Farmhand Legal Status Proof Scarce : Aliens May Not Have Work Records, Aid From Employers

Today looms as an important day in the life of Antonio Solorio.

A native of Michoacan, Mexico, Solorio now lives in Florida, where he moves from farm to farm harvesting squash, tomatoes, limes and other crops. He estimates that he has had 30 employers during his three years in the United States. But like several hundred thousand other farm workers, many of them in California, he lives in this country illegally.

Solorio, 31, hopes to change that. The provision of last year’s immigration reform law that permits “special agricultural workers” to apply for amnesty takes effect today, and as a farm worker, Solorio merely must pay the $185 filing fee and demonstrate that he lived and worked in the United States for at least 90 days in the year ending May 1, 1986.

Tough to Prove

He says he qualifies. But like many farm workers in this country illegally, he will have a hard time proving it.

Employment records are scarce and often non-existent for itinerant farm workers. And beyond that, many employers will not cooperate because, advocates for the farm workers say, their employees cannot demand higher wages as long as they lack legal status. Moreover, because some employers failed to pay Social Security taxes on their farm workers, they fear prosecution if they acknowledge having hired them.

The luckiest farm workers will present pay stubs or other job-related documents to prove that they qualify for legal status. But the Immigration and Naturalization Service has said it will also consider affidavits from employers and from other farm workers.

“I feel very shaky,” Solorio acknowledged through an interpreter. “Five or six employers have said, yes, they will sign an affidavit, but 15 have said no.”

Farmers’ Fear

Experts say farm workers such as Solorio are caught in a clash between the illegal immigrants’ desire for autonomy and farmers’ fear that immigrants, once they are legal, no longer will choose farm work.

Timothy Walter, immigration project coordinator for the Coalition of Florida Farmworker Organizations Inc., helps illegal immigrants to prepare for the so-called amnesty program and has seen his share of uncooperative employers.

Intent on keeping workers subservient, many bosses, particularly those in remote farm areas, “are like small dictators,” Walter said. Others simply “don’t want to take the trouble to fill out an affidavit form.”

At the Washington-based Migrant Legal Action Program, Shelley Davis, a staff attorney, called the problem of getting documentation “the biggest single stumbling block” to legalization for farm workers.

At INS headquarters, however, Commissioner Alan C. Nelson said: “We feel comfortable at the start that it’ll work out well. In some cases I’m sure employers will be reluctant, but we think that, overall, that’s not going to be a serious problem.”

Network in Place

Nelson noted that a national system of offices and personnel has been set up for the main legalization program, which began May 5 for an estimated 4 million people who have lived illegally in the United States since 1982. That same network can be used for the estimated 400,000 farm workers eligible to apply beginning today, he said.

“We’re comfortable with the commodities” can qualify. Growers of other crops must hire legal workers or risk fines under the immigration law, which prohibits employers from knowingly hiring illegal workers and requires all workers--including U.S. citizens--to produce documents showing that they are legal residents.

Estimate of Illegal Workers

The American Farm Bureau Federation estimates that as many as 500,000 illegal immigrants work on the nation’s 2 million farms.

“We’re trying to get the farmers to help the workers” to document their eligibility for legal status, said C. H. Fields, the federation’s assistant director of national affairs. “They can’t hire illegals anymore, and we’re telling them that the best way to get a supply of labor is to help legalize them so we can keep them on the farm.”

But farmers commonly believe that the INS’ 700 investigators are not nearly enough to enforce the prohibition against hiring illegal aliens and that remote farm areas will escape scrutiny in any case.

Like other employers, farmers are confused by the INS regulations on employer sanctions, and they are irked that they have not received the forms on which they must certify that new workers are eligible for employment. “There are going to be some rough edges for a while,” Fields predicted.

That is the outlook for Solorio as well.

‘Up to the INS’

Walter of the farm worker coalition said: “We’re going to paint a picture to show he is a farm worker and throw in as much supporting documentation as we can.” Beyond that, he said, “it’s up to the INS to be understanding.”

Even if Solorio can attain legal status, his family could be split. Only two of his children were born in the United States. The other four, along with his wife, are Mexican citizens and do not qualify for any U.S. legalization program.

The new law makes no special provisions for family unification, and the INS makes no promises to keep families together. The problem will be considered on a “case-by-case basis,” INS officials say.

“I’m not angry about the situation,” Solorio said. “God watches over me. Everything will work out.”