Down at Bottom of California

Long plagued by economic misery as suffocating as its summer heat, Imperial County’s streak of misfortune hit a new low last year.

The desert county braved controversy and jumped into the running for a project that more than two dozen California communities had shunned: a state mental hospital for violent sexual predators. But as usual, the county came up short. The 2,000-employee hospital was awarded to Coalinga, the only other place in the state willing to accept the facility.

All Imperial County got was a fresh reminder that it’s probably the hardest-luck county in California. Tucked into California’s southeastern corner along the Mexican border, the county ranks last or nearly last among the state’s 58 counties by almost any measure of economic well-being.

There have been signs of life lately. Home building is up, and a big beef slaughterhouse is coming in. New civic leadership is emerging, pushing Imperial County to cultivate business ties with neighboring Mexicali, a booming Baja California metropolis jammed with low-wage maquiladora factories.

Boosters also are hopeful that Imperial County’s publicly controlled utility system, a source of reliable power at a time when most of California worries about being blacked out, will help foster development. Cheap, flat land is part of the sales pitch too.

Yet against the harsh reality of Imperial County’s shortcomings, the upbeat signs may be little more than a mirage. The county’s struggles reflect how hard it is to lift a long-depressed area into the economic mainstream. And they illustrate why California’s economic comeback from the early ‘90s recession never quite made it here.

The litany of entrenched problems includes the area’s longtime dependence on a subsistence-labor farming economy and its image as an isolated backwater with a scorching climate.

Large numbers of residents lack high school diplomas or even the ability to speak English, signs of a poorly skilled work force. Without substantial government aid to improve education levels, “nothing is going to change,” said Khosrow Fatemi, an international economist who is dean of the San Diego State University branch campus in Imperial County.

That’s grim news for a county that has had the state’s highest unemployment and lowest median income for more than a decade. Last year’s average jobless rate was 26.3%, more than five times the state level. The latest figures for median individual income put Imperial County’s level at $18,126, far below the California median of $29,376 and less than half of Marin County’s state-leading $42,879.

Starved for jobs and new businesses, the area welcomes just about any development it can attract.

“We agree to take prisons, and Los Angeles wants to send its trash out here. It’s kind of a downer for people here when they think that’s all we can aspire to,” said Dana Murphy, who teaches political science at the SDSU branch.

History keeps a strong grip on the area. The desert bloomed after Colorado River irrigation water began flowing into the Imperial Valley a century ago, and farming remains the area’s biggest business.

Although it has slumped in recent years, agriculture still accounts for 23% of the county’s jobs, second only to government at 31%. Imperial County, once known as the country’s “winter salad bowl” for its huge lettuce crop, remains a major producer of winter vegetables and fruit, along with alfalfa and cattle.

Over the years, agriculture has made some of the area’s leading farming families wealthy, but it has provided only meager pay for people who toil in the fields.

Much of the farm labor hiring takes place in the border city of Calexico, in the parking lots of doughnut shops and convenience stores. Economists have called it the largest casual labor market in North America. A symbol of the backward side of local agriculture, the Calexico labor market also reflects the decades-long economic link between Imperial County and the Mexicali Valley.

At harvest times, the city’s downtown bustles by 3 a.m. as farm hands from Mexicali walk through the U.S.-Mexican port of entry and into the streets of Calexico. When hiring peaks in January, as many as 14,000 laborers with work documents pour across the border every day.

But not all of them make it to the farms. Many trudge back home without finding jobs.

“There’s too many people,” complained Pedro Contreras, a strapping 45-year-old field hand unable to find work on a recent morning.

The seasonality of jobs in the fields, as well as in the produce packinghouses and fertilizer businesses, means that many people sit idle for much of the year.

Unemployment checks, welfare and food stamps are linchpins of the local economy. And farmers have complained that laborers defraud the unemployment system by claiming jobless benefits while they work--inflating the jobless rate and triggering higher unemployment insurance costs.

Those costs are an issue for farmers, who say they are hurting too. Low prices for farm products are squeezing their profits. Many farmers say they are being undercut by growers in Mexico and even in nearby Arizona, where the minimum wage is 50 cents an hour lower than California’s rate of $6.25.

“The farm workers deserve to make $10 to $12 an hour, but the economics just don’t justify it,” said Donald E. Brock, 59, a third-generation Imperial County farmer.

Brock grows asparagus, alfalfa and wheat on 1,000 acres southwest of El Centro, the county seat. He used to farm 1,500 acres but cut back because of low crop prices. “I don’t know anyone who is in as good shape as they were five years ago,” Brock said.

Imperial County also has lagged in developing agriculture-related industries, such as food processing or farm-equipment manufacturing, that could provide higher wages and year-round employment. On that score, however, there is one bit of encouraging news: Construction is underway on a beef slaughterhouse in Brawley, expected to open with 600 employees--a hiring binge by Imperial County standards.

