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 Editorials | At Issue | March 2005 
Secretly, In Plain View
 Melissa Griggs - The News-Journal
 Sergio Paniagua looks at his paycheck and sees $50 deducted for federal taxes and Social Security.
The illegal immigrant from Mexico knows he'll never benefit from any of it.
"I work hard," says Paniagua, who earns about $450 a week. "Last week, they took $54 from my paycheck. That's a lot of money."
Farmworker advocates say people like Paniagua who pay into Social Security should be able to collect benefits. The advocates also want better monitoring to ensure the workers' deductions are sent and recorded in Washington, D.C.
As a worker using a fake Social Security card, Paniagua was unable to find out about his deductions through the Social Security Administration or even if they were sent in, when he filed a request with the agency.
One day, if he becomes a legal resident, he will be unable to collect benefits because there's no record of his payments, farmworker advocates say.
Social Security officials say they face a huge problem nationwide in tracking deductions for America's vast illegal work force and making sure employers send them in. But enforcement is a low priority for them.
The same is true with other federal work-related laws. Enforcement is virtually nonexistent in Pierson. Undocumented workers easily buy fake Social Security cards and permanent resident green cards that allow them to go to work.
"The fernery industry operates in the shadows," said Gregory Schell, an attorney with the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project in South Florida.
As a small town, Pierson is a microcosm of America's escalating immigration problems. More than 10 million immigrants now live illegally in the United States. And more arrive every day, mostly from Mexico, taking jobs Americans don't want, lured by the chance to earn 10 times what they could at home -- enough to support themselves and relatives back home.
Immigration advocates and critics agree that something needs to be done to rein in this illegal work force. President Bush and several members of Congress are pushing proposals to try to do just that, including an ambitious, delayed plan to pardon millions of long-time workers.
While they debate the proposals, an estimated 5,000 undocumented workers continue to live and work in Northwest Volusia -- secretly, illegally and in plain view.
FAKE DOCUMENTS EASY TO COME BY
The orange house with red window frames sits off U.S. 17 in DeLeon Springs. A statue of the Virgin Mary sits in the front yard. The walkway is lined with daisies.
This is where workers say they come to buy fake documents to go to work.
A boy, about 10 years old, answers the door.
"I am here because I was told someone can help me get a tarjeta (card)," a reporter for The Daytona Beach News-Journal said in Spanish.
The boy runs inside and, a few minutes later a man, maybe 40, Mexican, comes to the door.
He does not have the materials today to make the cards, he says, but come back. A Social Security card and a green card will cost $120. Or, if it's urgent, he suggests another place -- a trailer park on State Road 11.
With the demand for workers in Pierson -- the Fern Capital of the World -- getting a fake Social Security card is easy.
"The bosses look at the cards and know they're fake. But they don't care," said Salvador Moreno, a one-time fern cutter and illegal immigrant from Mexico.
It wasn't always this way. When growers first planted fern in the early 1900s, they hired mostly blacks as pickers. But black people abandoned those jobs more than two decades ago. Since the early 1980s, the fields have been filled with Mexican workers, hunched over with small knives, cutting "hoja" and paid a per-piece rate of 25 cents a bundle.
The workers, from impoverished regions in Mexico, help to sustain the $70-million-a-year fern industry in Northwest Volusia.
At C. Frank Jones Fernery in Pierson, crew leader Florencio Rodriguez says he doesn't even bother looking at his workers' Social Security cards. He knows they buy fake ones for $100.
"Who am I, la migra (immigration)?" he says. Unlike the workers, Rodriguez and other crew leaders tend to be legal residents, having been in the United States long enough to rise through the ranks of undocumented to documented workers.
Crew leaders work for the fernery owners, and act as a sort of middleman. They hire workers. They provide transportation. And they keep track of how many bundles of fern get cut, determining each worker's pay.
At Albin Hagstrom & Sons, another Pierson fernery, crew chief Jorge Bastidas says most of the 130 employees are illegal immigrants.
"Nobody but the crew leaders are legal," he said. "The workers buy illegal green cards and Social Security numbers."
But the fernery owners tell a different story. All of their workers are legal, they say.
"I've got the legal papers on all of them," said Frank Jones, the third-generation owner of C. Frank Jones Fernery, and boss to Rodriquez.
Jones said he has no way of knowing if the Social Security cards and permanent-resident cards of his 10 to 15 employees are authentic.
"I take whatever they give me. I can't ask questions: That would be racial profiling. I wouldn't want a lawsuit on something like that," he said.
Fern workers say some employers find ways to get around accepting fake Social Security cards. Regino Hernandez, 28, said he has worked 11 years for Greenlund Ferneries, owned by Pierson Town Council member Robert Greenlund. Hernandez doesn't get a paycheck. Instead, the fernery writes a check to another employee, who cashes the check and pays him, Hernandez said.
Greenlund did not return a phone call from The News-Journal.
A few employers admit they're caught in a bind between finding workers and abiding by immigration laws. Federal law makes it a crime to knowingly hire an illegal alien, punishable by up to six months in prison.
Richard Noll, owner of Florida Floral Supply Inc., said three of his six employees are illegal immigrants. He'd rather not hire them, but there simply aren't enough workers in a small town like Pierson, he said.
"I have the same problems as the bigger ferneries," Noll said. "I just happened to luck out that the other three I have are documented."
Noll said he supports a proposal by President Bush to allow many undocumented workers to remain in the United States as guest workers. The workers would be given valid Social Security numbers and, if they returned home after six years, as required, they could eventually collect retirement benefits.
"I've shifted my whole thought about immigration being a problem," he said. "You can't stop them now. There's too many people here. They've got homes. They're working. Hopefully, they're adding to the community. There's still going to be some that aren't."
