on the cover / By Japhet Weeks

The Iceman Cometh

With half its workforce gone, Sun Valley Floral Farms is stuck between a bad immigration policy and a hard place

(June 26, 2008) Spanish translation by Larry and Ana Maria Mease

Alejandro couldn’t have been all that surprised when on the afternoon of Monday, June 9, his employer, Sun Valley Floral Farms, told him not to come to work the next day. The flower growers had received a letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a week earlier identifying 283 workers on its payroll suspected of being undocumented.

GALLERY >

It wasn’t the first time, the soft-spoken Alejandro told the Journalin Spanish on a recent weekend afternoon, that Sun Valley had told him to stay away from work because of his fraudulent identification papers. Two years ago approximately 300 undocumented Sun Valley employees were warned by the company to stay home because la Migra was coming the next day, he said. They were also told to get new social security cards. After immigration had come and gone, the employees returned to the farm. Within 15 days, Alejandro was the proud owner of a new social security number.

The heads-up and the day on the lam are just part of the uncertain terrain undocumented workers in California’s agricultural industry must navigate. Regardless, Alejandro was grateful for his relatively good-paying job, the modicum of benefits he received and the chance to work indoors.

The recent layoffs at Sun Valley speak to another uncertain reality: doing business in a country that lacks a comprehensive immigration policy. The layoffs raise important questions: Can California growers make do without undocumented labor, and how much do employers actually know about the status of their employees? The fact that Sun Valley let go half its workforce in the span of a week without making much of a stink about it may indicate that the company knew more than it is letting on about the work status of many of its workers, and that the time had finally come for it to swallow a bitter pill.

Last week, the company denied any prior knowledge that its employees were undocumented. “Sun Valley has always and will always comply with federal employment law,” a spokesperson wrote in response to questions from the Journal.

Alejandro, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, is just one of the 283 employees. But his story is a common one. He entered the United States long after this country offered undocumented workers amnesty in 1986. He paid a coyote, or human smuggler, $1,000 to lead him across the border. It was a grueling two-day trip on foot. Eventually Alejandro made his way to Humboldt County. A few years later he returned to his hometown to bring his wife north. In the meantime, prices for crossing the border had gone up. The newlywed couple forked over $3,000 this time. Alejandro got a job at Sun Valley Floral Farms planting bulbs and his children were born on this side of la frontera. They speak English and are being educated in local schools.

At this point, though, the family’s future is uncertain: After receiving his final paycheck from Sun Valley on June 9, Alejandro managed to find temporary work, but he’s worried that when winter comes, bringing the rain with it, he may have to take his family elsewhere in search of a new job, the Central Valley perhaps or even back to Mexico.

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