by Tena Starr

Like many farmers, Bill and Sue Tester of West Glover have long had trouble finding reliable workers. They’re Christmas tree growers, and the work they offer is hard and monotonous.

“Every year when I’d advertise for help, especially for harvesting, I’d get 20 calls,” Mr. Tester said. “They’d show up and work one or two days and wouldn’t work anymore.  They’d leave me in the lurch, like when we were loading trucks or something.  I’d wind up hiring 20 people and end up with maybe three people who wanted to work.”

The unexpected solution came from Mexico. 

One year the Testers hired a tree shearing crew, all Hispanic labor.  They were impressed with the work and eventually arranged to have two young Mexican men come back and work full-time.  Those workers showed up with documentation and appeared to be in the country legally. 

They lived in a trailer near the house, kept a tidy space, taught one of the family’s children Spanish, worked hard, and became much like family members, Ms. Tester said.  Most of their money went home to their families in Mexico. They had accounts at the bank. “It was an honest and sweet relationship,” she said.

But one day, the Testers got a call from the Border Patrol saying, we know you have immigrant workers. Here’s what you can do:  You can get them to stand by the side of the road, or we can take them by force. 

The Testers were stunned. But they noticed that the workers went pale when they were informed of the phone call.  It turned out that their documents were fraudulent, and they were here illegally.

“They should have run,” Ms. Tester said.  “I wish they would have.” 

The Border Patrol took them, she said, and they ended up in the St. Albans jail.  “We were on the phone from [October] until December.  It was just awful.  Their Social Security numbers were bogus.  We called different lawyers and the Mexican Consulate to try to get them voluntary departure.  That was granted, but they didn’t get out of jail until December.” 

A neighbor had called the Border Patrol, she said.  He told them he was concerned about the family’s safety. 

The Testers had grown particularly fond of the 21-year-old named Eduardo, and they paid for his ticket back to Mexico when he finally got out of jail.  They’ve kept in touch with him and sent him personal belongings the Border Patrol hadn’t let him take. 

“We were shocked,” Ms. Tester said.  “Shocked that they were illegal, shocked by the whole thing.  It was very emotional.” 

This summer they’re hiring college students, but they don’t know what they’ll do for workers come November and harvesting season.  If there was a way to bring their Mexican workers back, they’d do it in an instant. “We would sponsor them in a minute, absolutely, and it wouldn’t be exploitation,” Ms. Tester said. 

She said they pay good wages and are only interested in finding reliable help.  The Mexicans were paid the same as Vermonters. 

Yes, it turned out they were here illegally, she said, but saving a buck had nothing to do with it.  The Testers needed help; the Mexicans needed work. In the end, the Mexicans probably cost more than the Vermont help, Mr. Tester said, because their housing was included in the deal.

“He’s a sweetheart”

An Orleans County dairy farmer with one full-time Mexican worker says he’d probably have to cut his mid-sized farm in half without that man’s help.  He said he wouldn’t even try again to look for local help.

He and his wife didn’t set out to hire foreign labor.  They simply responded to an advertisement by a placement service saying that good agricultural help was available.  And they were desperate for hard-working reliable help, which they just couldn’t find. “People want $15 an hour, and they don’t want to do anything for it,” the man said.

In February their Spanish speaking worker showed up with documents and moved into the apartment the family provided.  The Vermont family had to pay $1,200 to the placement agency.  A representative of that agency spent three days at the farm getting the worker acclimated and checking out the housing and work conditions. “He checked everything to make sure we had good housing,” the farmer’s wife said.

“The reason we hired him is that we needed a dependable worker, and that’s what he is,” she said.  “He’s awesome.  We love him to death.  He comes to our family functions.  He’s a sweetheart.”

“It’s working out better than we’d even hoped,” the farmer said.  

For one thing, the young man appears to truly like his work, and it’s a wonderful thing to greet a worker at five in the morning who’s happy to be there instead of sullen and complaining, the man said.  “I say good morning, and he says hola.” 

For another, he’s willing to do whatever needs to be done when it needs to be done, the man said, which is a critical factor in farm work.  Eight-hour days are rare.  “It’s unbelievable how good a job he does.”

