Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 10:43:12 -0400 (EDT) From: hahamovitch cindy x To: Labor Research and Action Project Subject: Re: Strawberry Debacle (1): The Significance of Citizenship Status In-Reply-To: The significance of citizenship status to farm labor organizing is not that undocumented farmworkers are unorganizable. Indeed, as Hector Delgado said, foreign farmworkers often come from regions with rich trade union traditions, and many know far more about unions (good and bad) than American workers do. The trouble is not so much the workers' predilictions (though they can be a decisive factor), but rather undocumented workers' vulnerability to deportation and threats of deportation. The INS has been used as agribusiness' bullwhip since the 2nd World War at least, so the problem, in my opinion, is the combustible combination of workers' vulnerability and state policy. The federally organized and managed Labor Importation Program (the predecessor of the H2 program) began during WWII, when the tightened labor market allowed African-American and Mexican-American farmworkers bargaining power, often for the first time. Faced with militant farmworkers after a 20-year depression that had kept labor cheap and relatively compliant, growers demanded and got foreign workers--primarily from Mexico but also, on the East Coast, from the British West Indies and Puerto Rico. Growers and their advocates in the War Food Administration (the wartime USDA) were quite open about the fact that they preferred imported workers because they could be deported for striking, "trouble-making", and even complaining. The WFA was very reluctant, in fact, to import Puerto Ricans because, as citizens, they couldn't be deported. Forced to include Puerto Ricans by Congress, the WFA held back 20% of their wages to ensure their return to Puerto Rico (it didn't work, of course). Since, WWII, we can cite many instances of growers wielding the INS as a sort of club to discipline an increasingly immigrant workforce. It didn't matter if the imported workers were willing to organize and even strike. If they did they would be promptly deported. Jamaicans were particularly quick to protest wages and conditions, but they found themselves in jail in Miami and then on their way back to Kingston before they even knew where they were headed. The issue of citizenship status, to make a long story short, is an extremely difficult one, but it's one that we must deal with without turning documented workers against undocumented ones. In some places, at least around here, undocumented workers are in the majority, so farmworkers can't be organized without the participation of the undocumented. What we must advocate, then, is the right of farmworkers to organize no matter what their immigration status is. This is particularly important now that growers are gaining ground in their effort to have Congress enact a new bracero program. The AgJOBS bill (I think that's its nickname--I'm at home away from my notes), if it is passed this time around (versions have come up in the last 5 congressional sessions) would allow growers access to unlimited numbers of agricultural "guestworkers." However, feeble the protections built into the H2 system are now, they at least require on paper that growers pay temporary importees prevailing wages (established by the Labor Dept); provide free housing that meets federal standards; guarantee the workers 3/4 of the wages promised for the contracted period; and obtain Labor Dept certification after they've demonstated a labor shortage. These rarely enforced, minimal protections would be lost under the proposed system. If we think organizing farmworkers is difficult now, just wait! Sorry for the long rant, Cindy Hahamovitch Associate Professor of History The College of William & Mary Author of "The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945" (UNC Press, 1997).