Farmers Also to Blame for Labor Shortage--Ezell

California farmers must share the blame for a shortage of field hands as the peak harvest season approaches, the top U.S. immigration official in the West said Thursday.

“Growers have been so hooked on the opiate of illegal workers for so many years that they don’t want to take the cure,” said Harold Ezell, western regional director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Ezell, holding a daylong meeting with farmers in Irvine, said during a break that part of the cure would be for growers to aggressively seek to import workers under the government’s H-2 guest worker program, the successor to the bracero program of the 1960s. Growers have resisted the H-2 program, Ezell said, because it requires farmers to provide foreign workers with adequate living quarters and wages comparable to domestic workers.

Amnesty Law Blamed

The seminar came one day after the California Farm Bureau reported that the agricultural labor supply in the state was 25% to 30% below demand. The Farm Bureau, a trade group, blamed the shortage on confusion by workers and potential workers over the complexities of the amnesty law.

But Dolores Huerta, first vice president of the United Farm Workers labor union, told the seminar that she believed much of the worker shortage had been “manufactured” by growers.

Large numbers of workers believed to be in this country illegally were fired by growers shortly before the amnesty law went into effect, and only meager efforts have been made by growers to enlist workers domestically, Huerta said.

She also criticized growers’ unwillingness to list job openings with the state Employment Development Department, preferring instead to work through labor contractors who earn fees for providing workers.

Clark Biggs, spokesman for the Farm Bureau, defended growers’ reluctance to get workers through the department, saying that the agency usually provides workers who are unqualified and unwilling to do the hard field work that is needed.

To qualify for amnesty, agricultural laborers who work in perishable crops--broadly defined by the government as virtually all fruits and vegetables--are required to have been employed in such crops for 90 days during the 12-month period ended May 1.

Farm Bureau President Henry Voss warned that it would be difficult to rectify the labor shortage this season, saying, “You know and I know that you can’t just turn the spigot on and off” to provide large numbers of workers.

Mike Stewart, senior vice president of the Western Growers Assn., urged the INS to help ameliorate the problem by adding facilities near the borders to quickly process applications by Mexicans who feel they qualify for amnesty.

Currently, the INS operates only one amnesty center in Mexico, and that is in Mexico City.

“That’s often hundreds of miles from the villages where the workers come from,” Stewart said, arguing that border facilities could do the job more expeditiously.

Ezell, outside the meeting, said he opposes border amnesty centers, which he said would create confusion. However, a final decision will be made by the INS in Washington.

Separately, Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) told growers in a televised talk that he had petitioned the White House to intercede on that issue and others to relieve the labor shortage.

Wilson aide Bill Livingstone said the senator met Wednesday with Howard Baker, President Reagan’s chief of staff, to discuss the issues and expects further meetings by the end of this week.

The INS has been under pressure from a number of congressmen, as well as farm groups, on these issues, but INS spokesman Rick Kenney in Washington said Thursday afternoon that no decisions had been made and no timetable had been set on how soon they would be made.