New migrants’ short United States experience translates into a less-developed network to assist their mobility and employment. As a result, they hold the worst and lowest-paid jobs, and are usually the last to be hired and the first to be fired as the peak harvest seasons run their course. In Santa Maria’s strawberry harvest, for instance, they typically occupy the crest of the high employment season and move on to other production sites before the season is completely over. Many find daily employment with a variety of employers but only to fill momentary gaps, to aid short-handed crews, or to meet special urgent contracts. Most, in effect, secure employment through farm-labor contractors. New migrants, in contrast with traditional migrants, are much more mobile and versatile. They travel up and down the California geography, and in and out of Oregon and Washington, following a variety of crops. Some chase the berry harvest, starting on the Mexican border in February and ending up in the state of Washington by mid-June, always striving to remain on the crest of the peak harvest season when piece-rate earnings are at their best. Others become involved in other highly seasonal crops such as cherries, asparagus, 30 plant pot pickle cucumbers, raisin grapes, oranges, and apples which are spread out throughout both the west coast geography and the agricultural calendar.
In the Santa Maria Valley, new migrants are especially present during the peak strawberry season, April-June, and again in September to participate in the short but intense wine-grape harvest. Since most new migrants come from highly impoverished rural regions of Mexico, they travel in large family groups without children or other unemployable dependents who could slow them down or hinder full employment during the course of their trek. It is not uncommon for these families to leave children and other dependents behind in shanty towns and camps located on the Mexican side of the border while the most productive and employable members seek jobs and wages in the United States. Many of the interviewed new migrants enter California in February and return to their home communities in southern Mexico by mid-November. During their stay in the Santa Maria Valley they typically crowd into local hotels and small unfurnished apartments. In 1991 and 1993 we observed as many as eight workers sharing a double hotel room and up to sixteen individuals jammed into a small one-bedroom apartment. The incidence of undocumented workers among both traditional and new migrants is quite high. Data collected in 1993 reveals that as many as fifty to sixty percent of traditional migrants are undocumented. Moreover, those who do possess appropriate authorization to work in the United States only received it recently through IRCA’s SAW program. In contrast, only ten to fifteen percent of the new immigrants are documented.
All, nonetheless, hold some sort of paperwork which is required to obtain employment. The high incidence of unauthorized/undocumented workers, compounded with the fact that many actually hold counterfeit documents, makes migrants into a population that resists enumeration and identification, a circumstance that is further complicated by migrants’ easy mobility and unconventional housing arrangements. Finally, with respect to census-taking efforts, it is important to emphasize that there are few migrants in the Santa Maria Valley by April 1. At that time, the vast majority of migrants are either just starting off on their annual treks from their home communities in Mexico or are busy harvesting strawberries in other southern producing areas such as Baja California, northern San Diego County, and the Oxnard- Ventura plain where the fruit matures earlier. As indicated above, the thick of the migrant presence in Santa Maria does not occur until strawberries reach their peak in mid-to-late April. Approximately one thousand individuals who form part of Santa Maria’s sizable agricultural labor force maintain a permanent home base in the U.S.-Mexico border area, either in small colonias in or near El Centro, Calexico, and Yuma or in Mexico itself, especially in or near the city of Mexicali. From these communities they regularly commute to the Santa Maria Valley where they participate in the lettuce harvest which extends from spring to fall. Most of the border area commuters are employed by a few large corporations that have come to monopolize the lettuce industry by, among other means, maintaining production sites in different parts of the state: in Santa Maria and other coastal valleys in the summer and in Imperial Valley in the winter.
