Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

MONTERREY, Nuevo Leon (AP) -- The nine ranch hands grabbed their duffel bags and headed to the Rio Grande as night fell. But unlike millions of Mexican migrants, these men didn't need the cloak of darkness or a smuggler to cross the U.S. border. Instead, the poor laborers headed north bearing new passports and U.S. work visas.

Industries hard-pressed to find U.S workers, such as agriculture and meatpacking, have recruited Mexican labor on their own for a decade. Now Mexican states are helping them find labor, investigating both companies and workers to make sure both sides keep their side of the bargain, and applying heavy pressure on workers to stay legal.

That arrangement sits well with Erma and Rodrigo Zendejas, who have had trouble finding workers for their pine tree planting business, Tree O-Forrestry Services, in Warren, Arkansas. Few U.S. workers are willing to work for them, so they have had to look south for a decade. Their success was limited.

"They'll work two, maybe three days, then they're gone. Last month the whole doggone crew left," Erma Zendejas said. "A lot of guys just want to use the visas. They just want to get to the States and that's it."

She said some workers have piled into their van, crossed the border with them - and then taken off when they stopped for gas.

This year they went to the government of Coahuila, which borders Texas. State officials found nine men and then accompanied the couple and the men to the U.S consulate in Monterrey, where they waited 10 hours to obtain visas for the workers. As they left for the U.S. border, Coahuila official Daniel Aguirre waved and yelled to the group in English, "God Bless you everybody."

"This has been great so far," Rodrigo Zendejas said. "I've been really impressed with the program. I think working through the state will make a big difference so workers don't take off."

Unlike before when recruiters simply hired people off the street, state officials run criminal background checks on applicants, guaranteeing that they have had no troubles with the law, and then repeatedly warn the workers of the consequences of not fulfilling their contracts. Officials also keep in contact with their families in Mexico, which helps pressure the laborers to return after their visas have expired.

State officials say their programs can serve as a model for a large-scale guest-worker program that could allow millions of Mexican workers, instead of the current thousands, to harvest America's food, wash its dishes, clean its hotels and fill other blue-collar jobs.

Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. and Mexican officials had been negotiating a major increase in temporary work visas as a way to slow the tide of illegal Mexican migration. U.S. President George W. Bush and President Vicente Fox are expected to renew talks in late March at a UN conference in Monterrey.

State officials say their programs ensure finding experienced workers with clean bills of health and no criminal records in either nation, including no deportation records. Officials help workers obtain visas ranging from four to 11 months.

Without the states' help, many companies find their workers through recruiters or even migrant smugglers - often shysters who charge workers thousands of dollars for putting them in contact with employers.

Zacatecas, which borders Coahuila to the south, was the first to start a guest-worker program 18 months ago and has sent hundreds of workers to companies from Pennsylvania to California. A dozen other states have since followed suit, modeling their programs after Zacatecas, and another dozen states are looking into it. In April, the state of Puebla just east of Mexico City will send 130 gardeners to mow golf courses in Michigan.

Most of the programs are too new to establish that all workers will return once their visas expire. So far none of the workers sent by Zacatecas - which has the longest running program - have taken off and looked for work illegally in the United States. One Zacatecas worker did stay in the United States - but that was because he married a woman from San Antonio, Texas.

"We tell them that they will be marked for life and will never be able to work in the United States again" if they don't return, said Armando Esparza of the Zacatecas migrant assistance office. During the Bracero program, a 1942 agreement between the United States and Mexico that brought five million temporary workers to the United States to harvest crops and maintain railroad tracks, the flow of illegal immigrants expanded along with the authorized workers and continued to accelerate after the program ended in 1964.

Many say the problems of the Bracero program were partly due to its implementation. Mexicans lived in overcrowded camps and were denied medical assistance. Under the state programs, officials investigate workers' complaints and report abuses to U.S. authorities. But the state programs don't spell out the Mexicans' labor rights, such as the right to join a union or to receive health insurance and other benefits. Zacatecas economist Rodolfo Garcia said no program will work until rights are clearly defined.

"This is not a solution to reduce the flows nor to resolve serious economic problems," Garcia said. "Those who are going are the poorest of the poor who have not been able to afford to migrate otherwise. This is a vulnerable population that accepts the lowest salaries and doesn't demand their basic rights."

The pine-tree planting crew, for example, was never told how much they would earn - and never asked.

"I couldn't ask that," said Romulo Mireles, 54, a burly cowboy. "Then they would think I wasn't eager to go."

Mireles figured it has to be better than what he earns working the ranches around his home town of Saltillo, which can dwindle to less than 10 dollars a day when work is scarce. Still, he spent two weeks' salary to get a U.S. visa to find out.

Armando Juarez, a husky 30-year-old ranch hand from the Zacatecas village of Trancoso, worked 13-hour days at a San Antonio, Texas meatpacking company. It was dangerous work - "pure knives," he said - cutting carcasses at rapid-fire speed.

One of his companions sliced a nerve in his finger only weeks on the job. The Mexican workers had no health insurance and the man had to return to Mexico.

"The company didn't do anything," Juarez said. "I worried a lot. If you chopped off your hand, what could you do? That's what I didn't like."

Juarez said he also was promised a raise after two months on the job, but never got it until seven months later, shortly before his visa expired. Even so, Juarez bought his first car with the 1,000 dollars he saved in nine months, and hopes to renew his visa and return to the plant.

"At least you don't have to risk crossing the Rio Grande," he said. "And you're not considered a criminal."