New Book: IMPOVERISHED IMMIGRANT WORKERS RESHAPE RURAL AMERICA

February 23, 2006

THE URBAN INSTITUTE, News Release, 2100 M STREET NW WASHINGTON D.C. 20037 T:202/261-5709, paffairs@ui.urban.org www.urban.org

CONTACT: Thomas Mentzer, (202) 261-5627, tmentzer@ui.urban.org

IMPOVERISHED IMMIGRANT WORKERS RESHAPE RURAL AMERICA

WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 23, 2006–A new book from the Urban Institute Press examines what lies ahead if current immigration patterns and policies aren’t

changed: farmworkers ready to work for poverty-level wages will continue to enter the country, and their U.S.-educated children, shunning their parents farm jobs, will continue to move to cities for better jobs, perpetuating a cycle of rural poverty.

The immigration and integration challenges facing the United States are profound, Phil Martin, Michael Fix, and J. Edward Taylor point out in The New Rural Poverty. Since 1990, the number of U.S. residents born abroad has doubled to 35 million, with one-third coming from Mexico. At least half of the Mexicans entering the United States in the past 15 years first worked in rural, agricultural areas.

“The wages of newcomer migrants are high by Mexican standards but low by U.S. standards, so the same immigration flows that preserve farms and farm-related industries in rural America are also increasing poverty in many of these new migration destinations,” the authors note.

Throughout the book, the authors address fundamental questions: Does U.S.

agriculture have a long-term need for exceptions from labor and immigration laws? Would the cycle of rural poverty end if a guest-worker program required immigrants to return home after their work stints? Or should seasonal farmwork be a first step to permanent residency?

Part 1 outlines the interdependencies between immigrants and agriculture, charting the history of migrants in farming from former transcontinental railroad workers in 1869 to Braceros in the 1960s to today’s illegal immigrants, many from Mexico.

Part 2 examines the changing face of rural America in three areas:

— California’s inland valleys of San Joaquin, Sacramento, and Imperial account for many billions of dollars in farm sales each year, but are also home to widespread unemployment and poverty. Just three counties in southern San Joaquin Valley account for almost $10 billion in farm sales, but wintertime unemployment can reach 20 percent.

— California’s coastal valleys also suffer from limited housing, a lack of immigrant integration, and high seasonal unemployment. Farm owners in Ventura County, with annual sales of $1.4 billion, used guest-worker programs, attractive worker benefits, and modern personnel practices to encourage seasonal workers to return year after year. But by the late 1980s, wage demands and the rise of illegal immigration undermined labor-owner cooperation.

— Poultry processing, mushroom farming, and tobacco industries on the Atlantic seaboard and the meatpacking industry in the Midwest are contributing to high rates of illegal immigration; the regions face problems like California’s, particularly challenges with social integration, and higher education and health costs.

In Part 3, Martin, Fix, and Taylor unravel three facts that frame the policy challenges and options facing rural America. First, many in the industry insist that a steady flow of foreign workers is necessary to agriculture’s lifeblood. Second, rural Mexico has too many people given the weakening of Mexico’s agricultural economy. And third, legalization programs have forged hard-to-break links between rural Mexico and rural America.

Two competing policy approaches result. One offers unauthorized foreigners guest-worker status with an eventual return to their native countries, the other a path to legal immigrant status. Among the policy options being debated in Washington:

— Fair and Secure Immigration Reform, outlined by President Bush in 2004, would permit unauthorized but employed foreigners to become guest workers for six years;

— The House in December 2005 approved the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act, which adopts an enforcement-only approach to unauthorized migration;

— The Senate is considering bills that would allow unauthorized workers to apply for six-year guest worker visas, but the bills differ on what happens after six years-under some proposals they could become immigrants, while under others they would have to return to their countries of origin; and

— AgJOBS, a compromise measure, provides a path to legal status for unauthorized immigrants and eases restrictions for guest workers.

“Farmers argue that migrants are needed to sustain and expand agriculture and related industries,” Martin notes. “However, if newcomers seeking the American dream remain farmworkers for a decade or less, and their children shun farm jobs, rural America becomes an immigration treadmill, serving as a port of entry for newcomers but not providing careers for the immigrants and their children.”

Philip Martin and J. Edward Taylor are professors in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis.

Michael Fix is vice president and director of studies at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

The New Rural Poverty, by Philip Martin, Michael Fix, and J. Edward Taylor, is available from the Urban Institute Press for $26.50 (121 pages, ISBN 0-87766-729-2). Order online at http://www.uipress.org, call 202-261-5687, or dial 1-877-847-7377 tollfree.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation.