Immigration Laws: December, 1996 - Number #3

Missouri. The Los Angeles Times on November 10-12, 1996 ran a three-part report on "the chicken trail," about the recruitment of poultry workers along the US-Mexican border for employment in the southeast.

The stories profiled Hudson Foods, based in Noel, Missouri, (population 1,169), which paid a south Texas recruiter, B. Chapman & Co., $175 for each worker who showed up in Missouri for the $6.70 per hour jobs. The reporter told how workers made their way north on the "chicken trail" to work for Hudson and live in a converted motel, along with 135 other migrant poultry workers, for $45 per week per person.

In 1994, Hudson employed about 1,200 workers to process 1.3 million chickens each week in Noel. Annual turnover exceeds 100 percent, so that Hudson hires about 50 new workers each month. Hudson employees are represented by a union. About 45 percent of the labor force are Latinos. Hudson paid a $20,625 INS fine in 1992 because many of them were not authorized to work. Hudson offers current employees who bring new workers to the plant a $300 bonus.

Hudson, the country's seventh largest-poultry producer, with headquarters in Rogers, Arkansas, has 14 facilities in 11 states, more than 10,000 employees and expects $1.4 billion in sales for 1996.

The reporter-worker described the wet, the 47-degree temperature inside the plant, the semi-automated "dis-assembly" line and the lack of training for newly hired workers. The number of broiler chickens processed in the US each year has more than doubled, from three billion per year in the early 1970s to seven billion per year in the mid-1990s.

Hudson's human resources director was quoted as saying: "there's a large number of jobs that very few citizens in the US want to do, but they're there and they need to be done...One of the social goods the poultry industry provides is employing people who would otherwise have a great deal of trouble getting employed."

The labor recruiting company travels to industry shows in search of employers seeking unskilled labor and then offers to recruit workers for theses companies. According to the reporter, the recruiting company checked workers' identification cards and took urine samples on the particular trip reported. The Border Patrol checked the Greyhound passengers identification cards in Falfurrias, about 75 miles north of the Mexican border.

In 1994, The motel owner bought the run-down hunting lodge motel for $220,000 and reopened it to house migrant chicken workers. Because poultry work is considered nonfarm work, it is not subject to special farm worker housing inspection, only normal local health and safety screening. The motel management takes every new Hudson worker to apply for food stamps at the Division of Family Services and the number of Latinos receiving food stamps in Noel increased from 35 per month in 1993 to 375 per month in 1996.

Hudson is the economic linchpin of Noel, Missouri, but Hudson pays no property taxes to the city. The number of Latino students in Noel's elementary school rose from 25 to more than 100. Hudson and nearby Simmons Foods contributed $12,000 to Noel schools in 1996.

The final article in the series concluded that, across rural and small town America, jobs that "used to offer working-class security to a local population" are now filled by Latino immigrants. The article concluded that towns without traffic lights and ATMs are not well equipped to deal with bilingual education, overcrowded housing, and racial tensions.

There are weekly reports of INS raids on food processing facilities or of unauthorized aliens detected by local police. For example, on November 21, 1996, 10 unauthorized workers were apprehended at the Hi-Point Beef Co., a meat processing plant in Bellefontaine, Ohio.

Some 40 unauthorized aliens were apprehended in late October in Idaho Falls, Idaho, the tenth INS raid in the area in 1996, prompting criticism that the INS detained and removed the parents of children in school from the US before they had time to tell their children. Most of the inspections were of potato processing and similar facilities.

Tobacco. The Virginia Agricultural Growers Association imported 2,603 Mexican workers to harvest tobacco under the H-2A program. The H-2A program requires that US employers offer to US workers, and pay to foreign workers, an Adverse Effect Wage Rate of $5.80 per hour in 1996 in Virginia. The H-2A program also requires US farm employers to provide free housing to workers and to pay the workers' round trip transportation. Farmers have to guarantee workers employment for at least 75 percent of a 44-hour work week, or 33 hours. H-2A tobacco workers in Virginia earn about $3,000 a summer, and $5,500 if they stay for six months.

H-2A tobacco workers are recruited in Mexico by Del-Al Associates of San Antonio, Texas. The Mexicans obtain visas to enter the US at the American consulate in Monterrey. Mexican H-2A tobacco workers pay $30 to the local recruiter who found them, and $125 to Del-Al Associates, which includes $44 for the US visa and an $81 recruitment fee. There is reportedly a blacklist that can get Mexican workers excluded from participation in the H-2A program.

Mexican workers are also recruited under the nonfarm H-2B program to work in the Virginia and North Carolina crab meat industry. In 1996, eight Virginia crabmeat processors hired 143 Mexicans under the H-2B program and 27 North Carolina seafood houses got Department of Labor approval to hire 1,685 H-2B Mexican workers.

Most of the seafood processors said that, when their local Black women employees retired, they could not "compete against the welfare programs of the United States government" for local workers.

Unlike farm workers hired under the H-2A program, H-2B workers do not receive written contracts that guarantee them a certain amount of work at a government set wage. Most H-2B crab workers are paid piece rate wages of $1.35 to $1.89 per pound and most workers can extract 18 to 40 pounds of crabmeat per day, for daily earnings of $25 to $67. Seafood processors sell crab meat for $6 to $13 per pound.

All workers must earn at least the federal minimum wage, $4.75 per hour, which generally means that workers must clean at least 750 crabs over eight hours to obtain 25 pounds of crab meat. Workers are entitled to 1.5 times their base wages for hours in excess of 40 weekly, a requirement that employers often violate.

Most seafood processors provide housing for workers, at a cost of $15 to $25 per week for beds in mobile homes or converted motels, The workers pay about $100 for bus tickets from Mexico to Virginia or North Carolina.

Foreign workers are reportedly seeking jobs in construction, on tobacco farms and in meat and poultry plants in Kentucky. In October, 1996, the INS won its first conviction of an employer in Kentucky, the Valley Fresh chicken- processing plant in Glasgow, for knowingly hiring illegal alien workers. Wages were $5 hourly.

In September, 1996, Kentucky police stopped a rented truck taking 31 illegal aliens to North Carolina, but the short-staffed INS told the police to let the truck continue its journey.

Pamela Stallsmith, "Golden leaf brings man to Southside," Richmond Times Dispatch, November 10, 1996. Jesse Katz, "The Chicken Trail: New Migrant Trails Take Latinos to Remote Towns," Los Angeles Times, November 10-12, 1996. Lane DeGregory, "Crab industry saviors come from unlikely place-Mexico," Virginian-Pilot, November 10, 1996.