6/1 – 11Alive News (VIDEO) – Georgia farmers face labor shortage in wake of immigration law | 11alive.com

Georgia farmers face labor shortage in wake of immigration law | 11alive.com.

 

6:07 PM, Jun 1, 2011  |   comments

Written by Jerry Carnes

Migrant workers pick cucumbers in Sumter County

 

ATLANTA, Ga — Farmers throughout Georgia are complaining that a worker shortage has put their crops at risk, a result, they say, of Georgia’s new immigration law.

Governor Nathan Deal is aware of the situation, and has asked the Agriculture Commissioner to investigate.

In Sumter County, a crew of 30 migrant workers picks cucumbers from a field owned by Minor Brothers Farms. Grower Dick Minor says the same crew had 45 or 50 workers last year.

Migrant worker Angelo Ybarra said many of the people who worked beside him last season are now avoiding Georgia.

“Immigration laws, that’s why they’re not coming back,” said Ybarra. “Mostly they’re going back to Mexico.

Georgia’s new get tough immigration law doesn’t go into effect for another month, but Minor is afraid his worker shortage will be 50 or more by the end of the growing season. He fears it will result in crops left in the field.

“We’re just at the beginning of our season,” said Minor, who grows cucumbers, beans, and watermelon. “If we get I the middle of June we’ll have more fields coming on, and it will be virtually impossible to keep up with the harvest unless we get some more labor.”

Minor said his workers provide documentation of legal status to the Department of Labor before they hit the fields. Still, he claims immigrants with that documentation are going to work in other states.

“We think it’s the perception of the bill,” said Minor. “The perception of being harassed, of being checked out by every law enforcement officer in the state, everywhere they go.”

Governor Nathan Deal, who campaigned on immigration reform and signed the immigration bill, is aware. He has written a letter asking Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black to “assess how this legislation is impacting agriculture operations.

“With this assessment, I hope to have a clearer picture of a reliable workforce for our farmers,” Governor Deal wrote.

“We have been asked by the Governor to assess the availability of labor for producers of fruits, vegetables and other commodities,” Black said in a statement. “We will report back to the Governor by June 10th on what we have found through our survey of farmers.
“Having a stable legal supply of labor is something agriculture needs,” said Black.
Minor said he’s tried to increase his workforce by hiring local people. He’s advertised with the Department of Labor, but so far has had no takers to work in the field.

“They’re not willing to take it,” said Miguel Tovar, who oversees the packing house at Minor Brothers Farms. “It’s too hot, and they say they’re not used to it.”

Meanwhile, there’s a waiting list of people who want jobs inside at the packing house. Employees there fear if fewer crops are making it from the field into the boxes, their jobs will be in jeopardy.

“I don’t know what I would do,” said Felicia Angry. “I’ve been working with them so long. We need these jobs.”

Dick Minor said it’s possible he and other farmers could lose as much as 30-percent of their crop if an answer to the labor shortage isn’t found.

“We’re a 1.1-billion dollar industry,” said Minor. “If we lose 30-percent of that, that’s a huge economic hit for our state.”

5/31 – CNN – Georgia immigration reform bill stresses growers – CNN.com

Georgia immigration reform bill stresses growers – CNN.com.

sing fake work documents and allows police broader latitude to check immigration status. The bill is modeled on similar, and controversial, legislation in Arizona.

The result, the growers say, is a scramble to get fruits and vegetables off the ground before they rot.

“The reports we’re getting back from our growers is that they are getting between 30 and 50 percent of the work crews that they need to get the crops in,” said Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, which represents mostly medium- and large-size operations in the state’s $1.1 billion fruit and vegetable business.

Growers say that the improving economy and a consequent slight rebound in construction could be siphoning some of the mostly Hispanic workforce they usually depend on. Some workers likely went home as the long recession dragged on, they say.

But the primary reason workers aren’t coming to Georgia, growers say, is the legislation.

“I know a lot of crew leaders,” said Jason Clark Berry of Blueberry Farms of Georgia. “Everyone I’ve talked to from Vidalia to Baxley, where my farm is, down through Homerville has said the exact same thing. People are afraid to come.”

In response to growers’ concerns, Gov. Nathan Deal sent a letter last week to the state’s agriculture secretary, asking him to look into the shortage. Deal, who called the legislation a “responsible step forward in the absence of federal action” when he signed it this month, has not commented publicly on the inquiry. A spokeswoman said Tuesday she did not believe the inquiry and the legislation were linked.

In addition to the immigration-status checks, the law requires employers to participate in a federal work eligibility program and imposes penalties of up to 15 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 for workers convicted of using faked documents to get a job.

Before passage of the legislation, agricultural interests and representatives of the state’s hospitality industry said they feared the law would have wide-ranging economic impacts.

So far, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Chamber of Commerce says, the organization continues to hear concerns, but it has seen no verified reports of losses associated with the bill outside the agriculture industry.

But in the fruit and vegetable industry, the loss this season could total 25 percent to 30 percent of the annual take for such farms — a cut of at least $250 million, Hall said.