But immigration opponents say employers like Noll are taking advantage of workers whose wages are kept artificially low. The current arrangement flouts the law, said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for strict immigration rules.
"Whatever the law is we should enforce it," he said.
Instead, undocumented workers are migrating out of the fern fields and into other jobs. Salvador Moreno worked at a fernery for a year and left. Now, he cuts sod and earns about $750 a week -- twice what he made cutting fern and almost 10 times what he earned in Mexico.
Many men now work in construction, the sod business or other better-paying jobs, according to The Farmworker Association of Florida, whose 6,300 members advocate for better wages and working conditions statewide. The exodus has led to an increase in the number of Mexican women who are cutting fern, often wives contributing a second income.
"We have a huge undocumented work force," said Schell with the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project in South Florida, a group funded by the Florida Bar Foundation that advocates legally for farmworkers. "So, we wink at it. We have immigration laws. We have post 9-11. But, everybody knows it: It's all a game."
SHOULD THEY GET BENEFITS?
The lack of enforcement clears a path for illegal immigrants to go to work in the fern fields and remain on the job for a decade or even longer. Chances are slim that a worker, once here, will be arrested for working with fake documents and deported, farmworker advocates acknowledge.
But farmworker advocates say the hands-off approach can hurt workers. Many labor here for years, having money deducted from their pay for Social Security, federal taxes and Medicare, and will never reap the benefits.
"If they pay into a fund, they should have access to those benefits," said Tirso Moreno with the farmworkers association. "Social Security is still functioning because of the undocumented workers' contributions."
Moreno said he wants the government to better monitor workers' deductions to make sure they reach Washington and are recorded.
Three illegal workers -- Sergio Paniagua, Salvador Moreno and his wife, Angeles -- filed requests with the Social Security Administration, with the help of The News-Journal, and could not find out about their deductions. They were told their names and Social Security numbers did not match agency records, and no information was available.
Schell, the lawyer with the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, said he believes the lack of records can lead to abuses. Some employers may deduct money from their workers' pay for federal taxes, Social Security and Medicare, and never send it in. Later, if farmworkers become legal residents and apply for Social Security, there is no record of their contributions, Schell said.
"A lot of the employers know their workers are not documented, so they won't squawk," he said.
Angeles Moreno's boss said it's not hard to figure out why her deductions don't show up in agency records.
"Her damn number's no good," said Noll, of Florida Floral Supply. "That's real simple. Guaranteed, it belongs to an 80-year-old person in California."
Based on the first three numbers of her Social Security number (507), it would have been issued in Nebraska -- a state she has never visited.
"I can't ask them: Are you an alien or not?" Noll said. "You can only take what's given you."
After the interview ended and the reporter had left, according to Salvador Moreno, Richard Noll called in Angeles and fired her. Moreno said Noll threatened to call immigration officials and give them his wife's address.
The next day, according to Moreno, Noll and his wife came to their home and offered Angeles her job back, which she accepted.
The Nolls disputed his account. Noll and his wife said Angeles was never fired nor did they threaten to call immigration officials.
CRACKING DOWN NOT A PRIORITY
Immigration opponents, such as Mark Krikorian with the Center for Immigration Studies, disagree that illegal workers should expect benefits.
"They have no claim to that money. Their jobs are illegal," he said. "They committed a felony by using illegal documents to get the jobs."
Agricultural producers send in millions of payments to the Social Security Administration in which the worker's name and Social Security number don't match the agency's records, said Charles Liptz, director for employer wage reporting with the Social Security Administration in Washington. Since 1937, when the Social Security Administration began collecting money, it has received 245 million mismatched wage reports.
Liptz said he did not know the amount of these payments, but they go into the overall pool of money used to pay benefits.
Going after employers who submit bogus documents or who don't bother to send in deductions is not a priority, Liptz said.
"Employers who don't send in the money? Oh my!" Liptz said in mock horror.
"It would be very costly to try to keep track of that information. Our systems aren't that sophisticated to track that," he said.
Frank Cioffi, resident agent in charge for the inspector general of Social Security's office in Clearwater, said he could not recall any prosecutions for Social Security fraud in Flagler or Volusia counties since he started in Florida in 1978. But his office may have supplied information to other agencies involved in prosecuting wrongdoing, he added.
The Internal Revenue Service can assess employers a $50 penalty for each invalid Social Security number submitted, up to a maximum $250,000 fine. But, the IRS doesn't place a priority on pursuing employers or employees because enforcement could have "a negative impact on the participation of employers and employees in the tax system," IRS Commissioner Mark Everson told Congress last year.
The IRS even allows undocumented workers to file annual tax returns and possibly collect a refund. To do so, they must obtain an individual taxpayer identification number, or an ITIN. Of the 6 million people estimated by IRS to be working here illegally, 353,000 filed tax returns in 2000, according to one recent government review.
This alphabet soup -- IRS, ITIN -- draws blank looks from undocumented workers in Northwest Volusia.
Fern cutter Juan Velasquez, who works for a fernery owned by Samuel Bennett, chairman of the Pierson Town Council, said he receives a W-2 each year, but has never filed a tax return.
"I just throw them out in the garbage," Velasquez said.
Asked if he knew about undocumented workers in his fern fields, Bennett said: "I wouldn't know about undocumented workers. But I understand there are people in the community that are not documented."
And so, workers in Northwest Volusia, as in all of America, labor on illegally, secretly in plain view.
"They know Mexicans are good workers," said Salvador Moreno, a former fern cutter who now cuts sod. "Who else is going to take the heavy jobs? Are American citizens going to work in the ferneries? Or cook the food in restaurants? Who?"
Staff Writer Patricio Balona contributed to this story. |
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