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 News from Around the Americas | December 2007 
Undocumented Workers Bemoan U.S. Crackdown
 Alfonso Chardy & Helena Poleo - MiamiHerald.com
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| | Homestead farmer Larry Dunagan, right, with his son Mark Dunagan, says labor shortages are possible if the immigration crackdown intensifies. (C.M. Guerrero/El Nuevo Herald) |
Immigrant workers and employers in South Florida said they are seeing fewer jobs and remittances after an escalation in immigration enforcement.
For thousands of South Florida's illegal immigrants, the new year offers more uncertainty, discontent and, for many, resigned departure.
From farms in Homestead to day laborer pickup sites in Florida City and Fort Lauderdale, migrant workers are struggling to find work as Homeland Security steps up enforcement after a firestorm of public opinion derailed an immigration overhaul in Congress. That proposal, which failed in the summer, would have eventually legalized millions of undocumented workers.
Adding to the turmoil: a slowing economy.
More than two dozen South Florida employers and undocumented workers interviewed by The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald said they worry about tough times ahead. Evidence suggests immigrants are sending less money back to their families in Latin America and the Caribbean.
At Global Money Express in Little Havana, money transfers have dropped by a third in the past few weeks.
"This season is usually the one with the most remittances, but the flow has gone down," Global manager Roberto Carlos Tejeda said, adding that similar declines occurred at two other branches near downtown Miami and Little Havana, where many Central American immigrants live.
Several immigrants without work papers are seeing job opportunities dry up and said they're thinking of packing up and leaving employers who count on their cheap labor and seasonal work.
"The raids that have happened during the summer and early fall are a concern," said Larry Dunagan, a pole bean farmer in Homestead. Dunagan said labor shortages are possible if the crackdown intensifies.
"There will be a tremendous demand on labor, and a shortage is a concern because we deal with a perishable product," he added.
Immigrant workers endure longer periods between jobs or have lost jobs because they cannot prove they are in the country legally. A recent survey by the Pew Hispanic Center of 2,003 Hispanics nationwide notes nearly two-thirds believe life has become more difficult since the immigration overhaul's failure in Congress.
Israel Tax Martín, a Guatemalan who waits for potential employers at a pickup site in Homestead, said he's barely working the odd jobs - in farming, construction, cleaning - that he used to snap up daily.
"Before, I worked Sunday to Sunday, but now I work two days per week - if I'm lucky," said Tax Martín, who has a wife and five children in Guatemala. "Before, I would send $1,000 per month to my wife, and now I can only send her $150."
At one South Broward County pickup work site, some day laborers said they had not worked in more than eight days.
"The situation is very difficult," said a 21-year-old Honduran who asked that only his first name, Carlos, be used for fear he would be deported. "There is no work."
He said his brother was deported four months ago.
At another site in Florida City, several Guatemalans also complained that jobs were scarce.
"Three or four years ago, I worked every day," said Raymundo Gómez, 35. "Now, I work once or twice a week. Before, I earned $450 per week; now, it's $100 or $150."
International economic analysts who track remittances said the immigration crackdown is a likely factor behind the slowdown in money transfers.
"Clearly, something is happening if the reported remittances to Mexico are flat," said Donald Terry, general manager of the Inter-American Development Bank's Multilateral Investment Fund, which has been tracking remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean since 2000.
The fund recently conducted a survey, released by Miami pollster Sergio Bendixen, that showed remittances to Mexico - which were rising at a rate of 10 percent to 15 percent in the past five years - are now flat.
Terry said the biggest slowdown in money transfers was taking place in states considered "new destinations" for Mexican migrants, such as the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Several municipalities in those states have passed laws to bar immigrants from renting homes without proof they are legal.
"Those are places where anti-immigrant sentiment is the highest," Terry said.
Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security secretary, said in August that the remittance slowdown proved the success of stepped-up enforcement.
Some South Florida employers are not entirely convinced, though they do not rule out immigration as a fear factor.
"There's still a flood of people looking for jobs, but a slowdown in the economy could be leading to fewer job offers," said Sanford Stein, president of the Miami-Dade County chapter of the Florida Nursery, Growers & Landscape Association. "Talk of an immigration crackdown is leading to greater scrutiny in hiring."
Over the past year, the number of detentions of undocumented immigrants has increased.
In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly double the number of deportation-order fugitives from the previous year: 30,408 compared to 15,462 nationwide. The agency's Miami office arrested 2,579 fugitives compared to 1,456 in fiscal year 2006.
The most unsettling Homeland Security move for employers came in August, when Chertoff announced a requirement that businesses fire employees who fail to prove legal status.
Annually some employers receive letters from the Social Security Administration when the names of certain employees don't match the Social Security numbers assigned to them.
Chertoff said businesses would have 90 days to resolve discrepancies in the so-called no-match letters containing the warning by immigration officials or would be required to fire employees whose legal status could not be verified.
In October, a federal judge in San Francisco put the plan on hold, and in November, Homeland Security announced it would rewrite the measure to satisfy the judge's concerns. On Dec. 5, Chertoff announced that Homeland Security would also appeal the judge's ruling.
The plan is seen by many South Florida immigrant workers as the main factor behind employers' increasing reluctance to hire them.
"Employers fear receiving no-match letters or that the government realizes they have undocumented workers," said Levis Torres, a Colombian farm and nursery worker in Homestead.
In Miami, two workers said they lost jobs because they couldn't prove legal status to their employers.
María, a Nicaraguan who asked that her last name not be published because she fears being discovered by immigration, said she was fired as a maid in a house she had cleaned for 13 months.
"My boss realized that she could not hire undocumented workers, because she had seen it on television, and she had a conversation with me and told me she was afraid that she could be taken to jail," María said.
Gloria, who withheld her last name for the same reason as María, said she lost her job at a laundry after her husband was arrested by immigration agents.
"When they found out my husband was at immigration, they told me that I could put the business at risk," said Gloria, who has a 10-month-old Miami-born daughter and several children in Honduras.
Fears about hiring undocumented workers may deepen in Florida if the Legislature next year approves immigration bills that seek to involve more local police in immigration duties.
One bill by House Rep. Don Brown, a Panhandle Republican, would compel local governments and law enforcement to cooperate with federal authorities to enforce immigration law.
"The bill is a modest attempt to begin to do what the state governments can do," Brown said.
achardy(at)MiamiHerald.com |
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