Threat to Crops Resulting From Immigration Law to Be Studied

Federal and state officials have scheduled a meeting this week with apprehensive California farmers amid mounting reports that the nation’s new immigration law is creating a drought of farm workers and threatening millions of dollars of ripe produce.

From Fresno to the San Joaquin and Santa Clara valleys, growers are worried over a decrease in the number of migrant workers--estimated by some at 30%--that they say is the result of the new law.

INS Western Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell has scheduled a meeting Thursday in Irvine with growers’ groups, state officials and U.S. State Department officials to discuss the situation, said Christopher Fowler, Ezell’s assistant.

As crops ripen, growers’ groups are asking the INS to relax entry restrictions and the application process to aid this year’s harvest. They warn that without changes in the Special Agricultural Worker program, a provision of the immigration law, millions of dollars in this year’s crops could rot in the fields.

Acute Anxiety

“The growers are having acute concern and anxiety that we could be facing an economic disaster,” said J. Roy Gabriel, legislative director of labor affairs for the California Farm Bureau Federation, a growers’ group.

Those fears are even more acute in the Northwest, where growers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho report worker shortages that have impeded the strawberry and cherry harvests and could threaten the fall apple crop. The Washington Farm Bureau has asked the governor to declare the harvest region a disaster area.

Jan Wessell, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture, said there have been sporadic reports of labor shortages here, but the extent probably will not be clear until mid-July, the heart of the harvest season.