Work visas helping Mexicans, U.S. firms - Guest laborers get good pay, safe passage; busy companies find source of manpower

Dallas Morning News - November 27th 2000.

By Brendan M. Case, Angela Shah

Rodrigo Dominguez has spent 22 years dodging the U.S. Border Patrol and toiling illegally for American bosses. Now Uncle Sam is rolling out the red carpet.

So is Acme Building Brands. The Fort Worth-based company already legally employs 45 Mexicans at factories in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, and it wants to hire Mr. Dominguez and up to 80 others.

Because of demands from companies such as Acme, natives of the hardscrabble state of Zacatecas in the highlands of north-central Mexico can hear opportunity knocking.

"All my life, I've worked in the United States and come back to see my family," said Mr. Dominguez, 34, who landed his first job picking oranges in Florida at age 12. "Now I'm going to have benefits just like American workers, and I won't have to hide from the government."

Mexican President-elect, Vicente Fox, has proposed sending hundreds of thousands of his countrymen to work legally in the United States, an idea critics call unrealistic. But a pilot program in Zacatecas is already sending scores of workers to Texas with U.S. backing - and is showing how documented Mexican workers satisfy economic needs on both sides of the border.

"Our employment situation was very serious, and we just about exhausted ways to find people," said John C. Hunter, Acme's manager of human resources and industrial relations, who has traveled to Zacatecas to interview prospective workers. "We can help these people here with a fair wage and good benefits. They'll benefit us and we'll benefit them."

In this record 10th year of economic expansion, companies throughout the United States face a severe labor shortage. Texas unemployment levels, at 3.9 percent in October, are scraping record lows. The North Texas Chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors predicted that construction projects will create 15,000 new jobs over the next three years in an industry already hard- pressed to meet its labor needs.

By contrast, Mexico has a surplus of laborers who will gladly take jobs shunned by Americans. Hundreds of thousands of them swim across rivers and hike over deserts to cross the border illegally, often paying outlaw guides called "coyotes" more than $1,000 to reach the United States.

Expanding grants

The United States already grants a small number of work visas to foreign citizens each year. Agribusiness employers have long used so- called H2A visas to import thousands of foreign workers, most of them Mexican, for seasonal work. Congress recently boosted the number of H1B visas available to technology workers.

Now, industrial and service companies are resorting to H2B visas for low-skilled non-agricultural workers. To qualify, companies must show they can't find employees locally. The U.S. Department of Labor requires them to pay prevailing wages, often higher than the minimum wage.

To help fill the need for workers from quarries to kitchens, without fueling undocumented immigration, U.S. diplomats in Monterrey helped establish the Zacatecas program with Gov. Ricardo Monreal six months ago. Their efforts represent the first time the U.S. government has worked with a Mexican state to recruit guest workers since at least 1964, when the Bracero Program stopped sending workers north.

Now U.S. officials are expanding the Zacatecas initiative - and planning a conference about the program in Monterrey in early December. Their Zacatecas counterparts have discussed work contracts with labor-hungry American companies from Nevada to New Jersey.

"A lot of U.S. employers depend on Mexican labor," said Armando Esparza, who oversees Zacatecas' labor recruitment program. "But Mexicans risk their lives to cross the border, and they make coyotes rich by paying $1,500 to $4,000."

Cloudy future

The Immigration and Naturalization Service said it granted 17,285 H2B visas in fiscal year 2000, which ended in September. That was far below the 66,000 that can be issued each year but 22 percent above the 14,193 granted in 1995.

In Texas alone, the state workforce commission processed 646 H2B visas for state companies in the year ended Sept. 30, twice the number in 1999. Given the state's economic juggernaut, there could be room for more: Texas service industries added 77,100 jobs during the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, and construction generated 26,500 more.

"I suspect that programs like the H2B are probably the reason we can continue to add ... [jobs] at such a rapid pace," said Clayton Griffis, a labor market analyst at the Texas Workforce Commission.

To be sure, one big question clouds the future of guest worker programs: Will American workers and union leaders stand for them if the economy slows?

"As soon as the economy goes down, it's one of the first rallying cries we hear," said Carole Wilson, a political science researcher at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "So unless Mexico can get some sort of agreement that these allotted visas will continue forever, I have a feeling that this is just a temporary effort."

A good situation

Mr. Fox has said he would like to see a permanent labor agreement in place between the countries, and eventually a common North American labor market. For now, however, he plans to lobby U.S. officials to raise the number of H2B visas available for Mexicans, perhaps to as many as 250,000, according to advisers.

