The fruits of our labor absurdity

There was a moment when they first started calling this the "Great Recession," in 2008, that Steve Appel thought this might be the time.

Americans might come back to working on the farm.

"It's just common sense, with the depression and high unemployment and what not, that there ought to be local folks looking to come take some of these jobs," says Appel, 58, a wheat farmer in the Palouse in Eastern Washington.

Nope. It hasn't happened. Farm jobs are going unfilled to such a degree that now a huge fruit orchard in Okanogan County, desperate for someone to pick cherries and apples this summer, has turned to flying in hundreds of workers from ... Jamaica.

That's right. From a Caribbean island more than 3,000 miles away.

"That's quite a statement, isn't it?" says Appel, who doubles as president of the Washington Farm Bureau.

I first heard this story recently from KIRO radio host Dave Ross. It's not unusual for local farms to go overseas for help. But this time it's a direct result of get-tough immigration policies.

It started in December, when one of the state's largest orchards, Gebbers Farms in Brewster in Okanogan County, got a visit from the immigration police.

It wasn't a raid, but a "papers" check. The farm was forced to lay off hundreds of Mexican workers — as much as a quarter of the town's population — after those workers couldn't prove they were in the U.S. legally.

Many had been working and living there for years. But they had used fake documents to get their jobs, so the law says they had to go.

What happened next shows how immigration issues don't lend themselves to easy, bumper-sticker solutions.

To replace their depleted Mexican work force, Gebbers Farms posted help-wanted ads for 1,280 jobs picking fruit.

Must be able to lift 60 pounds, climb a ladder while carrying 40 pounds and endure "wet orchards in temperatures from 30 to 100 degrees," the ads said.

Pay: At least $9.19 an hour. But because workers are paid by how much they pick, the average last year was $16.48 an hour for picking cherries and $12.19 an hour for apples, according to the state.

I don't know how many U.S. citizens applied — the state wouldn't say and the farm isn't talking. Obviously, not many. Because the first plane load of 50 Jamaican farm workers shipped out from Kingston to the Okanogan earlier this month.

Up to 300 Jamaicans are expected, to be paid the same rates as stated above. In all, this one farm has applied to bring in more than a thousand temporary foreign workers.

Before a farm can use this agricultural guest-worker program, called H-2A, it has to prove there aren't "able, willing, and qualified United States workers available," says the U.S. Department of Labor website.

Able and qualified, I'm guessing that's no problem. But willing?

"They couldn't find 'em," Appel said. "Believe me, no farmer wants to fly in its workers from Jamaica or anywhere else. For starters, you have to pay for the plane tickets."

Lately, we're on a get-tough kick with illegal workers. That would be fine — except for the part where we won't do the work ourselves. At least not for the pay rates the farm economy says it requires (Appel says he doubts pay of $20 an hour would draw any U.S. applicants.)

So in trying to get tough, instead we get absurd. Firing hundreds of trained workers who already live here while being forced to jet in new ones from thousands of miles away.

Much of our country is in a nativist lather right now, so here's an idea that's probably a nonstarter. We should expand immigration, not curb it. Let more in legally. And as this story shows, it makes more sense to retain the illegal workers who are already here than to try to drive them out.

Instead of firing them, why not just give the Mexican workers in the Okanogan work visas? If we won't do their jobs, why not let them?

I know, I know — that's amnesty. Now a dirty word.

There's another word for it, though: reality.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.