Such a loss could force some already stressed small operators, especially those who focus on growing vegetables, out of business, he said. For others, it could mean a switch to row crops such as soybeans, which don’t require field labor and aren’t as affected by the legislation, he said.

It’s unclear whether increased costs or lowered productivity being reported by producers will translate to higher prices for consumers.

Although Georgia growers say they comply with federal requirements to verify that workers are in the country legally and are eligible to work, they also acknowledge that much of their workforce is likely illegal and working on falsified documents.

More than half of seasonal agricultural workers in the United States are believed to be in the country illegally, according to the Immigration Policy Center and the United Farm Workers.

Hall said he doesn’t know for sure, but has no reason to doubt such numbers are true in Georgia.

Growers are being “transparently hysterical,” said D.A. King, an immigration reform advocate who worked closely on the legislation with its sponsor, state Rep. Matt Ramsey, R-Peachtree City.

He believes growers simply don’t want to pay the higher labor costs associated with hiring legal immigrants and said an “unlimited” supply of foreign workers is available through a federal agricultural visa program.

“If our bill has made Georgia less attractive to illegal labor, then it’s a huge success,” King said.

Growers say the federal visa program, called H2A, is unreliable, inflexible, imposes significant costs and is barely able to produce the 7,000 workers Hall said it brings to Georgia. The state needs at least 40,000 workers to harvest crops, he said.

Brent Brinkley, who owns a farm-supply business and grows cantaloupe in Pelham, Georgia, said he isn’t opposed to ensuring workers are in the country legally. He just doesn’t like that his competitors in Alabama and Tennessee aren’t held to the same standards.

“I understand the reason the law was passed and you can argue it easily both ways,” he said. “It would be selfish of me to say, ‘Don’t tighten up on immigration because it hurts my pocketbook.’”

But handling the issue on a state-by-state basis makes for an unfair playing field that gives some states unfair advantages, he said.

Proposed fixes have included repealing the law, reforming the federal visa program, and bringing in more domestic workers through the state Department of Labor.

For Berry, the blueberry grower, nothing being proposed now makes much sense. Local workers don’t last long in the fields or don’t produce much if they do, and fixing the agricultural visa program will take too long to salvage this year’s crops.

“Basically, they’re cutting off the only solution we have,” Berry said. “There’s got to be a better way.”

6/1 – ajc.com – Here comes the lawsuit to challenge Georgia’s immigration law | Political Insider

Here comes the lawsuit to challenge Georgia’s immigration law | Political Insider.

3:40 pm June 1, 2011, by jgalloway

Two weeks after Gov. Nathan Deal signed a strict illegal immigration bill into law, the ACLU and a coalition of other civil rights organizations are about to take the new law to court.

The law permits law enforcement officers to inquire about an individual’s U.S. residency status – but only when an individual is stopped for other causes.

The civil rights groups say the Georgia law “establishes a ‘show-me-your-papers police state.” A 2 p.m. Thursday press conference at the state Capitol has been scheduled to discuss the lawsuit – which we will presume will be filed in federal court.

Georgia’s bill is patterned after one in Arizona. The U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld an Arizona statute requiring that businesses use the federal E-Verify data base to screen new hires. Georgia has a similar provision.

- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider

5/31 – CBSAtlanta(CNN) – ‘Tequila Party’ Aims To Increase Latino Voting Bloc – Atlanta News Story – WGCL Atlanta

‘Tequila Party’ Aims To Increase Latino Voting Bloc – Atlanta News Story – WGCL Atlanta.