Some of these companies regularly transport farm equipment, vacuum cooling plants, and office facilities over great distances, from summer to winter producing sites and back. Large lettuce producers have also developed a highly specialized and stable labor force that travels from site to site as needed. These are the lechugueros or specialized lettuce harvesters , who maintain a permanent home base in the border area, near winter production sites, from where they migrate seasonally to summer production sites such as the Santa Maria Valley. Lechugueros explain that in the border area they find affordable housing, lower cost of living, and a more favorable sociocultural environment. Few of them are originally from the border itself but after the Bracero Program was cancelled settled there as an ideal location from which to access U.S. employment. Many of them can be traced back to the traditional sending communities of Central Mexico. Professional lechugueros are a breed apart among California’s agricultural laborers in that they enjoy nearly year-round employment, always with the same employer, by following the crop from production site to production site. They also earn relatively high wages, $1,200 to $1,500 monthly with some benefits. At home on the border and during the winter months, while lechugueros are busy with the winter harvest, other family members also find part-time, intermittent employment in local agricultural endeavors. During the summer, however, only lechugueros migrate to the distant production sites, leaving behind dependents and other family members who, nonetheless, continue to seek part-time occasional farm jobs near home. Migrants return home occasionally, every two or three weeks, for a few days to visit family and friends, and to rest. During their stay in the Santa Maria Valley, lechugueros rent apartments which they share with other commuters to cut down expenses. A few experienced commuters have installed small, grow raspberries in a pot dilapidated trailers in the area which they use as a temporary second home. Most of the lechugueros we interviewed in 1991 and 1993 are documented and have been so for some time. A few who do not possess either “green cards” or citizenship use commuter border passes issued to them years ago by INS which entitle them to work in the United States while living on the Mexican side of the border. Those who, before 1986, lacked adequate documentation were subsequently able to legalize by accessing IRCA’s SAW program with the encouragement, sponsorship, and assistance of their employers. Because lechugueros, relatively speaking, lead fairly conventional lives, they are much less apprehensive about being identified and counted and, as a result, offer little resistance to census takers and other surveyors. Nonetheless, those who maintain a permanent home base on the Mexican side of the border are likely to be missed during the census count, while those who live on the U.S. side risk being counted twice owing to the circumstance that in the early spring they typically occupy two homes. Above we have described and categorized the bulk of the work force employed by Santa Maria Valley agriculture. The four types of workers we have described thus far have established some degree of routine or recurrent behavior over the past years according to opportunities created by their farm jobs and/or specific arrangements they have made with the larger family group to which they belong. The four described categories account for approximately eighty-five percent of the farm workers employed by Santa Maria farms during the course of a complete agricultural cycle. There is, in addition, an undetermined number of single unattached workers, mostly young males, who spontaneously show up in the valley during peak employment seasons and who remain there only as long as employment is available; otherwise they quickly move on to other work locations. Although it is difficult to ascertain the exact number of these transients, we estimate there is a constant pool of 300 to 500 such workers in the Santa Maria Valley at any given time.
Overall, up to two or three thousand individuals may pass through Santa Maria during the course of the year; some remain in the valley only for a few days while others may stay there for several months. Interviews conducted in 1991 and 1993 reveal that some of these workers follow a preconceived itinerary designed to land short-term jobs in especially demanding crops through a network of farm labor contractors . Indeed, a few of the interviewed transients were originally recruited by farm-labor contractors in the border area and in their home communities deep in Mexico to perform a specific job in California and, once completed, they were referred to other labor contractors in other work locations. Most, however, are on their own and seek out farm-labor contractors upon arriving at a new location to inquire for work and shelter. Single unattached transients land the worst possible jobs and receive rock-bottom wages, often at rates below the minimum wage. They are usually employed as day laborers and they rarely know for how long or for how much. In a good week a transient worker can yield as much as $200 but typically monthly earnings rarely exceed $400. They, moreover, experience long and frequent periods of unemployment between jobs. Despite their erratic and transient lives, these workers continue to be strongly attached to their families in their home communities in Mexico to whom they send part of their wages whenever they can spare them. Many, in effect, aspire to return home before Christmas with presents, new clothes, and $1,000 cash in the pocket. It is, however, not uncommon for transients to remain in the U.S. for several consecutive seasons, only to return home when they are broke, homesick, and/or ill. As would be expected, few transient workers are documented but most have acquired fake documents. While in Santa Maria, transients find shelter either in one of the few labor camps still open, or in garages, tool sheds, shacks and trailers offered by their employers at a price. Many camp out in the fields, in boxcars, or in their cars. Only when the weather forces them will they choose to stay in one of the local hotels that caters to migrant farm workers. They are, as a result, the most difficult workers to track down, find, interview, and enumerate. We came across them, almost fortuitously, when we examined and interviewed members of strawberry, wine grape, and celery harvest crews. In this report we have described the forces that attract immigrant and migrant farm workers from Mexico to the Santa Maria Valley , and we have described a variety of forms and behaviors of that immigrant and migrant labor force. Moreover, in the process we have identified some of the circumstances that hinder an accurate accounting of this population. In this section, we draw upon the information we have gathered in order to propose strategies to improve the identification, description, and enumeration of immigrant and migrant farm workers in California. One unassailable conclusion derived from our field research in the Santa Maria Valley is that a considerable number of immigrant and migrant farm workers prefer not to be identified and, hence, will actively avoid and frustrate efforts designed to enumerate them. They will, moreover, often provide erroneous, false, and incomplete information when they are pressed by surveyors. Some farm workers are reluctant to cooperate because they do not possess appropriate authorization to be and to work in the United States; others, although authorized, resist to protect family members and friends who are not; and many, although they have nothing to hide, have a deeply imbedded mistrust of any official government effort to identify, describe, and enumerate them. Many have at one time or another lived and worked illegally in the United States, have experienced apprehension, deportation, and harassment, and hence maintain a cautious, suspicious attitude towards all government officials, especially those who want to know more about them. Active resistance to identification and description compounds the well-known difficulties encountered in attempts to enumerate immigrant and migrant farm workers due to, among other circumstances, their frequent mobility, their unconventional housing arrangements, and language barriers.