News goes from bad to worse for some local growers

GRANDVIEW, Yakima County — Washington fruit and vegetable growers — hard-pressed to find enough workers to harvest their crops — are bracing for the latest hit: a new regulation requiring them to fire workers who lack valid Social Security numbers.

The rule could strike a blow across the industry, in which illegal immigrants represent up to 70 percent of seasonal agricultural employees, according to some estimates.

Employers unable to resolve a discrepancy in a worker's Social Security number within 90 days must fire the employee or risk criminal charges and fines.

Farmers say it's becoming more difficult to find help — legal or illegal — and fear the start of a troubling new era in labor recruitment.

"This is insane," said Gerald Dion, who hires some 70 workers at the peak of the harvest season on his 250 acres of apples, cherries and grapes. "Some farmers are just going to ignore this. What else can you do?"

The 90 days employers have to fix the problem is just enough time to get through the fall harvest before they would have to comply.

"If you get a letter in November and the worker is no longer there, you can't do anything about it," said Dan Fazio, labor specialist for the Washington Farm Bureau. "The rule doesn't tell seasonal employers what to do when workers show up next year. Seasonal employers didn't sign on to be immigration officers for the country."

However, the National Farm Bureau has warned growers that they could be liable if they hired the same worker with a problem Social Security number for next year's harvest.

Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League, said he thinks the new rule will lead to huge instability among employers and workers. "There will be a lot more employee turnover — the musical-employee phenomenon."

From the fields, fruits and vegetables flow to myriad storage and processing centers. Employees at one such facility already are on edge.

"They come up to me and say, 'Hey boss, what's going to happen?' " said a processing official. "I got several that are ready to run right now."

Many processors already conduct Social Security reviews of workers.

"We tend to get more of the folks who have been in the country, and have gone through the process to become legal," said Bruce Frazier, general manager of Valley Fruit. "But we do ... have to let some go."

Frazier said the Social Security Administration only allows a company to check a handful of numbers a day. That's a problem for the 50 farming operations that Valley Fruit represents. "They need a lot of people quickly, and are allowed to check a few."

The risk of fines could increase the use of labor contractors. Such contractors may write payroll checks, and that would make them — and not farmers — responsible for employees with mismatched Social Security numbers.

Jared Fewel said his family farming operations — spread out over the fields around Grandview and also in Oregon — require up to 450 people to harvest fruit and other crops.

Around Grandview, he said, he used to hire local workers.

But those workers are scarce. So for the past two years, Fewel said, he has used a labor contractor who pays workers, houses them in a Boardman, Ore., motel and transports them more than 160 miles each day to work in his Grandview field of ripening watermelons.

Are they all legal?

"We don't ask," Fewel said.