Mexican State Plays Matchmaker for Migrants, Jobs

TRANCOSO, Mexico — Armando and Jose Juarez Quintero are pioneers in what could become the model for the next generation of Mexican migrants to the United States.

After losing the battle against the drought-hardened soil in central Zacatecas state, the brothers are now packing meat in Texas--legally.

They’re taking part in a pilot project developed by the Zacatecas state government to arrange temporary labor for U.S. employers who have jobs to fill but have proved they can’t find Americans to take the positions at the prevailing pay rate.

This modest program could be the basis for a far larger initiative to let hundreds of thousands of Mexicans work temporarily in the United States.

The program boasts clear advantages: Unlike many migrants, the men crossed the border legally; they didn’t have to swim the Rio Grande or risk death in the desert. They don’t have to skulk around in Texas avoiding immigration agents. And unlike many undocumented migrants, the Juarez Quintero brothers will almost certainly come home after their 11-month work permits expire.

But there are drawbacks too: The men are earning near the minimum wage, they cannot change employers, and they probably won’t be invited back if they join a union. Some critics liken their status to that of indentured servants, exploited by U.S. industry to keep wages down.

The pilot program offers a new approach in a sometimes-troubled initiative that allows the temporary migration of more than 56,000 workers annually. So far, 600 workers have been enlisted in the Zacatecas program, which is being expanded to several neighboring states. If U.S. and Mexican negotiators can cut a deal on an overall migration policy in the next few months, as many as 250,000 Mexicans could be heading north for temporary jobs in the United States each year.

Such a program could meet both nations’ disparate needs. The United States has a shortage of workers willing to do menial, low-paid jobs, but it doesn’t want more illegal migrants. Mexico needs jobs for its young people until its baby boom tapers off in 15 to 20 years, but it doesn’t want to lose them permanently, as happened with earlier generations of migrants.

Mexican and other temporary foreign workers have been recruited directly by U.S. firms since 1987 through what is known as the “H visa” program. H1-B visas are for highly skilled workers such as computer programmers. The H2 visas--H2-A for farm workers and H2-B for nonagricultural laborers--generally are for low-paying jobs, often the dirtiest work in the United States.

The difference in the year-old Zacatecas program is that the state government is serving as go-between. It is screening both the employers and the prospective employees to make sure the terms are fair and fully disclosed, avoiding unscrupulous operators and simple misunderstandings.

“People are not risking their lives; they are not making the coyotes [migrant smugglers] rich, paying $1,500 or $3,000 for crossing,” said Armando Esparza, the coordinator of the program. “Nor are their families breaking up. Because they are working legally, they can return to visit their families and they send their families money.

“You could say that the undocumented migrants are more enslaved, because they are paid less [and] they have no rights to anything.”

The wives of the Juarez Quintero brothers worry about the effect of so many months apart from their husbands. The trade-off is the steady, if modest, income.

Lidia Alvarado Zapata said her husband, Armando, headed north in the first batch of migrants last September on a two-month contract with a meatpacking plant in San Antonio. He came home briefly, then signed up for a yearlong contract that started in December.

Armando, 29, sends home $200 or so each month, Lidia said--nearly three times the money he earned hawking cactus fruit, chiles and beans in the suburbs of the city of Zacatecas, capital of the state.

“For me, it’s much better that he doesn’t have to cross the river,” she said. “It is better that he doesn’t have to worry all the time that the police will grab him and he will get into trouble.”

Maria Luisa Alvarado’s 31-year-old husband, Jose, left in July to work in a similar plant in Corpus Christi, Texas. She said her husband reported that he is treated well and has a decent boss.

The two women’s dreams are similar. Maria Luisa wants to build a small house, starting with two rooms, so she no longer has to live in a dark, adobe-brick house tacked onto her mother-in-law’s house. Lidia wants to add running water and a bathroom to her two-room home.

There’s no industry here in Trancoso, and the hacienda that dominates the town square is overgrown and boarded up. Sewage ran from a leak near the square one recent day.

For migration experts such as Miguel Moctezuma, a professor at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, the grinding poverty of Trancoso is a giveaway that the town isn’t on the traditional migrant path. The town bears none of the satellite dishes and fancy home additions that set apart migrant communities, whose departed members send home steady incomes for those left behind.

“The temporary labor program works in towns that are poorer, that lack the migrant networks and have no other means of getting to the other side,” said Moctezuma, a co-director of the university’s respected migrant research program. “The programs don’t work in areas of high migration or with those who have experience in crossing.”

High-migration communities in Zacatecas state have complex networks to get people across and connect them with jobs, even without papers. Moctezuma explained this with a personal anecdote: “My cousin in Oakland earns $23 an hour in construction--far more than I earn with my doctorate.”

He said the state program helps “address the needs of the most vulnerable groups, who are extorted by coyotes and who often wouldn’t return home. At least these migrants will come back.”

That’s critical for states such as Zacatecas. With more and more of its people staying in the United States permanently, many rural towns in the state have suffered a brutal decline in population.

“From our side, we also want people to come back, because we are losing people at a rate like never before,” Moctezuma said. The state of 1.2 million is losing 26,000 to 28,000 people a year, he said, with 34 of the state’s 57 towns shrinking. About 40% of those who leave head for the United States; the rest migrate to Mexican cities.

Unlike undocumented migrants, the legal temporary workers from the state have a 100% return rate so far, said Esparza, the program coordinator. That provides ammunition for supporters of a broader guest worker initiative, who have had to counter speculation that legal migrants would merely jump ship and stay in the United States when their contracts ended.

That may result in part from the screening of both workers and employers by the state. Prospective employees see a video of the work they would do, and the company lays out the conditions in detail.

In most other guest worker arrangements, firms recruit employees directly. And accusations are rife of ghost companies falsely enticing workers to sign up and then handing them over to other employers, or paying less than promised. The recruiters often charge employees a commission as well.

Esparza said the Texas workers are making at least the minimum wage of $5.75 per hour, and the companies bear all costs of the visa and transport to the factory. Others among the 600 people contracted through the state program so far are earning up to $16 an hour, depending on the job and location, he said.

The advantages for legal workers come in many small forms, Esparza noted. For example, workers hired through the program get a Social Security number and can get a driver’s license and thus have a formal identification so they can cash their paychecks. Illegal workers, in contrast, often have to use check-cashing services and migrant-oriented shops that charge a fee or force customers to pay inflated prices.

For reasons of cost and proximity, Mexicans make up the vast majority of low-skilled temporary workers in the U.S. They received 28,441 out of the 30,200 H2-A agricultural labor visas issued in fiscal 2000. Mexicans got 27,648 non-farming temporary working visas, accounting for more than half the 45,037 H2-B visas issued.

Everybody in Zacatecas agrees on one thing: It would be better if the men didn’t have to go at all.

“The best thing would be for them to have good jobs here, and they could go to work in the morning and come home each night,” Lidia said. “With four children, it is difficult without [Armando] here. Together, if one of us was sick, we helped each other. Now I am all alone with all this responsibility.”