It is 9 a.m. in Chester County, and Mexican laborers ride mowers spewing grass from the rough at Radley Run Country Club. It is a springtime scene in the hills of Philadelphia's suburbs, but it could just as easily be Virginia, Illinois or Florida.
Foreign workers are landing seasonal jobs in affluent U.S. suburbs in unprecedented numbers, thanks to a little-known visa program that is ballooning to serve a booming suburban industry: landscaping.
Since 1998, the U.S. government has tripled the temporary visas issued to unskilled foreign laborers, a surge in a controversial program that critics compare to a form of slavery that depresses U.S. wages. The growth has happened in the H2B program. It provides visas lasting less than a year for unskilled, nonagricultural jobs.
Responding to what they call a dearth of low-wage labor in pricey towns, landscapers and immigration consultants are spreading the word about the long-underused program. The visas have become so hot that last year the State Department issued nearly 63,000 – just shy of the 66,000 limit. The majority of requests have been for landscaping-related jobs.
One trade association is lobbying Congress to eliminate the cap. Another is meeting this week in Washington to cut the program's costs and red tape.
"Employers are just figuring out that this is a very good source of cheap labor," said Jessica Vaughan, a policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.
For years these visas were the near-exclusive domain of resort hotels. But the hunt for low-wage workers in the new suburban oases of wealth that finance the landscaping industry has fueled the program's growth.
The government's only other unskilled seasonal work visa program – the H2A, for farm workers – has remained level at about 31,500 in recent years.
"When you ask a contractor what their number-one business challenge is, their answer is labor," said Maria Candler, a groundskeeping executive who runs the legislative committee of the Associated Landscape Contractors of America. The H2B, she said, "is what everybody's talking about."
This growth is unwelcome to immigrant labor watchdogs, who say there is little evidence of genuine labor shortages.
The decades-old program offers few worker protections, they say. And, like illegal immigrant labor, it drives down wages by giving employers an alternative to boosting wages enough to lure U.S. workers.
"These people are indentured servants," said Vernon M. Briggs, an expert in immigration and labor at Cornell University. "If they quit, they have to go back... if they agitate for a union or they stop showing up for jobs, they get fired."
From the industry side, the claims are clear: We need help.
Radley Run superintendent Charlie Carr said he was using the visas for the first time this year out of frustration: College students often failed to show up for the 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. shifts. The 160-acre golf course near West Chester is ringed by estate-size homes, as are many newly developed communities in the far outer suburban ring of Philadelphia - hardly a source of low-wage labor.
In Chester County, five golf courses have been built in the last five years, said Jerred Golden, president of the 1,400-member Pennsylvania Turfgrass Council.
"Corporate parks are being built, McMansions are being built; these people don't have time to mow their own grass," said Golden, director of grounds and water quality at nearby Hershey's Mill golf course and retirement village.
At a November 2002 conference at Pennsylvania State University, the turfgrass council invited a Pittsburgh landscaper to host a session on the visas. It drew rave reviews.
Employers say the demand for lawn care has outstripped the desire to work.
"Owners can't even get their own kids to do the work," said Tom Delaney, vice president of governmental affairs for the Professional Lawn Care Association of America. "The labor force has gotten snobby."
In recent years, Carr began hiring local Mexicans. They showed him Social Security cards and permanent resident visas, known as green cards. After the season ended last year, though, Carr received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying the numbers on four workers' immigrant wage formsdidn't match the names provided.
"I got tired of all the bad documents," Carr said. "I just wanted everybody legally working."
Seasonal foreign labor dates to World War II, when Latin American guest workers, or braseros, were invited to fill a labor shortage on U.S. farms. When that program ended, immigrants continued to enter the States illegally. In an effort to create a disincentive, Congress made it legal in 1952 for companies to recruit foreign workers.
In 1986, temporary visas for unskilled workers were divided into two categories: agricultural (H2A) and nonagricultural (H2B). The goal was to give the government more control; farmers had been hiring illegal immigrants, said Briggs of Cornell.
Analysts have closely watched farmworker visas, but few have tracked H2Bs or related claims of labor shortages, Briggs said. "Just because someone can't find the worker he wants at the wage he wants to pay doesn't mean he should go to Mexico to get him cheaper," Briggs said. "He should raise the wage rates. That's the way a free market operates."
In December, Carr hired Marcus Drake Consultants. The Park Ridge, N.J., firm helps employers clear three government agencies and get work visas.
"A lot of landscaping companies, a lot of construction companies have caught on," said Noel Goldman, head of Marcus Drake. "My competitors and I, we're promoting this at conventions and in trade magazines."
Carr ran classified ads to prove the jobs could not be filled. But this was done in mid-winter to allow for the lengthy review and ensure the workers could be cleared by April. Carr also pledged to pay prevailing wages before the U.S. Labor Department and the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry would clear his application for approval by the immigration service.
Carr's full-time, year-round greenskeeper, Norberto Bernal, a naturalized citizen from the Mexico City area, located the workers: four members of one family and two acquaintances. Victor Gonzalez, 29, and his wife, Erika Piedra, 27, left their 7- and 8-year-old girls in the care of grandparents in Toluca. They arrived in West Chester May 4th and are to return in November. All six share an Avondale home.
In Mexico, Gonzalez made $100 a week as a police officer and Erika did not work. Each now earns $320 weekly – about $7.50 an hour. They hope to build a house in Mexico.
"The truth is there isn't enough money to live in Mexico," Gonzalez said. "We were living with my parents because we didn't make enough."
All told, it took six months and cost Radley Run about $6,000 in government and consulting fees to bring the six workers to Chester County.
"I look at it as value," Carr said. "I wanted to create a work environment where they have a legal visa, they don't have to worry about the cops pulling them over."
Benevolence does not entirely explain why landscapers are opting for visas when there are, by most accounts, plentiful illegal immigrants willing to work. Landscapers say the temporary visas protect against the possibility of government raids.
"Our company got too big to run that risk," said Candler, of Virginia. A risk, she explained, "of coming in one day, and half of my workforce is gone."
There are less noble incentives: Regulations do not give workers a way to file complaints, and visas are owned by employers, said Arthur Read, general counsel for Friends of Farmworkers in Philadelphia.
"They are not permitted to work for any other employer," Read said. "So if you have any dispute with your employer over almost anything, you are powerless."
Two trade groups are combining efforts to loosen regulations. The Associated Landscape Contractors of America wants Congress to eliminate the annual cap. The Professional Lawn Care Association of America wants to make the process less expensive and less onerous, and arranged meetings this week in Washington to discuss the issue with members of Congress.
The meetings, Delaney said, "are laying the basis for us being newly involved in the issue, understanding the players and the players understanding us."
The author, Maria Panaritis, is a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer and can be reached at mpanaritis@phillynews.com.