Posted on 09/22/2002 3:27:09 PM PDT by Tancred
Nat Lindquist can tell how good the blueberry crop will be by how many migrant workers show up to help with the harvest.
"They know if we're going to have a good crop," and more workers show up those years, said Lindquist, vice president of operations for Jasper Wyman & Son in Cherryfield. "They're well-informed. They have a network, and I don't know how it works, but it does."
The network leads migrants - both those who come from other countries and those who reside in the United States - to these Down East blueberry barrens; to the western hills of Maine, where they pick apples; to Cumberland County, where they harvest strawberries; and to northern Maine, where they pick broccoli. Word of mouth also helps brings foreign residents to York County amusement parks, where they work the midway; midcoast restaurants, where they serve food and wash dishes; and Maine resorts, where they serve the skiers.
Often overlooked, workers who come to Maine temporarily as migrant laborers or foreign-resident workers are vital to the state economy.
Without migrants, most Maine crops couldn't be harvested. Without workers from overseas, summer tourists on the coast might not find their hotel beds made or their meals served promptly. And the underbrush in the woods owned by timber companies might not be thinned.
A van crash two weeks ago, which killed 14 men from Honduras and Guatemala, provided a tragic window into role of migrant and foreign workers in Maine. The van, carrying 15 men to work in the woods, tumbled off a bridge over the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. The 15th worker - Edilberto Morales-Luis of Guatemala - survived by kicking out a window of the van.
The accident sent "a shock wave through the people who depend on migrants," Lindquist said.
Maine businesses employ up to 8,000 migrant and foreign workers at any given time, said Juan Perez-Febles, the director of the division of migrant and immigrant services for the Maine Department of Labor.
"Most people don't realize that there are that many migrant workers in the state," he said, and there are actually two categories.
The first is migrant workers, who follow the "Eastern Stream" of work each year. The stream starts in January and February in Florida, where the migrants pick tomatoes and grapefruit, then flows up the coast through tobacco fields in North Carolina, the high-bush blueberries in New Jersey and then into Maine for blueberries. Some migrants stay in the state until fall, picking apples and making wreaths, Perez-Febles said.
Then the workers, most of whom are either U.S. citizens or here legally, head back to Florida to repeat the route the following year.
Maine also has a fair number of the second category - foreign workers, who Perez-Febles prefers to call "guest workers." Many tourist-dependent business have hired these workers for years, since a labor shortage began developing in the mid-1990s.
Ken Cormier, the owner of Funtown/Splashtown USA in Saco, said foreign workers make up about 15 percent of his summer work force.
Last year, he hired 20 students from overseas to work in his amusement park. This year, it was 60. In 2003, he anticipates hiring up to 100 foreign workers.
Cormier works through an agency to find the workers, who this year came from Russia, Slovakia, Poland, the Netherlands and China. The agency and Cormier share costs on transporting the workers to Saco and he arranges housing for them.
It's simply a matter of need, he said.
"There just are not enough people to go around," Cormier said, partly because of a lack of desire of many American kids to work. "The kids today are so affluent, or their parents are so affluent, they feel they don't want to work."
Perez-Febles said the farm workers also do work few Mainers would consider.
"The average American worker will not take that job," he said, adding that the migrant workers are "a key component to the farmer. If they could not rely on the guest workers or migrant workers, they would not be able to harvest their fruit."
The co-dependence - the need of the employer for labor and of the worker for money - keeps abuses on either side rare, Perez-Febles said.
In Maine, most farmers supply their migrant workers with housing and transportation to and from work. State agencies check on health conditions regularly, Perez-Febles said, and make sure the housing is safe and there's plenty of clean water. Farmers generally correct problems to avoid a federal inspection.
"For the most part, Maine employers try to do the best they can and if they don't, I remind them that things need to be fixed," he said. "They know it's a losing battle if I have to make a referral" to federal authorities.
Still, severe problems do arise. About 800 Hispanic, migrant workers reached a $6 million settlement in 2001 with A. J. "Jack" DeCoster over living and working conditions at his egg farms in Turner. Federal officials said those conditions were among the worst they had ever seen nationally.
Workers were told to wade through chicken dung and dead birds without protective clothing, and live with their families in trailers with backed-up toilets.
