Amnesty’s Harvest: Wages on Rise as Labor Supply Falls

One day last spring, San Juan Capistrano farmer Shigeru Kinoshita summoned his dozen workers and told them the new immigration law gave them no immediate cause for concern. Those in the country illegally had a full year and a half to apply for legal residency and, in the meantime, could continue working on his farm.

Despite his reassurances, two of the workers packed up and left for Mexico the next day. Like many other illegal aliens, they apparently believed they would face harsher sanctions than previously if caught by immigration agents.

Their positions are still vacant, and Kinoshita said he has been forced to pay overtime wages to keep his customers supplied with his sought-after strawberries, bell peppers and corn.

At DBS Wood Products in Garden Grove, brothers David and Ben Perez saw three of their 15 workers leave last spring, and now they are trying to persuade others with similar thoughts to stay.

“I tell them to wait and see what happens. . . . I’ve even offered them more money,” said David Perez, who with his brother started the small furniture business in Anaheim 21 years ago.

“But I think they’ve already got one foot out the door--buying little presents for their families back home, that sort of thing.”

This month, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service begins hammering home the linchpin of the Immigration Reform and Control and Act of 1986: sanctions on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. The law will enable hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who have been in the United States for several years to gain legal status and, eventually, citizenship. But it was also intended to stop the steady flow of illegal aliens who have entered the country in recent years seeking a better life.

Employers Must Sign Affidavits

If employers no longer hire them, the reasoning goes, illegal aliens will stop coming. Employers now are required to ask all job applicants for identification and proof of citizenship or legal residence--and to sign affidavits attesting that they believe the papers are genuine. Employers who violate the new law could face jail terms or fines of up to $10,000 per illegal alien hired.

But undocumented workers face no greater penalty now than they did before the new law took effect. If arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, an illegal alien probably would be bused back to the border, just like before. That does not, however, appear to be generally understood.

For some Orange County employers, the law will mean little more than increased paper work. But others are already struggling to adjust to a rapidly changing labor market. Interviews with employers in several industries, including agriculture, services and manufacturing, indicate that:

- Fewer illegal aliens are applying for the low-wage, high-grime jobs they have increasingly dominated in recent years.

- Many workers have already left the country, and employers fear their numbers will increase.

- Immigrants who stay and receive legal status, along with

other, already legal workers in low-wage jobs, recognize their increased value and are demanding better pay.

Some employers have gone to considerable expense to legalize their workers and, they hope, keep them. Mort Hermann, co-owner of Hermann and Jensen Nurseries, figures he may end up spending $20,000 on private attorneys’ fees to help “maybe 100” employees qualify for amnesty. The workers will pay about half the cost through small payroll deductions each week, he said.

Other growers and nursery owners have contracted with one of two legalization programs run by two agricultural groups--the United Agricultural Assn. and Alien Legalization for Agriculture (ALFA).

Local ALFA director Tony Bonilla recently traveled to Bordier’s Nursery in East Irvine, where he described the amnesty process to about 100 workers, all of them Latino.

But the workers have not been responding, said Rick Dominge, vice president of Bordier’s: “We don’t have people signing up, at least not in the numbers we were hoping to get.”

Some people may be applying through Catholic Charities or through private lawyers, Dominge said, while others still fear that they or their family members may be deported if INS rejects their applications. INS has insisted that will not happen.

Like several other wholesale nurseries in Orange County, Bordier’s was shorthanded during the busy spring season. Dominge, who has resorted to placing help-wanted ads in newspapers, said the company also recently raised wages 19% to attract applicants. The starting wage is now $4.10.

More Money Not Enough

Sometimes, though, even more money is not enough to keep or attract workers. David Perez said he would give Marco Antonio--a burly, 32-year-old man from the Mexican state of Zacatecas--a dollar an hour more if he would stay.

Antonio now earns $4.50 an hour doing “whatever we need” in the furniture factory, Perez said, but Antonio insists that he must go. “I cannot qualify,” he said, “and if I stay, they will punish me. I don’t want to get into trouble.”

If any more of their workers leave, David Perez said, the company may have trouble filling orders on time for their inexpensive bedroom furniture and could lose even more business to competitors in Brazil, Central America and Taiwan.

The Perezes said they have asked the state Employment Development Department for workers but haven’t heard back. In the meantime, they have hired two undocumented workers on a short-term basis, but David Perez said he realizes he must begin complying with the law or risk heavy fines.

Other employers said they, too, have asked state employment office to send them workers. Most said they are still waiting for their first applicants.

Suzanne Schroeder, a spokeswoman for the Employment Development Department in Sacramento, said job openings filed with Orange County’s five offices are up slightly but not necessarily

Domestics in Demand

“These (figures) fluctuate from month to month.” But, Schroeder said, some employees in the agency’s 200 offices statewide are “getting a feeling that the law is making a difference” in the number of job openings filed.

Qualified workers have not been beating a path to the doors of the National Domestic Agency in Huntington Beach either, company owner Lupe McKnight said.

“If they’re out there, I want them,” said McKnight, a Baja California native who was once a maid herself. “I have the jobs, but I don’t have anybody available to supply.”

Most of the women applying for work don’t have papers, McKnight said. Neither she nor most of her clients are willing to take the risk. But, in contrast to companies that have been hurt by the labor shortage, McKnight said her business is making more money than ever.

“Whatever I have, I can charge more,” said McKnight, who receives a commission equivalent to 75% of the referral’s first month’s salary.

“And the legal Spanish-speaking maids realize they’re a valuable commodity. Women who used to get $125 a week, now they’ll get anywhere from $150 to $250. . . . They won’t work for less. . . . If you want legal aliens, I’ll get them, but be ready to pay the price.”

McKnight said the change “is good for the Spanish people. We’re finally getting the wages we deserve.”

Restaurant Workers Cash In

Some restaurant workers are also cashing in on their increased value. At Maxwell’s, a popular spot at the foot of the Huntington Beach pier, day manager Skip Wimmer said kitchen workers are asking for $4.50 to $5.50 an hour, about a dollar more than they worked for a few months ago. And they are getting it.

“The laborers are tougher to come by,” Wimmer said. “You’re more or less at their mercy. . . . This may have been long overdue--maybe we’ve been getting away with something in the industry all along, and it was time to increase that wage.”

Perhaps the clearest evidence so far of legal or soon-to-be-legal aliens’ increased bargaining power in Orange County is a strike by dry wall installers. About 500 dry wallers in Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties--many of them immigrants applying for amnesty--have joined the strike and are demanding higher wages, according to the group’s leader, Jose Valadez.

Current Orange County wages range from 5 to 7 1/2 cents per square foot for hanging heavy dry wall sheets, and the strikers want about a 1-cent increase.

“What we’re seeing, and I think everybody else is seeing,” said Bordier’s Nursery field manager John Walden, “is that the illegals who have been here a while, who have experience, they have more to bargain with.

“And more power to them.”