By Nick Valencia CNN

POSTED: 2:47 pm EDT May 31, 2011

UPDATED: 2:47 pm EDT May 31, 2011

(CNN) — By now, people in the United States and elsewhere in the world are familiar with the Tea Party, but there’s a new social movement on the political block — it’s called the “Tequila Party,” and its leaders say the group is serving as a wake-up call to the Latino voting bloc.Tequila Party organizers describe their movement as a nonpartisan group that launched this year on May 5 — Cinco de Mayo, to mark the Mexican holiday. It has enlisted both Democrats and Republicans to get the more than 20 million eligible Latino voters to become “consistent primary and general election voters,” the movement’s website says.In other words, its organizers say, it is not a political party in the traditional sense. It’s more about registering to vote and then voting than supporting particular candidates.”I think first you have to understand the humor of calling it the Tequila Party. We are a culture that likes humor,” the movement’s main political consultant, Agustin “Gus” Garcia, told CNN.”We’re not Puritans. Humor is part of our politics as well. We could have called it the ‘Cafe con Leche Party.’ You have to laugh because there is no logic in racism.”In 2008, during now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s run to become president, Garcia was her national Latin co-chair. A Democrat, Garcia said he believes there is no better time for the Tequila Party movement.”There is fertile ground right now for a message like this,” he added. “We’re appealing to a large group in this nation. We’re not appealing to a minority, but to a mass of people. We’re united by culture and language.”National Tequila Party leader Belinda “Deedee” Garcia-Blase told CNN that the movement “is a platform for us to position ourselves as consistent voters.”"This is not a movement in place to endorse any politician whatsoever,” she said in a phone interview from Tucson, Arizona, where the movement is based. “We’re not going to bash politicians like the Tea Party does. This is about voting and why we’re in the situation we’re in.”The goal is to influence the 2012 elections, Garcia-Blase said. The group is now in the final stages of organizing a national tour of concerts, events, dinners and rallies in 20 states that will “encourage a massive Latino ‘Get Out The Vote,’” she said.The kickoff event is June 4 in Tucson, Arizona.The U.S. Hispanic population grew 43 percent in 10 years between 2000 and 2010 — four times faster than the total U.S. population — according to figures from the 2010 census. Currently, people of Hispanic origin make up only about 9% of the eligible electorate, according the Pew Hispanic Center.Still, Hispanics were one of the most sought-after voting groups in the 2008 presidential election and were heavily concentrated in at least four battleground states in the presidential campaign — Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.”We’re one-out-of-four people entering college. We’re now becoming more obvious. We’re national now,” said Garcia, who is a Cuban-American who immigrated as a child to the United States in 1961 and now lives in Miami. “We’re no longer regional. We are reflective of a world that is changing. Latins are the neighbor next door that brings global society.”Garcia-Blase is also head of Somos Republican (We Are Republican), the largest Hispanic GOP group in the nation. She says the genesis of the Tequila Party grew out of frustration with the Obama administration’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform and legislation including the DREAM Act, Garcia-Blase says. But she is quick to clarify the movement is not “anti-Obama, but pro-social justice.”The DREAM — Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors — Act would offer a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children. In December, it failed to pass the Senate during a lame-duck session of Congress.”The immigration issue is the number-one concern to Latinos right now,” Garcia-Blase says. “We’ve witnessed over 800,000 Latinos get deported. We’ve heard the cries and the pain and the suffering from families who are being forced apart. Now is a time for us to become better voters.”Garcia-Blase concedes the idea for the Tequila Party was not originally hers. She credits Fernando Romero as being the inspiration behind the movement. Romero is president of the nonpartisan Nevada group Hispanics in Politics.”The movement is important because it unites efforts from the two major parties and others who want to get involved on issues that their party is not dealing with or their party may be in disapproval of,” Romero told CNN from his office in Las Vegas. “This is a collective resolution for the Hispanic community. To this moment I have not received any negative feedback.”Romero first got involved in politics more than 30 years ago as a volunteer for now-Sen. Harry Reid’s campaign for lieutenant governor of Nevada.”The principle thing for the Tequila Party movement is border education,” Romero said. “Everything else will come through once we accomplish a good community empowerment movement that will allow us to be as effective as we can. The challenges may be that non-Hispanics may try to make an issue of this as a third-party movement. That’s a misinterpretation of what we’re trying to accomplish.”For first-generation Cuban-America Felix Castillo, 19, a rising Badson College sophomore in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and an unregistered voter, the Tequila Party movement is a good idea in principle, but he’s skeptical about its ability to succeed in accomplishing its goals.”I don’t think it’s necessary,” Castillo told CNN. “I think people my age are really hard-headed. … I really don’t think people my age are going to listen to them.”"They’re going to have to do more than just concerts (to succeed),” he added.University of Washington Political Science Associate Professor Matt A. Barreto is also skeptical. He has conducted political research on Latinos for more than 15 years and is currently a pollster for Latino Decisions, an independent polling firm that began in 2007.”My impression is that it’s 99.9% driven by Republican Latinos. Everyone that I’ve talked to about it believes that to be the case. It’s more of an effort to try and get the Republican Party to take the immigration issue more seriously and to not ignore the Latino vote,” Barreto told CNN in a phone interview.”Based on history, I think they’re going to continue issuing press releases and they may hold some events surrounding immigration issues, but I’m not sure they’re currently set up with the organizational capacity to conduct massive voter registration drives,” he added.Garcia-Blase says organizers have not received any funding from Republicans for the Tequila Party and reiterated to CNN that the movement is not at all affiliated with the Republican Party.”A lot of our leaders are Democrat,” she said.Right now, Garcia-Blase says, the group has more than 55 grass-roots leaders throughout the nation working to get sponsors for the rallies, which are planned in places with a conventional Latino presence including Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami, but also in non-traditional Hispanic cities like Des Moines, Iowa; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Topeka, Kansas.”We’re working with a group of pro-immigrant-minded business leaders in Florida for financing. It would cost between $5,000 and $6,000 per metropolitan city. We want to bring in a good entertainment like Shakira and Santana. If we don’t get the national acts, we’ll go local,” she said.Garcia-Blase, a sixth generation Mexican-American whose parents worked in the potato fields of Idaho when she was a child, says that for now, 100% of her focus is on the pro-Latino movement.The pro-immigration reform advocate says she plans on changing her political affiliation to independent so that she can be taken seriously by critics as a legitimate social leader.”I used to be a rah-rah Republican. To heck with that,” Garcia-Blase said. “This isn’t about politics. It’s about people. I’ve always maintained I’m a real Republican, but I’ve been called names because I defend my community and put people before party. I still get attacked for that.”

Copyright CNN 2011