I agree with the ban. My Grandfathers house in Yakima was stripped of all the wiring and copper plumming by Mexicans who are to lazy to work. My attitude go and destroy your county.

Fruit Firms Sued Over Illegal Aliens
by Helen Jung
Two Washington residents who work in Eastern Washington's tree-fruit industry have sued two packing houses and a staffing agency, charging they deliberately hire illegal immigrants in order to depress wages for all employees.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Spokane, accuses the defendants of running an "illegal immigrant hiring scheme" that violates the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and a state anti-conspiracy law.

The packing-house companies, which also own orchards in the Yakima Valley, have for years "knowingly employed illegal aliens" and used the staffing agency to do so, says Steve Berman, the Seattle attorney representing the plaintiffs, who are Mexican nationals.

Mr. Berman, a well-known class-action lawyer who represented Washington and other states in suits against the tobacco industry, says the suit is intended both to compensate injured workers and to "change the way the industry does business" in Washington.

The suit seeks unspecified damages from the defendants -- Zirkle Fruit Co. and Matson Fruit Co., both of Selah, and Selective Employment Inc. of Yakima -- and asks the court to issue an injunction preventing them from continuing their alleged illegal activity.

The defendants say they can't comment on the suit, because they haven't had time to review it. But Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League in Yakima, dismisses the accusations as groundless and ridiculous.

"It's an outrageous concept to begin with," he says, referring to the notion that any orchard or packing company would by design seek out illegal aliens and hire them, knowing the company could be fined by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

In fact, the INS has in recent years been cracking down on the state's $1 billion-plus fruit-picking and packing industry for its use of illegal immigrants in Eastern Washington, staging several raids on warehouses.

And Mr. Gempler says it's an absurd contention that orchards and packing houses are depressing wages. With the labor market tightening, he says, growers are paying as much as they have in years.

Indeed, the state's $8-an-hour wage is at the high end of the range for crop workers around the country, says Bruce Goldstein, co-executive director of the Farmworker Justice Fund Inc., a national litigation and advocacy group for migrant and seasonal workers in Washington, D.C.

But, Mr. Goldstein argues, that means little when wages in real dollar terms have declined over the years. The hourly wage in real dollar terms declined about 70 cents an hour in 1998 (the most recent figures available), he says, citing a new report from the U.S. Department of Labor.

About 150,000 mostly seasonal laborers work picking and packing Washington crops every year, Mr. Gempler figures, though he adds that the actual number may be smaller because so many hold multiple jobs. There are no official estimates as to how many of the state's seasonal workers might be in the country illegally.

While many employers in the fruit belt acknowledge that much of their work force probably isn't legal, they say there isn't much they can do about it. Orchards and packers are "between a rock and a hard place," says Mr. Gempler, because it's extremely difficult to discern counterfeit documents from the genuine articles, and antidiscrimination laws prohibit businesses from asking for extra credentials just because someone looks foreign to an employer.

Mr. Berman, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, responds that there are common-sense ways to identify illegal workers. "When the Immigration and Naturalization Service pulls up to look over the fields, and everyone's gone, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know your work force is not legal," Mr. Berman says.

According to the suit, Zirkle Fruit and Matson Fruit have not only hired hundreds of illegal aliens through Selective Employment, but all three defendants were aware of the workers' status. And, the suit claims, Zirkle Fruit and Matson Fruit hired these workers purposely. Illegal immigrants, the suit contends, are in such economic and legal straits that they won't press for higher wages, with the result being that both legal and illegal employees are paid less than what the market would support for an all-legal crew of harvesters and packers.

The suit doesn't say how much seasonal laborers in the fruit industry should be paid, contending only that the defendants' alleged employment of illegal aliens kept wages for everyone artificially low. That, Mr. Berman says, harms documented and undocumented workers alike.

Many seasonal laborers, Mr. Berman says, "are in that gray world between being a citizen and non-citizen. They're working for a multibillion-dollar industry that much of Eastern Washington is allied with, so who's going to help these folks? No one."

Mr. Berman wants the court to certify the lawsuit as a class action, on behalf of thousands of harvesters and packers hired through Selective Employment. Without a class-action decision from a federal court, he says, the industry won't be forced to change its behavior.

The two plaintiffs in the case, Olivia Mendoza and Juana Mendiola, declined to be interviewed.

The seasonal-laborer dilemma isn't confined to Washington, says Sharon Hughes, executive vice president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Hughes says that the council has heard of incidents where more than 50% of workers "have used fraudulent documents" to land farm jobs in a number of states around the country.

The council and other trade groups for farmers support as a solution the proposed Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefits and Security Act, which is co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican. It would allow undocumented workers who can prove they worked at least 150 days as agricultural laborers within the past year to gain legal status as temporary nonimmigrant workers. Those who work for at least 180 days annually for five consecutive years would be eligible to apply for permanent U.S. residency.

The Washington Growers League and other backers of the bill say it would ease the labor shortage and eventually boost wages; critics contend it would help farms avoid federal sanctions for hiring illegal workers. Officials with the United Farm Workers of Washington in Sunnyside have condemned the measure for promoting what is tantamount to "indentured servitude."

With the situation as it is now, says Mr. Gempler of the growers league, everyone in the tree-fruit sector is frustrated. "There's been a wink-and-nod approach to immigration for decades by the government," he says. "I think ultimately they're going to have to develop a better policy to deal with the reality that many industries are living with."

According to Bob Coleman, the acting INS district director in Seattle, the agency is testing new policies to help employers. For example, it recently started sending to orchards and packing houses lists of illegal immigrants culled from past investigations. But, he says, there's only so much the INS can do.

"Worker rights are a big issue in Eastern Washington," he says. "We're trying not to get wrapped up in that."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------