LABOR & LITIGATION: Second Home

Feliciano Montes’ son was up to no good.

Working in Ijamsville, Md., as an H-2B landscape laborer for Outside Unlimited, Feliciano received word his teenage son, Jose, had mixed with the wrong crowd back in Mexico and was headed toward trouble. 

Being hundreds of miles from home, Feliciano felt powerless. As a concerned father, he might as well have been a million miles from his son.
 
Desperate, Feliciano approached his boss, Michael Martin, Outside Unlimited’s president, about his predicament.
 
“He told me he was worried and that his only goal for the last few years was to get his 18-year-old son up here to live with him,” Martin says.
 
The next year, Martin was able to get Jose a work visa as part of the H-2B program that brings up nearly 100 Hispanics to work as laborers and foremen for his landscape company. It was the change of scenery Jose needed, Martin says. Under Feliciano’s tutelage, Jose developed into a model employee at Outside Unlimited. “Up here Jose has been a great worker,” Martin says. “He proved early on to be an excellent technical laborer and he’s worked his way up to become an assistant foreman. In fact, after this year, we expect him to begin running his own crew.”
 
That is, if the H-2B program still exists in its current form for Jose.
 
Jose’s story, like many others, is the success overlooked during the H-2B discussion. As lawmakers lobby for the continuation of the H-2B program with the exemption of returning workers or a limited program that can reach its cap too quickly for the green industry to benefit, the human side of the equation is often overlooked.
 
The H-2B program annually grants 66,000 work visas for employers demonstrating a seasonal, intermittent, peak load or one-time need for foreign workers. The program has been under fire as of late due to anti-immigration and “restrictionist” conservatives in Congress, as well as a misinformed and erroneous perception that H-2B workers take jobs from Americans and deplete social services.
 
The fact is, in most cases, H-2B workers come to the United States and during their nine months toiling for landscape companies they become productive members of their surrogate communities. During their stay here, many take advantage of the opportunities to better themselves, some for the first time in their lives.
 
Not only do they better themselves, but they return to their home countries with the ability to better the lives of their families.
A BETTER LIFE. Bruno Pillari remembers the disappointment on the faces of the men he turned away.
 
Pillari experienced firsthand the environment workers try to escape through the H-2B program. In the impoverished border town of Ciudad Juarez, just outside of El Paso, Texas, Pillari interviewed potential workers for his Howell, N.J.-based landscape company, Pillari Brothers. Amid the shanty homes and street peddlers, Pillari screened dozens of candidates who believed working for his landscape company was the ticket to a better life.
 
“They were all dying to get in here because the opportunities are so bad where they are now,” Pillari says. “Looking at their faces you can tell it’s been a hard life and it hasn’t been easy to make a living. They put a lot of stock and hope into getting picked up by this type of a program. When they don’t make it, you see the looks in their eyes – now they’ve got to go back.”
 
In many cases, the rejected were red-flagged because they had illegally crossed the border once before and were caught, Pillari says. Very little in the way of job opportunities or a livable wage remains for them in their rural Mexican farming towns.
 
“At a restaurant we bought a nice lunch for 24 guys and it only cost us $90,” Pillari says. “I left a $10 tip and one of the guys said, “Are you crazy? That waiter doesn’t make $10 all day.”
 
Those fortunate enough to be granted a work visa are given a ticket to a better life.
 
In general, a new H-2B worker starts as a manual laborer digging trenches for drainage and irrigation systems, clearing out plants, shoveling gravel and making paths for walkways and patios. While they arrive uneducated, contractors say the workers are good with their hands and some have limited experienced in trades such as concrete work and carpentry.
 
As they learn the ropes and better themselves through training and supplemental education, they have the opportunity to gain responsibility for more specialized work, says Manuel Castaneda, president of Pro Landscape in Hillsboro, Ore.
 
Castaneda’s workers start at $11.01 an hour which increases $1 over a short period of time. Seasoned workers in their second or third year earn between $12 and $14 an hour, and Castaneda says he has a couple of veteran employees who make $16 an hour. All workers are eligible for time-and-a-half overtime.
 
Martin’s workers, the majority from Mexico, start out at about $8 an hour, with experienced laborers earning $15 an hour, not including overtime.
 
Likewise, Pillari says new workers earn about $9 an hour and experienced foremen – with five to six years of experience – earn between $16 and $18 an hour.
 
Besides money, many contractors provide their H-2B workers with opportunities to better themselves. For many workers, it’s their first exposure to a structured education.
 
“Most have practically no education, and if there is any, it’s at a very elementary level,” Pillari says. “You see this firsthand when they struggle to fill out paperwork. Some guys can’t even write.”
 
Castaneda provides his workers with educational opportunities at the local community college for English classes and to become certified in welding, concrete work, stone carving and heavy equipment operation.
 The investment, about $10,000 annually, is worth it, he says. “They become much more productive when they understand why they’re doing things a certain way,” he explains. “When they understand why they become more interested in what they’re doing and begin to build a passion for their work.”
 
