. That's pretty telling.
"The presumption is that these people work for the lowest wage," Dye said. "But at a day-labor center, I watched Mexicans refusing work that didn't pay $80 a day."
The owner of a restaurant chain agreed.
"We wouldn't have many employees without them, even at $10 an hour," said the businessman, who does not want his name published because of the sensitivity of the immigration debate. "We really need the Mexicans, all of the service industry does."
He questioned whether any new guest-worker system would work if it's simpler to illegally cross the border than to spend months or years navigating a complicated application process.
"We'd love to hire them legally. But it's just so difficult," he said. "There's so much bureaucracy applying for permission from Mexico, that it's just easier for them to come over illegally."
Leo Wadley, a Fort Worth roofing contractor, acknowledges taking a stance at odds with many in his field.
"I would like to see complete and total enforcement of all immigration laws and see all of the people here illegally shipped back to their country of origin as soon as possible," he said. "And the government should spend what it needs to enforce and penalize those who are in not in compliance."
Wadley concedes that the immediate effect would be higher roofing prices, but not as high as they would be if Texas imposed mandatory general liability insurance and workers' compensation like Florida, California, New York and Alabama.
The roofer said he's aware of undocumented workers who get injured on the job but get no help from contractors. They were often hired indirectly through labor brokers who carry no insurance coverage, he said. County hospitals often pick up the tab, which in effect means that taxpayers are subsidizing their neighbors' roofing repairs, he said.
"What business frankly wants is a steady stream of low-cost labor," said economist Jared Bernstein of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. "Immigrants are now a key component of the work force, and if they're gone, increased labor costs are passed on as higher prices for goods and services."

Barry Shlachter, (817) 390-7718 barry@star-telegram.com
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/14466774.htm
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Posted on Sat, Apr. 08, 2006

Southwest Kansas prepares for protests over immigration reforms
Associated Press
ARKANSAS CITY, Kan. - Immigrant rights supporters will hold rallies against proposed immigration reforms Monday, and the meatpacking plants' owners and the workers are divided about who should attend.
Dodge City's National Beef is advising its employees not to leave work to go to the demonstrations linked to the "National Day of Action" organized by labor, civil rights and religious groups. Another plant, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef of Arkansas City, is closing its doors Monday and urging employees to take part in the peaceful protests.
"We really agree with the perspective of the Hispanic community," said Rusty Wright, Creekstone's director of human resources. "There is a lot of mixed opinions on this controversial bill. I don't think we mind having our opinion."
Wright said his company is shutting down Monday because three-quarters of its 750 workers are Hispanic, and the company disagrees with a House bill that would make it a felony to be an illegal immigrant and would build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Wright said the company screens all their employees' applications through a computer system provided by the Department of Homeland Security to check that anyone Creekstone hires is eligible to work in the U.S.
But he said the company decided to stop operations because management thought workers should be able to protest the bill, which would also make it a crime to assist illegal immigrants.
Closing the plant won't be cheap. Creekstone's operations director, Kevin Pentz, said the plant will have to reschedule about 30 trailers of live cattle and may have to work longer hours next week to keep up with production.
"People think the Hispanics are taking away from jobs that could go to other people," said Pentz. "But in reality, these are jobs people don't care to have. These are skilled labor jobs, hard work."
National Beef, meanwhile, sent a letter to its workers last week questioning the wisdom of skipping work and urging workers to contact elected officials instead.
"We at National Beef already know that we need our Hispanic workforce," said the letter. "We disagree that not working is the best way to express your disapproval of this bill."
On Sunday, Latinos in Dodge City will have a town hall meeting to discuss immigration matters. Monday, immigrant rights groups and Hispanic advocacy organizations are expecting thousands of people will attend rallies in Dodge City and Garden City.
Superintendent Vernon Welch says he's preparing for a wave of absences among students and support staff in the Liberal Unified School District.
And as fliers, e-mails and text messages circulated urging area Latinos to leave work and school Monday, some community leaders are concerned that those who attend protests will actually hurt their cause.
"We don't want to promote anything that's going to hurt the (Hispanic) community," said Onesimo Aranda, who heads the Regional Latino Affairs Council in Dodge City. "We're trying to build them up."

source: http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/state/14297380.htm
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Tyson says closing some U.S. plants on rally day

Updated: 1:01 p.m. ET April 27, 2006
CHICAGO - Top meat producer Tyson Foods Inc. joined other large processors and said Thursday that nine of its U.S. plants would be closed Monday due, in part, to expectations some of its workers will be attending an immigration rally.
Tyson also said market conditions played a role in deciding to close five of its nine U.S. beef plants and four of its six U.S. pork plants Monday.
The closings coincide with planned nationwide rallies on that day in support of immigration reform.
"While we understand the sentiment behind the May 1st events and support comprehensive immigration reform, we are not encouraging workers to participate in the rallies," Tyson said in a statement.
"We are asking workers not to take any unauthorized time off and instead seek pre-approval from their supervisor or participate during non-work hours," the statement added.
"Most of our red meat plants will not operate because of factors such as market conditions that permit scheduling changes and the potential shortage of workers," Tyson said.
Previously, Cargill Inc. had said its beef and pork plants would be closed Monday and Seaboard Corp. said its pork plant would be closed as well. Both firms said the actions were taken so that workers could attend the rallies.
Similar rallies earlier this month resulted in reduced beef and pork production. One catalyst for the rallies was a bill passed recently by the House that would categorize illegal immigrants as felons.
A large share of meat plant workers are Hispanic. Hispanics have been vocal in the need for laws that would make it easier to work in the United States.

source: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12515940/from/RL.1/
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