It’s not cheap labor, he said. It’s reliable labor. He provides housing and utilities and pays above minimum wage, which is $7.25 in Vermont.

He’s come to the conclusion that without the foreign labor, largely Mexican, that has quietly crept onto Vermont farms over the past few years,  farms would be in grave trouble.  “The dairy farms in Vermont would be history.” 

Agriculture Secretary Kerr agrees

Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Steve Kerr pretty much agrees. 

“I don’t think our farmers easily or lightly turned to immigrant labor,” Mr. Kerr said.   “For years they struggled with Americans, they tried really hard to pay them what the business would allow.” 

But attracting and holding farm laborers has been increasingly tough, he said.  “I think farmers have only come to the point where they’re hiring Mexicans because they feel they have absolutely no alternative,” Mr. Kerr said. “The nature of the labor issue is changing.  It’s not so much that farms are getting bigger since 100-cow dairies as well as 1,000-cow dairies are relying on foreign help.  I think it’s a function of the fact that people want a real life, a more varied life.”

Lots of people want to continue farming, but don’t want to be tied 24/7 to their dairies anymore. Plus, Vermont’s economy has diversified, and there just aren’t that many people who want to work the long and unpredictable hours that most types of farming require.  “Folks have different and more choices and that’s made it difficult for farmers to compete.  In a market economy, where there’s a need, there’s a supply, and that seems to be immigrants,” Mr. Kerr said.

“So this very willing and generally hard-working supply of Mexicans pops up,” he said.  “I think our folks have just gravitated toward this ready and able supply.  They know they’re making a bit of a bargain with the devil because a high percentage are illegal.  But what do you do?” 

Many farmers are faced with taking that risk or selling their farm, Mr. Kerr said.  “That’s the trap we’re in.”

He blames the federal government for having a dumb and sometimes self-serving policy towards immigrant labor and said everyone would benefit from a coherent set of rules.  Washington simply hasn’t decided  what it wants to do about 11 million immigrants, and the result is a mess that leaves employers and their workers paranoid.

“Congress needs to get off the dime and make a decision, whatever it’s going to be,” Mr. Kerr said.  “It’s an unhealthy situation that we can’t solve by demagogues saying, deport them all.  Who’s going to do the work of these 11 million people?”

What he’d like to see, specifically, is an expanded guest worker program. 

“It’s a confused and confusing mess, and our farmers are caught in the middle of it,” Mr. Kerr said. “The states have tried for years to attract farm labor, but Americans are just finding other things to do. Somebody has got to milk cows and pick apples.”

Jamaicans often pick much of Vermont’s apple crop, Mr. Kerr said.  They’re here for about six weeks, legally, under a guest worker program. But dairy farming isn’t seasonal. It isn’t finite like apple-picking. “That doesn’t work for dairy because you’re allowed nine months then you have to go home.”

He said Vermont has been working with its Congressional delegation to extend the guest worker time, and was making progress until recently when illegal immigrants suddenly became a hot button political issue.  

Somewhere between 350 and 400 people come into the state each year through the guest worker program for agriculture, called H-2A, said Cris LaDuke, employer resource consultant for the Department of Labor in Vermont.  Those workers can actually stay here ten months or less, and there are strict rules about their employment.  In fact, he said, there are three pages of tiny single-spaced rules that must be followed.

The employer must provide housing, as well as transportation to and from the home country.  Also, for New England, the current minimum wage for a guest worker is $9.16.  That figure is based on a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey done to come up with a pay scale that will not depress local wages, Mr. LaDuke said.

The program allows temporary agricultural workers to come into the U.S. when it can be shown by the employer that there’s not sufficient help to do the work when it needs to be done, Mr. LaDuke said.  But it does limit the work time.  “That’s why, for the most part, dairy farmers have not utilized it,” he said.

Also, H-2A insists that U.S. workers must be hired first, and that, for 50 percent of the contract time, the jobs be left open to Americans. 

Congress is now talking about allowing guest workers to come here for up to three years, Mr. LaDuke said. Immigration and Naturalization will currently allow a worker to be here for three years, but the Department of Labor will not permit a worker to stay with a single employer for that period of time. “The only way that worker could stay here is to go from employer A to employer B to employer C.”