That remains unlikely, political analysts say. But at a time when the U.S. economy draws more than 300,000 undocumented Mexicans each year, U.S. employers relish the prospect of more legal guest workers.

That could lead to other programs like the one that has joined poor workers in Zacatecas with labor-starved companies in Texas, an effort that has yielded 200 work visas so far.

Zacatecas harbors little industry, and thousands of its people flee the arid mountain state each year to work illegally in the United States. Families receive a large chunk of the $6 billion to $8 billion that undocumented workers send to Mexico annually from the United States.

American officials hope the Zacatecas program will reduce abuses associated with H2B visas. The U.S. Consulate in Monterrey once discovered a labor recruiter who was charging people $1,500 for the permits, even though the processing cost usually falls below $200.

"This is one of those rare moments in history when you have a win- win situation," said Mehron P. Azarmehr, an Austin immigration lawyer whose firm, Azarmehr & Associates P.C., helped bring together Acme and Zacatecas. "It's good for the workers, it's good for the companies, and it brings the two governments together."

Interest in legal Mexican workers is growing nationwide.

A Nevada immigration lawyer recently contacted Zacatecas officials about arranging visas for casino and hotel workers. In New Jersey, hotels, golf courses and landscapers hunger for laborers, said Noel H. Goldman, president of Marcus Drake Consultants of Park Ridge, N. J.

Mr. Goldman already arranges visas for up to 700 people each year from the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and other countries. After a visit to Zacatecas, he's looking into visas for 1,000 Zacatecans.

"Demand for labor is overwhelming," he said. "I found that the people in Zacatecas were very, very cooperative and they were very intelligent. ... We're looking for a big increase from Mexico over the coming year."

Happy employer

So is Eva Marie Wesemann, human resources director at L&H Packing in San Antonio. L&H Packing slaughters 1,100 head of cattle a day and processes the meat into hamburger and taco beef. It supplies restaurants such as Wendy's, Whataburger and Taco Bell throughout Texas and the Southwest.

The jobs at L&H are physically demanding, and they pay only $5.62 an hour, rising to $10 an hour for overtime. Some of the 700 American workers routinely worked grueling hours, and some of them told Ms. Wesemann they needed a rest. But she simply couldn't find new people.

"I wasn't getting the level and caliber of employees I needed, and I wasn't getting the volume," she said.

Then Mr. Azarmehr steered her toward Zacatecas. On her first trip there, she hired 52 people, including 40 who could handle knives as if they were professional butchers. She'll be going back for more this fall.

"We've had an absolutely wonderful turnaround when it comes to our ability to produce in our plants," she said. "Our million-dollar [customer] accounts, who don't care to hear if we're having staffing problems, have been very happy."

New employees such as brothers Fernando and Ruben Rojero Miranda feel lucky to keep the butchery humming, despite 12-hour days and other on-the-job hazards.

Fernando Rojero's arms broke out in a rash after he spent weeks making choice cuts from the carcasses of freshly slaughtered cattle.

"I'm bathed in sweat and blood all day, which is not very agreeable," said Fernando Rojero, 43. "But I'm making $400 a week. [In Zacatecas,] it's hard to find any work at all."

Grateful workers

At home in Villanueva, Zacatecas, the Rojeros would probably earn $80 a month as day laborers, at least when work was available.

Sitting on their porch near a dry streambed in Villanueva, the two spoke of using their U.S. paychecks to roof extra rooms for their children - and of working their way out of abject poverty.

"Jobs in Mexico only pay you enough to eat, at most," said Rubn Rojero, 41. "Working in the United States is a sacrifice, but it helps you get ahead."

Other Mexican workers have found themselves working for Acme in Millsap, a rural community 40 miles west of Fort Worth. The local factory, which has perched atop rich shale deposits since 1891, churns out thousands of bricks a day.

Acme has enough potential to attract the likes of Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. bought the company earlier this year. But its labor needs are so acute that executives began looking to Mexico early this year.

On a recent afternoon in the picturesque colonial city of Zacatecas, more than 100 men with work shirts and rough hands gathered in the venerable statehouse.

State officials had screened them for criminal records and health problems, and now it was time to face Mr. Hunter, the human resources executive, and his colleagues.

Roberto Hernandez, 44, once worked at a Dallas landscaping company. Now the chance to earn between $7 and $15 an hour at Acme, plus safe and legal passage across the border, was drawing him back to the area.

"I showed I could handle the work in the United States, I showed I was good at it," he said.

"And I have six kids, so I have a big need to work."

Brendan M. Case reported from Zacatecas. Angela Shah reported from Dallas and Millsap.