In the county’s efforts to break out of the cycle of rural poverty, federal, state and local government jobs have provided a measure of help. Over the last decade, new jobs have gone to Border Patrol agents involved in the Operation Gatekeeper crackdown on illegal immigration, as well as to guards at the county’s two state prisons.

Yet many factors have kept away private industry. The area’s isolation, 100 miles east of San Diego, is a big part of the problem. So is its climate. Last year temperatures exceeded 100 degrees more than one out of every three days.

Local officials and outside observers say the county lacks the political clout to help it recruit companies. That’s partly because its population remains modest, despite drawing immigrants from Mexico and growing at a faster rate than most of California over the last decade. According to the 2000 census, the county has 142,361 residents. Neither of the state lawmakers representing the area lives in Imperial County, nor does its congressman, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine).

Perhaps most damaging to the local economy are the shortcomings in the county’s work force that keep many people in low-wage, low-skill jobs.

More than one-fifth of the county’s adults speak little or no English, and given the steady immigration, that figure could climb. On top of that, 46.8% of adults lack a high school diploma, almost double the statewide average.

The SDSU branch campus in Calexico serves fewer than 1,000 students, so young people who want to pursue four-year college degrees often leave the county--and never come back.

“It’s because of work opportunities,” said Wally J. Leimgruber, a member of the county Board of Supervisors. “There’s really not a lot available here.”

For less educated workers, the situation is similar. “There’s hardly [any] work here. It’s mostly seasonal,” said Sonia Romero, 28, a single mother with two sons ages 7 and 14. Romero is in a training program to improve her office work skills. She also is preparing to take her high school equivalency exam, but she doesn’t hold out much hope of landing a well-paying job. “Mostly, it’s all minimum wage,” she said.

Time and again, the perceived weaknesses in the county’s work force have hurt the area’s ability to attract employers and jobs. State mental health officials cited the scarcity of health-care professionals in the labor market as a key reason they chose Coalinga over Imperial County for the sexual predators hospital. The facility will house rapists and others convicted of repeat sex crimes.

Lately, however, a measure of hope has come to Imperial County. The sense that change finally may be coming is fostered by shifting political currents. Many Latinos and others with few ties to the big farmers who once dominated local politics have moved into positions of power. The population of the county now is 72% Latino, far higher than any other California county.

Latino political influence has extended even to a longtime local powerhouse previously dominated by farm interests, the Imperial Irrigation District, which supplies the area with water and electricity.

Two Latinos now sit on the district’s five-member board, believed to be a first in the district’s 90-year history. One of those new directors, Stella Mendoza, also became the first woman on the board when she was elected in November.

The district, because of its plentiful power supplies in a state where many consumers and businesses elsewhere face rolling blackouts this summer and beyond, figures heavily in Imperial County’s economic development strategy.

Like Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power, the irrigation district manages its own electricity supplies and is not subject to rationing on the state’s power grid. And even though some locals fear an eventual water grab by ever-thirsty Los Angeles, the district’s long-standing Colorado River water rights put it in an enviable position.

Seeing the Border as Merely a Fence

Imperial County’s boosters are particularly hopeful that more business will come from across the border. Local officials, once reluctant to cooperate with Mexico, now look for the industrial boom of recent years in the Mexicali Valley, home to an estimated 1 million people, to spill over into the county.

The new attitude is that “the border is just a fence,” said Louis A. Fuentes, a 26-year-old UC Berkeley graduate who is president and chief executive of the recently formed Imperial Valley Economic Development Corp.

Imperial County already is getting more transportation-related jobs because of more U.S.-Mexico truck traffic moving through the area. County officials say that trend should be pushed further along by local road improvement projects and increased congestion in the Tijuana-San Diego area to the west.

At the same time, Imperial County boosters are counting on the North American Free Trade Agreement to produce business opportunities for Imperial County and other border communities.

A surge in home building in Calexico is testimony to the benefits of being Mexicali’s neighbor. Many professionals and managers in Mexicali’s factories are buying homes in Imperial County. Their reasons range from rampant fears about kidnappings in Mexicali to the desire to send their children to U.S. schools.

“The quality-control people, the plant managers and production managers, the accountants and the financing guys are all buying on this side” of the border, said Barry S. Garman, a Los Angeles native who began selling homes in Calexico in 1992.

But there is plenty of skepticism about how much Imperial County can be lifted economically by virtue of its proximity to Mexicali. With assembly-line workers earning only about $2 an hour in Mexicali, skeptics say, Imperial County businesses can’t compete on the basis of cost. Imperial County’s lack of skilled labor puts it in a weak position too.

Mexicali’s industries also threaten to further damage Imperial County’s quality of life. Plants on the Mexican side have brought serious water and air pollution to the area, and the smog is likely to get worse as new power plants intended to sell electricity to California start operating there.

Even with encouraging developments such as the home-building boom and the new slaughterhouse, Imperial County’s promoters acknowledge that any economic growth in the area is likely to come in small steps in light of the entrenched problems.

“If you don’t have jobs, you don’t have a community,” county Supervisor Leimgruber said. “That’s what we’re up against. Sometimes you have to take what you can get.”