Dairy farmers, who need year-round help, have quietly turned to the Mexican population, and since it’s mostly underground there are few, if any, solid numbers on how many are here, where they are, or what they’re paid.  “I don’t know if anybody tracks them,” Mr. LaDuke said. 

Mr. Kerr’s best guess is that there are 2,000 foreign workers in Vermont, but he emphasizes that it’s a guess. And he says there’s a vague truce between law enforcement and the farm community.  The Border Patrol isn’t that interested in picking up people who are simply trying to make a living, he said. 

On the other hand, the Mexican Consulate has complained that Vermont is more aggressive than other New England states in sweeping up workers. 

The first farm laborers showed up in Addison County maybe ten years ago, he said.  “It has to go back at least ten years, but no one can say for sure because it’s so murky and undercover.  In the last five years, it’s exploded.  They’re on small dairies, big dairies, in between dairies.  They’re everywhere.  They’re a very reliable source of labor.  They can’t exactly go down the road and get another job.”

 If they need to go home for some reason, they often replace themselves with a relative, Mr. Kerr said.  “They’ll say, my mother is dying, and I need to go back, but my cousin will be here in two days to take care of things for you.”  And they tend to replace themselves with someone they know to be hard-working since it would reflect badly on themselves if they didn’t.

That’s pretty much how it’s working out for the dairy farmer mentioned in this story.  His worker is going home in December for three months but is replacing himself with a relative whom he will train.  When he returns to Vermont, the other man will go back.

That family found their worker through an ad, but increasingly it’s word of mouth, Mr. Kerr said.  One farmer knows another who has a Mexican worker. They talk, and the Mexican finds a friend or relative who’d like to come to Vermont. 

“You’d talk to your neighbor, who already has a Mexican,” Mr. Kerr said.  “He’d say, look, I’ll call you back tonight, let me talk to my man and see if he’s got a brother or cousin.  Many times he’ll just ask the worker, are there any more like you, and he knows darn well there is.  And José isn’t going to call home and get some lazy person because he knows that would hurt him.”

Proper documentation

In nearly all cases, workers show up with the proper documentation – an I9 form, which is basically the form that says they have a right to work in the U.S., and a green card.

“That ID lets the farmer off the hook,” Mr. Kerr said.  “He has what’s legally required to employ a foreign worker, so his risk is minimized. Farmers are generally not worried about legal trouble.  They’re worried about getting up in the morning and having no one to help them run the farm because the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) has deported their help.”

As much as three-quarters of the documents are fraudulent, Mr. Kerr said.  “There’s quite a cottage industry in green cards.”

 One sinister aspect of that situation is that  illegal immigrants who are treated as legal workers pay taxes, Social Security, Medicare, just like anyone else, but of course, they can’t collect on what they’ve paid in. 

“One of the ugly little facts of life is that these Mexicans are paying billions in Social Security and Medicare from which they will never benefit,” Mr. Kerr said.  “Congress knows it.”

A county vegetable farmer who employs two Mexicans disagrees with the idea that Mexican worker don’t have choices. 

“They’re not desperate,” he said. They’re reliable, but they know that there’s other work out there.  They’re smart, and his workers will probably end up in managerial positions if he can keep them, he said.  He’s got some good local help, but it’s just not there in quantity.  The Mexicans, who live at his home, are a great addition to the farm, he said. 

What saddens him is that they need to keep a low profile and can’t live a normal life.  They can’t go down to the store and hang around for half an hour because they might draw attention to themselves in this very white state. 

“The sad part of it is that we’re not really comfortable taking them out and about,” the farmer said. “We do, but we go several towns away.

“You know, they’re similar to the old salt of the Earth Vermonters.  You get that same feeling of integrity.”

He said he hired one worker last year who was so-so.  This year he hired two and they’re terrific, and next year he might hire four. 

He’s committed himself to keeping the workers year-round, and hopes he can.  “It is what it is,” he said.  “But I don’t think our society is going to be changing anytime soon so kids decide they want to work instead of play video games.  I think it’s time we acknowledge these people and appreciate them. They’re a really nice addition to this area.

“It’s not about the money,” he said.  “It’s not about saving a buck or two.  To have somebody show up who wants to give it their all day in and day out, you just want to give them everything you can.  I don’t think people really understand the reality of what’s going on.”