By Susan Ferriss – Bee Staff Writer
No one needs to convince registered Republican and conservative businesswoman Cathy Gurney that the U.S. immigration system is broken.
But Gurney, who owns Sierra Landscape & Maintenance in Chico, doesn’t consider illegal immigrants a grave threat to the American middle class or lawbreakers beyond redemption.
Without the ability to make sure all her workers are legal now and in the future, she said, the business she’s built for 27 years would collapse.
The current illegal immigration crisis exists, business owners contend, partly because lawmakers have failed to devise a visa system that would allow foreigners in to fill jobs for which there are labor shortages, because Americans either are not available or don’t want the jobs.
Ever since the 1986 immigration overhaul, Gurney and others argue, foreign workers desperate for work have been tacitly allowed to fill that void using fake documents. Employers only had to eyeball documents to check their authenticity.
Now businesses are imploring Congress to give them a foolproof system for checking documents, in combination with more visas.
"They can’t just build a fence. They can’t just send people back. That would devastate the U.S. economy," said Gurney, who doesn’t really know who among her employees has real or fake documents.
Gurney pays workers $8 an hour when they start, but she said wages rise steadily with experience. Some make more than $20 an hour now. After they’re on the job for one year, she pays 100 percent of employees’ medical insurance.
"With no immigration reform, I cannot have access to legal workers. I could shut down. That’s a scary feeling," she said. "The small-business people need to speak up. It’s the biggest broken system we have, and they’re not fixing it."
Jack King, who handles government affairs for the Sacramento-based California Farm Bureau, also was left disappointed Thursday.
California agribusiness produces a huge quantity of America’s food and has been lobbying for years for reform that would legalize current employees and set up a guest worker system.
With foreign workers serving as the backbone of almost every corner of agribusiness, labor advocates such as the United Farm Workers Union also support giving work visas to employees.
Immigrant farm laborers who were legalized during the 1986 amnesty have largely moved on to other jobs, farmers say.
The Senate bill would have required newly legal workers to remain in farm work for three to five years and show English proficiency before permanent residency would be granted.
"We’re certainly not giving up on this," King said. "We’re getting reports of labor shortages already. We can’t let it go."
King said a segment of Congress seems swayed by a "vocal minority" that doesn’t understand the magnitude of the need for immigrant workers on farms.
California produces half the nation’s fresh fruits and vegetables and more than 20 percent of the entire U.S. milk supply.
"The public isn’t facing the reality of how these products get there," King said.
Gurney plans to travel to Los Angeles on Wednesday to join 100 immigrants and others on a cross-country campaign called the Dreams Across America Train. The train trip is billed a way to "dispel myths" about immigrants, legal and illegal.
The train will pass through various cities until reaching Washington, D.C., June 18 for a rally.
About the writer: The Bee’s Susan Ferriss can be reached at (916) 321-1267 or sferriss@sacbee.com.