Posted on 06/29/2005 7:21:27 AM PDT by jackbenimble
Foreign workers flee ranchers who brought them
By Bruce Finley The Denver Post
Yellowjacket Pass, Colo. -- With his boots caked with manure and face spattered with blood, Peruvian shepherd Tomas Santa Maria corrals bleating lambs by the hundred in a green mountain pasture in northwest Colorado. He chases them as they dart beneath ewes, hoists them one by one, holds their kicking legs and thrusts them forward belly-first for castration. Following his native tradition, Santa Maria performs the castration with his teeth.
The sheep industry, a longtime mainstay of the western Rocky Mountains economy, has come to depend on shepherds such as Santa Maria, brought from Andean countries under a guest worker program.
But now this program is threatened because many shepherds flee their flocks to work illegally in cities. Shepherds and Peruvian government officials say rough working conditions and low pay are partly to blame. U.S. government agencies do little to enforce immigration laws.
In their pasture north of Meeker, Santa Maria, 47, and fellow Peruvians Pedro Hurtado, 40, and Toledo Echevarria, 49, say they love the work. Their fathers herded sheep in the Andes.
The ability of Peruvian shepherds to move sheep and protect them from coyotes and bears is uncanny, said Marita Landaveri, Peru's consul general in Denver. Once, on a visit to check on shepherds, she watched one lying on his belly surrounded by dozens of sheep that were silent, seemingly mesmerized.
Yet shepherds who break their contracts and migrate to cities earn more money, Santa Maria said. Echevarria's 21-year-old son, Sandro, left his shepherding job in Colorado this spring.
For now, Santa Maria, Echevarria and Hurtado have decided to stay despite some misgivings.
President George W. Bush has proposed radically increasing American use of foreign guest workers. But the details of his plan aren't settled, including the extent to which foreign workers would be free to roam from job to job as permanent immigrants traditionally have done.
The government's current H-2A guest worker program allows the hiring of foreign workers for agriculture jobs that American workers don't want. Under the program, ranchers in Colorado and other Western states have hired some 2,000 shepherds from Peru, Chile and Bolivia on renewable three-year contracts.
Many impoverished Inca families have benefited.
"My wife says, 'We need more money for the children,"' said Santa Maria, a landless father of five who speaks more than one language.
Over the past few years, shepherds in the United States have grown hungry for higher-paying, easier work in cities.
Some 60 to 70 contract shepherds in Colorado and other Western states have abandoned their flocks. Ranchers who paid for recruiting, paperwork and airfare are out tens of thousands of dollars, said Dennis Richins, director of the Utah-based Western Range Association, which handles shepherd contracts for the Labor Department.
Ranchers call several times a week to report runaway shepherds, said Landaveri.
"We are trying to tell Peruvians that they have a contract and they should follow the contract," she said.
Under H-2A, shepherds are legally bound to one employer, and pay is relatively low -- in Colorado $700 a month, well below the minimum wage.
Herding sheep is harsh work. There is no running water or electricity in the camps. Shepherds get no days off, no emergency communications and no health insurance.
Since 2002, federal labor officials have investigated 39 cases of reported mistreatment of foreign shepherds in the United States, said Dolline Hatchett, a Department of Labor spokeswoman in Washington. She declined to give details.
Rural communities from Colorado to California count on a robust sheep industry, which generates $500 million a year from wool and meat sales. But sheep ranches around the country have declined in the past decade both in number and size.
If more herders leave, foreign competitors will prevail, said Peter Orwick, director of the American Sheep Industry Association in Denver. Ranchers "can't replace these foreign herders from any other labor source," Orwick said. He said U.S. workers are just not interested."
The solution, he said, is for immigration agents to find and deport contract violators so that word gets around. Often, ranchers know where the shepherds have fled.
But Department of Homeland Security officials in Washington say immigration agents haven't the time or resources to enforce guest-worker contracts.
The U.S. government allows employers to bring in tens of thousands of guest workers under various programs. Just for agricultural work, Labor Department officials last year granted employer requests to hire 44,637 foreign laborers, including 1,690 shepherds, all on three-year H-2A contracts paying wages set by states.
That's on the legal side. Government surveys estimate that more than half of the nation's 2.5 million agricultural workers -- about 80 percent of them foreign-born -- are in the country illegally. They're among 10.3 million illegal workers overall.
Critics say details of any new guest-worker program must be negotiated carefully. The H-2A program, begun in 1957, lacks oversight, said Chris Schneider, executive director of California Legal Services, which tries to help migrants. "When you set up a program like this," Schneider said, "you are inviting exploitation."
Today, sheep ranchers are scrambling to round up replacement herders to lead sheep to high pastures.
North of Hayden, Brad Smith said he grew so frustrated after four Peruvians fled his ranch this spring that he considered joining demonstrators along the U.S.-Mexico border urging better immigration enforcement.
He said the workers went to Wyoming and he knows where, but immigration agents won't detain them.
This year, a Wyoming rancher caught an AWOL shepherd herself and drove him to Homeland Security offices in Salt Lake City, according to Smith. He said federal officials told her she could face kidnapping charges.
Immigration officials declined to comment.
Guestworker plans are just another sham like the amnesty in 1986 to get the public to accept legal status for millions more illegals. The politicians have no interest in actually enforcing the laws and the guests will never be required to leave.
If they won't enforce the law for the tiny number of guests that come in under the H2A Guestworker Program they won't enforce the new laws either.
Every visa program we have lacks oversight.
Remind me never to get into a fight with one of these guys.
You are absolutely correct and this is why I'm against a guestworker program, be it Bush's, McCain's or Tancredo's.
Ping.
There's no need of a guestworker program as long as there are unemployed able bodied Americans.
"Following his native tradition, Santa Maria performs the castration with his teeth."
What!?!??!!??!?!?!!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Following his native tradition, Santa Maria performs the castration with his teeth.
Will there be a special class of visa for those performing this task? Perhaps we can send a bunch of them to the next democratic convention, oh wait, that won't be necessary.
"Following his native tradition, Santa Maria performs the castration with his teeth."
OK maybe there are some jobs Americans just won't do.
The relationship between sheep and sheep herders has always been somewhat odd. Here in Wyoming it is the subject of many jokes such as: Wyoming, where men are men and sheep are scared. I lived in Australia for a year which also has a big sheep industry and they told most of the same jokes there only New Zealanders were usually the butt of the joke. I suspect it is the same the world over. Humor usually contains an element of truth. The Wyoming sheep industry has traditionally been dominated by Basques from Spain and like the Peruvians they also did castrations with their teeth.
(And we sir are trying to tell our president and government that THEY have a CONTRACT with the American People. It's called their oath of office - it includes guarding our border from foreign invasion.)
We are truly moved by their plight to scab Americans . .
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Over the past few years, shepherds in the United States have grown hungry for higher-paying, easier work in cities.
Some 60 to 70 contract shepherds in Colorado and other Western states have abandoned their flocks.
Ranchers who paid for recruiting, paperwork and airfare are out tens of thousands of dollars, said Dennis Richins, director of the Utah-based Western Range Association, which handles shepherd contracts for the Labor Department.
Ranchers call several times a week to report runaway shepherds, said Landaveri.
"We are trying to tell Peruvians that they have a contract and they should follow the contract," she said.
Under H-2A, shepherds are legally bound to one employer, and pay is relatively low -- in Colorado $700 a month, well below the minimum wage.
"and pay is relatively low -- in Colorado $700 a month, well below the minimum wage."
Yes, but lunch is free.
ping
With the recent oligarchic ruling by the U.S.S.C. that your persoanl dwelling is not safe from being impounded at will, sheep herding is looking better all the time.
Free market bump!
Why do I get the impression that our immigration employees are just tickled pink with Bush's no-enforcement policy? I picture these guys sitting around the office surfing the internet and whenenver a reporter talks to them they say "oh, we're busy fighting the war on terror- no resources to stop illegal immigration."
This year, a Wyoming rancher caught an AWOL shepherd herself and drove him to Homeland Security offices in Salt Lake City, according to Smith. He said federal officials told her she could face kidnapping charges.
Alice and her rabbit would be right at home with the Homeland crew. Then again, maybe the rancher thought the Dred Scott decision was still in effect.
I think we can safely say this guy is doing a job Americans won't do....or at least doing a job in a manner in which Americans won't do.
My point in posting this article is to show that current guestworker programs are not being enforced. If the Federal Government can't (or won't) enforce a program with a mere 50,000 Ag workers per year, why would any of us believe that a guestworker shamnesty program which included 10+ million of the current illegals would be enforced or enforceable?
The answer is that there won't be any enforcement. It is just a sham to get us to swallow the next big amnesty and get the government off the hook so it does not have to do its job.
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