“The program allows guys to concentrate on the work at hand and not at looking over their shoulders because they’re here working illegally,” says Pellari, who subsides about 80 percent of supplement education costs for his H-2B workers. “They can also concentrate on taking classes to learn English and better themselves and not worry that if they slip up they’ll get arrested.”
 
A worker who betters himself through education and added responsibility knows no limit, Martin says. On his crews, Martin has a number of Hispanic foremen who oversee $100,000 jobs in high income residential communities.
SAFE PASSAGE. For many years Noe wanted to leave his home in Mexico to work in the United States but his parents refused to allow it.
 
They’d heard the stories. They worried Noe would find his way to the United States but then not find work and would be penniless. He could get arrested and incarcerated or a con artist offering safe passage to the U.S. may double cross their son. Or worse, their son could get lost in the dessert and be condemned to die a horrible death from sun exposure and dehydration.
 
The H-2B program was the venue that provided Noe with safe and legal passage into the United States to work for nine to 10 months for Pro Landscape in Hillsboro, Ore., and earn a wage, benefits and lifestyle unattainable in his home country.
 
“This is a win-win situation,” says Pro Landscape’s Castaneda. “H-2B opens up an opportunity for them here. These people want to work and succeed. The people that are left out of the program are the people who want to blame others for not finding work.”
 
Once here, very rarely are H-2B workers strangers in a strange land. Because the workers appreciate the H-2B program, it’s common for them to lobby their employers to bring up relatives to work the following season. This builds community and support networks.
 
“Every year I get list of people – whole families – who want to come here as part of the H-2B program,” Martin says. “This family collective is a great benefit for the individuals who are here working because it’s easier to be 1,000 miles from home when you have a sense of community supporting you.”
 
One of the misconceptions about H-2B workers is that they come to this country to work and then they become a drain on the system’s social services. This perception is far from reality, contractors say.
 
The H-2B program gives guest workers the opportunity to engage in normal lives. During their months working in the U.S., the workers become active members of their communities. They typically live with a relative or an acquaintance in an apartment while utilizing the H-2B program.
 
“We encourage them to be independent, and in doing so they become less dependent on us,” Castaneda says. Likewise, H-2B workers are economic engines for their host communities. Besides renting apartments, during their stay they rent or buy cars, they spend money in their local grocery and retail stores and they invest their money at local banks.
 
“I had a local retailer tell me that when our guys are in town it’s a whole different profit margin for their businesses,” says Martin, whose company is about 40 miles outside of Baltimore. “Our guys are well-known at the local banks because they all have accounts, and they're well-known at the local stores because they spend money there.
 
“It’s not as if they come here to work and they leave the United States with all the money they made,” Martin continues. “That’s a silly misconception. The fact is they start to live lives as Americans and they’re as much a part of the fabric of our community as anyone else.”
 
Next to religious and church-related activities, soccer is the most popular past time among Hispanic workers. Castaneda sponsors a company team that often plays against teams from competing landscape contractors.
 
“Soccer is one of the things all of the Hispanic workers seem to have in common,” he says. “From what I hear, our team is very good.”

DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES. Landscape contractors readily admit the loss of the H-2B program, the lack of support for exemption of returning workers and an unaddressed and business limiting cap issue would have negative consequences on their businesses. Suddenly they could lose a proven workforce that many have cultivated and trained over the last decade.
 
Imagine the effects of losing a team of workers overnight and you get some idea of the impact on the industry. But imagine if the job you relied on to pay for your home, to support your family, to educate your children and improve your whole way of life suddenly disappeared. For the H-2B workers, continued limits on the program could be devastating.
 
“As landscapers, we’d be in trouble if the guys weren’t available next year,” Pillari says. “For the workers, I imagine it’d be much worse.”
 
“They’ve learned to trust the system,” Castaneda says. “And these are a group of people who aren’t really used to trusting anyone.”
 
Not only have they bettered themselves here, but they’ve made life better for their families back in their home country. With the money they’ve earned, guest workers acquire better housing, send their children to college and even start second businesses. Losing the program jeopardizes the strides they’ve made to become more self-sufficient, Castaneda says.
 
“I imagine their lifestyle has changed back home and they’ve become dependent on this kind of money to sustain that,” Castaneda says. “Some have purchased land and built homes and that’s the part we won’t see here. If they can’t work, they’ll be in trouble.”
 
If the system is dismantled, many landscape contractors expect workers will cross into this country illegally.
 
“It is human nature to do what you need to do to survive,” Martin says. “These jobs have given them a lifestyle that they’re able to support and feel secure in because every year they know they’ll have a job with us, they’ll make money and they will be able to support their families.
 
“When you lay down at night, it’s good to know that you have that security and that you’re not going to have to walk three days through the desert for work or worry that someone may turn you in to the authorities,” he adds.
 
Many H-2B workers don’t understand what’s on the line, while others expect, in the end, their bosses will find a solution and make everything right.
 
“When we talk to them about this issue they shake their heads that they understand but I really think that they don’t,” Castaneda says. “They take it for granted that their work visas will always be here for them. They don’t worry because they figure we’ll deal with it and figure it all out and that things won’t change. They think we have more power to change things than we do.”