Still, such serious problems are not the norm. Migrant and guest workers come to Maine because it offers them economic opportunity not available to them at home.
Most migrant workers return to the same fields year after year, Perez-Febles said, and if they were mistreated, it would soon become apparent.
"A migrant worker can walk," and word spreads of places to avoid, he said. The state also steps in to investigate if workers report that they're not getting paid properly or work conditions are unsafe.
Perez-Febles said he suspects at least a few of the migrants are here illegally, but there's not much he can do if they produce what appears to be valid identification.
Lindquist, of Jasper Wyman & Son, said most of the migrant workers he sees have green cards, the paperwork that allows them to work in the United States.
He said there are exceptions: This year, the Border Patrol, acting on a tip, sent two young men who lacked the paperwork back to Mexico. Their father, Lindquist said, has been working on the blueberry crop for years.
In Auburn, Harry Ricker relies on a crew of about 65 men from Jamaica who pick apples on his nearly 500-acre orchard.
Most of them have been coming to Maine for six or seven weeks in the fall for nearly three decades, he said.
"We try to keep the same guys coming back every year," he said. "They get good at what they do."
Ricker said that it's been a long time since Maine farmers who need a lot of labor at harvest time could rely on local workers.
"It hasn't happened since the Depression," he said, adding that it's worth it to him to pay transportation costs and wages to hire Jamaicans he can depend on each year.
There might be some equally hard-working Americans who could do the work, he said, but they generally have other jobs and need year-round work, not six or seven weeks each fall.
"I've talked to apple farmers who are prejudiced toward Jamaicans," he said, and would hire them before many Americans.
Some migrant workers stay longer than a few weeks.
Fernando Carpio was part of the wave of migrant workers who moved through the state until his employer, Cooper Farms in West Paris, asked him to stay on a few years ago.
Now he works at the farm year-round, mostly in the packing house, and lives in West Paris. Originally from Mexico, Carpio said he now has permanent resident status, on the way to becoming a citizen.
Maine enjoys a fairly good reputation among migrant workers for living and working conditions, he said.
"It's all right, not bad compared to other states," Carpio said, although there is one complaint.
"There's not too many Latinos here," he said. "I wish more would come."
Bull!
The "average American worker" has a full time job, a house and a family. These jobs are for average American NON-workers. But with welfare, why would these lazy, tax supported, spawn breeding scum work at all? Hence, the working class is taxed to support the non-working class.
Before a massive government welfare program it wasn't that difficult to find low-skilled workers. Now those people lay around and watch soap operas all day or are in prisons. Immigration will very likely help bring down our Socialist government because the taxpayers can't provide all the services especially when massive lay-offs and foreclosures are eliminating many of the taxpayers.
Yes, migrant worker doesn't necessarily mean illegal workers, but I fear in America today, it usually does.
But I am still wondering who was doing this work before these workers. Yes, some people do lay around and draw welfare - but perhaps they were working at these jobs before the illegals came. I have seen that happen. No, they can pay these people less, have no taxes to pay, no bookkeeping, no medical expense, no worker's comp. With the taxpayers picking up all those pesky little incidentals.
Ahhhh. First you see, then you begin to understand. You have come far in your journey, Grasshopper.
Oh, Billybob, I got it a long time ago, just say it every chance I get in the hopes someone else will give it some thought.
"Then the workers, most of whom are either U.S. citizens or here legally, head back to Florida to repeat the route the following year."
These are the same people who did these jobs before.
Migrants.
The true problem here, is the need of some people to turn any conversation that remotely includes the words "immigrant" or even "migrant" into a rant about illegals.
Read the article, it plainly tells you that these people are, by and large, here legally.
One last thing, a number of those migrant workers are US citizens, and that has always been the case.
You're right but the article kind of confused the issue somewhat by referring to illegals when it was probably about legal and citizen migrants.
Now, Luis, the newspaper said they were all legal and I believe it, by george.
When someone posts something to which someone else doesn't agree, some are always willing to jump on them and think they are ignorant. Just because I person doesn't agree with you, does not mean they are ignorant of facts.
I will stand by my statement that in the past they probably were not necessarily illegal - but now I believe the majority are. Just because they migrate from place to place doesn't mean they are legal and just because a news article says they are all legal, also does not make it so.
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