Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

3/29/01 News Report -- The Dallas Morning News

LA CARGADA, Mexico -- In a barren land where even the sturdy cactus struggles to survive, Armando Esparza thinks he has found a way to resuscitate a countryside void even of its men and women. He's relying on the most unlikely of heroes: Texas Sen. Phil Gramm.

The rhetoric about a proposed guest-worker program from the staunch law-and-order Republican senator has sparked interest in the central state of Zacatecas just as quickly as wildfire spreading through this dry windswept area.

"I don't know the man, but I think he's the solution," said Mr. Esparza, head of the state's efforts to coordinate its immigrants abroad.

Few issues on either side of the border are as emotionally charged as immigration, with views differing depending on which side of the border immigrants call home. While natives of Mexico generally embraced Mr. Gramm's concept, their countrymen in the United States are skeptical about the benefits.

The powerful conservative has long lambasted illegal immigration and any effort to offer amnesty to undocumented workers in the United States. But with Republicans in charge of Congress and a fellow Texan in the White House, Mr. Gramm's timing of elevating immigration issues to Cabinet-level discussions is impeccable and odd, analysts said.

"In the past we've had opportunities to pass a bill that would have benefited farmworkers, and there's only one reason why that didn't pass - and that's Phil Gramm," said Cecilia Muñoz, vice president of the Washington-based National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy group.

Mr. Gramm's spokesman, Larry Neal, said the senator is pushing his proposal aimed at easing shortages in the nation's agricultural fields and service sectors, but a bill with specific details won't be introduced for weeks.

One-year visa

Generally, his idea - among other proposals being discussed in Congress - calls for a visa that would be offered to undocumented workers already in the United States. At the end of the year, each worker would be required to return to Mexico to apply for re-entry into the United States. Eventually, the temporary visas, complete with hour and wage protection, would be issued in Mexico for migrants crossing the border in search of work.

"What prompted Senator Gramm to raise the issue is a recognition of the fact that we have two presidents and two administrations who are familiar with the border and with the complexities of immigration," Mr. Neal said, referring to President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox. "It's also hard to imagine any other public policy issue with a broader impact in Texas than immigration."

Nevertheless, criticism abounds from a list of unlikely players, including farmworker advocates and their nemesis, the anti-immigrant groups. All decry Mr. Gramm's proposal as locking workers to their employers for up to a year, a situation that could lead to indentured servitude and an unintentional increase of illegal immigration.

Or consider Andres Morales, an undocumented immigrant from the tiny Zacatecas community of Luis Moya. He has eluded agents of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for nearly four years, working at odd jobs in the United States. His concerns echo the sentiments of tens of thousands of his compatriots living illegally in the United States.

'What's the point?'

"Why would I want to do that if it would mean having to come forward and then I'd have to reapply every year?'' he said. "If I'm not selected, I will have to pay a coyote [immigrant smuggler] again. What's the point?"

But in Mr. Morales' desolate countryside in Mexico, Mr. Gramm's picture and guest-worker proposals are plastered on the front pages of newspapers, including El Sol de Zacatecas. Nearly everyone in this state has worked and lived north of the border or has a relative or friend there. Even Gov. Ricardo Monreal has considered it.

"The culture of immigration permeates all of society," the governor said recently. "We're losing our most talented people to the north. That's why we like Mr. Gramm's proposal. It's similar to our own experiment."

While the political battlegrounds form in Washington, Zacatecas has developed a pilot program similar to Mr. Gramm's proposal. The state negotiates contracts with specific American companies in which workers apply for temporary visas that restrict them for as long as 11 months to specific jobs in agricultural, meat-packing and service industries.

The program has attracted more than 2,000 workers. Mr. Esparza, the Zacatecas official, said the program has been so successful that the states of Puebla, Hidalgo, San Luis Potos! and Michoac n are fine-tuning programs to simulate the Zacatecas experiment.

The new dynamics have politicians on both sides of the border and advocacy groups re-examining their positions. The National Council of La Raza, once a vociferous enemy of guest-worker programs, now says, "We're ready to talk about work permits that truly free people to choose their employers for a promised period of time and that adjusts the status of current workers living illegally."

The Fox administration hasn't taken a position on Mr. Gramm's proposal, although senior officials say they want to help the United States create a common labor market in which workers can come and go in a safe, orderly manner.

Returning home

What has Mexican state officials excited is that such temporary guest-worker programs ensure that their natives return home. Between 2.7 million and 8 million undocumented immigrants from Mexico live in the United States.

While migration affects nearly every region of Mexico, few of the 32 states reap the benefits and cope with the consequences as deeply as Zacatecas, where the situation is considered pervasive. The latest census shows that more than one-third of the 57 municipalities declined in population.

Further, while California once was the main destination for Zacatecanos, immigrants from that state now are in every region of the United States.

Dallas has become a hot spot, as the number of Zacatecanos living in North Texas now rivals the number of Mexicans from the state of San Luis Potos!, the second-largest sender of immigrants to that area, just behind to the state of Guanajuato.

Said Noel Mares, who operates a bus service to his native state of Zacatecas: "It seems that a piece of Zacatecas just got up and moved here almost overnight."

Elsewhere, the U.S. economy and Mexico's slow economic recovery have attracted an increasing number of Zacatecanos to states such as Arkansas and North Carolina and increasingly along the Eastern Shore.

Trudging through snow near Newark, Del., Mr. Morales conceded he is not used to the bitter weather even after four years along the East Coast, working in landscaping and picking mushrooms. Home, he said, still calls him "every time I open a letter from my viejitos [parents], and every time it snows."

But he has no plans of returning anytime soon. Like millions of his countrymen living illegally in the United States, he's afraid to go home because the U.S. Border Patrol, backed by new high-tech tools and more crime-fighting money, makes it costlier for him to cross back into the United States.

In 1997, the smuggler charged him $1,500. It's certain to be more now, he said.

While Mr. Morales continues his adventures in the United States, communities such as his home town of Luis Moya and La Cargada are dying a slow and painful death.

The decade-long drought in La Cargada has left land so dry that hundreds of acres of corn and wheat fields remained unplanted this year. Families have moved to the United States. Sure, they return once a year, usually for Christmas, or the town's annual holiday. Yet most of the year, said 69-year-old Enrique Guerrero, the streets of La Cargada are so empty that "we're like a cemetery awaiting the last rites."