Maybe State Can’t Pick Its Future Without Those Workers in the Field

The scent of strawberries wafts across the 405 Freeway, which means that somewhere nearby, someone is probably breaking his back under a hot sun.

And so there they are, in a field stretched out at the foot of a hill just off Laguna Canyon Road. From a parking lot next to the field, I count only a couple dozen workers, hunched over like coolies in a rice paddy and sporting a variety of the latest in protective sun gear: old sweatshirts, beat-up hats and very brown skin. The parking lot itself speaks further to their station in life: pickup trucks, tattered Oldsmobiles and Chevys.

It’s 11 in the morning; some of the workers have been there since 7. A six-day workweek is common, and the typical workday in this field runs until 4 p.m. The workers average $5.75 an hour but because there are times when they get paid by how many strawberries they pick, some of the more industrious have taken home more than $600 in a week. But even at $5.75 an hour, some of them make more in an hour than they could in a day in Mexico.

Mark Murai sits in a small office near the strawberry field his family has owned for three generations. Like a lot of family farmers, Murai worries about the future. Having grown up in the business, the 32-year-old Murai--as well-spoken and mannered as any corporate executive--has done it all: picked berries, driven the tractor, irrigated the field. “It’s hard work,” he says of working in the fields, “very tough.”

He grins at my joke, which is to ask if anyone in the Woodbridge High School Class of ’98 works out there in the field. “No,” he says. “They wouldn’t last an hour.”

Murai doesn’t say it condescendingly. Nor did I ask it that way. The work is too hard, he says, too monotonous, too unsocial, too uncool to appeal to modern teens. Indeed, American parents have worked hard precisely so their children don’t have to toil in strawberry fields.

That doesn’t eliminate the fact, however, that someone does.

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I showed up unannounced at Murai’s farm to ask about the “Welcome to California” sign that an Orange County-based group paid for on Interstate 10 near the state line. Faced with protest and a possibility of trouble, the group took down the sign but has talked of relocating it somewhere in Orange County.

Estimates from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in the last year or so put the state’s number of undocumented residents as high as 2 million--as much as 40% of the national total and in the ballpark of 6% of the state’s overall population.

Murai says he isn’t aware of the controversy about the highway sign. Nor does he seem particularly eager to dive into the fray. So, we talk instead about the strawberry-picking business. He says right off the bat that California produces 85% of strawberries grown in the United States.

With that comes the “reality” of things, he says. That reality is that if people want produce such as strawberries or lettuce or tomatoes to get to market, someone has to pick it. If people want the prices kept affordable, labor costs have to be manageable. The result is that unskilled workers are the ones who do the picking.

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To the extent that he can, Murai says, he verifies citizenship of his employees. But he doesn’t try to insult my intelligence by suggesting he has never had illegal immigrants picking strawberries for him. Or that they don’t pick lettuce in the Central Valley or apples in Washington state. All he knows for sure is that his workers work hard and aren’t taking jobs away from anyone he knows.

There is another question to be asked, Murai says. At the expense of drying up the possible illegal immigrant work force, would Americans prefer that their produce come from other countries? That would come with a risk, Murai says, because while U.S. inspectors strongly regulate both health and safety, he doesn’t know to what extent other countries do.

Murai doesn’t favor unchecked national borders or scuttling immigration laws. He’d much prefer, he says, a system that let him concentrate on farming and not have to worry about a worker’s immigration status.

Failing that, though, it “saddens” him that people bash illegal immigrants while at the same time demanding reasonable and safe food products at the grocery store. “I’m irritated at the ignorance that people take so for granted where their food comes from,” he says. It is probably a fact of life, he says, that food couldn’t get to the stores at reasonable prices without illegal workers.

The thought occurred while talking to Murai about Irvine strawberry-pickers that I could just as easily have zeroed in on Mission Viejo nannies, or San Clemente bus boys, or Buena Park gardeners or Newport Beach fry cooks or Anaheim hotel workers. They’ve all helped California become the “illegal immigration” state.

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Lord help us if they leave.

So, this recommendation is to the backers of the “Welcome to California” sign looking for a new spot in Orange County.

How about atop a scenic hill next to the 405, near the Laguna Canyon Road turnoff? If positioned just so, any so-called undocumented workers in the nearby strawberry field, bent and sweating in the noonday sun so the rest of us can eat strawberry shortcake, would have a great view of it.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com