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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. Economic hard times have come to nearly all groups of people in the United States, but few if any have been hurt more than immigrants. I'm here with The World's Jason Margolis now. He's about to present the first part of his four-part series on the immigrant experience during the recession. He rooted himself in California to report these stories. Why California, Jason?

JASON MARGOLIS: Yeah, why California? Well, California has been hit especially hard during the recession. First, they had the sub-prime mortgage mess. California has among the highest unemployment in the country right now, and now we're hearing in the news about California's budgetary problems. I mean, California is the perfect storm right now for the recession. And in terms of why California with the immigrants, well, California has long been a beacon for people across the world from Latin America, Asia, Europe, eastern Europe, everywhere.

MULLINS: And these immigrants have been drawn to what kind of work?

MARGOLIS: Well, they're typically drawn to low-wage jobs. This is what immigrants do. One area in particular, they work in the farm fields of California, the farm fields of Central Valley. These are some of the most productive farm fields in the world. There's a good chance that your fruits and vegetables on your dinner plate tonight were picked by immigrant labor in California.

MULLINS: So aside from agriculture, what other industries will you be looking at in the series?

MARGOLIS: Well, I looked at four areas – so agriculture; and then tomorrow we're looking at in-home healthcare workers. Those tend to be largely Filipino and other Asian immigrants. On Wednesday, I'm looking at nannies – but not just any nannies; nannies to the stars in Hollywood. And on Thursday, I'm profiling day laborers. Those are the guys out on the street corners who are just hoping to get picked up for a day's labor, doing gardening, painting, whatever they can do to earn some dollars.

MULLINS: Okay. But today you're going to take us to the farm fields of the San Joaquin Valley. This is a place where crop prices are down. California is in a third year of a drought, and water has been turned away from the fields to protect a threatened fish known as “The Delta Smelt. It's a pretty tough situation, which explains why people there need to blow off some steam. And that brings us to the start of your story, Jason. Let's listen.

JASON MARGOLIS: This is Firebaugh, California. Population 6,894. Tonight is Demolition Derby night. Many of the drivers are farmers. They need to blow off some steam. Times are tough here. Unemployment hovers around 30 percent. I watch from the stands with farmer Shawn Coburn. Coburn has rammed cars with his peers in the past.

SHAWN COBURN: I'm not doing it this year because I'm tied up trying to find water.

MARGOLIS: That's what everyone here is trying to do.

COBURN: These are little bunches right here. These are going to turn into berries.

MARGOLIS: That's Colburn again, during the daylight hours showing me his grape vineyards. His field looks robust and healthy. Just across the street, his neighbor's land is fallow dirt. Coburn bought his neighbor's water.

COBURN: I got my checkbook and begged, borrowed, and stole and paid a lot of money to try to keep some water around. We're going to lose money on this. I have to keep this. They can't take the year off. Without water, you're done. These things are going to die.

MARGOLIS: As bad as it is for farmers, it's worse for the people who pick their crops. Almost all the people in the fields are Hispanic; most are Mexican. They live in places like Taft, a small community of a few hundred farm workers. Moises Silva earns $8 to $10 dollars an hour picking cherries, blueberries and peaches. He shows me his small apartment. The back door has come off the hinges. The front window won't close. The carpet is filled with holes. He points to exposed fluorescent light tubes on the ceiling with wires dangling down. He says it took his landlord four years to fix the light. He was afraid to complain too much. He's here illegally. Many of these small communities used to be labor camps. They often lack sidewalks or paved roads. Some places don't have clean drinking water. These places seem a million miles removed from the immigration debate in Washington.

PHOEBE SEATON: I'm not a fan of being attacked. We all have stories. We definitely all have dog stories, stray dog stories.

MARGOLIS: That's Phoebe Seaton and Laurel Firestone, both attorneys who work in California's rural immigrant communities. For many of the people here, non-profit lawyers are the only representation they have. Seaton is with the California Rural Legal Assistance and Firestone co-directs the Community Water Center in Visalia. The women say the recession is making life in these communities harder than it already was.

SEATON: I think that often, the poor get poorer in harder times.

LAUREL FIRESTONE: I think some of the impacts on a day-to-day level are whereas before people were struggling but were able to buy, for example, bottled water so they would have safe water in their
homes. They're having to make choices and aren't always able to go get bottled water, and so people are having to expose their families to contaminated water in drinking and cooking whereas before, they might have been able to avoid that.

MARGOLIS: There's no way of knowing exactly how many of the farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley are here illegally. It's estimated that up to three-quarters of agricultural workers in the US don't have papers. I took an informal poll in Taft. My translator, Fausto Sanchez, helped round up about 40 men. So first question is: how many of them are here with papers, are here legally? Not a single man raises his hand. I ask a few more questions. “Raise their hands if they're making as much or more money now as they were a year ago?” Again, no hands go up. “Are any of them considering going back to Mexico?” One man raises his hand and chuckles.
Herein lies the dilemma of the immigration debate: what to do with an estimated 12 million people already here?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: For those immigrants who have put down roots, may have come there illegally, I think they need to pay a penalty for having broken the law. They need to come out of the shadows and then we have to put them through a process where, if they want to stay in the United States, they have an opportunity over time to earn that opportunity.

MARGOLIS: That's President Obama speaking during his April visit to Mexico. This idea, a path to legalization, doesn't sit well with a lot of people. Critics like Rick Oltman call it a free pass for lawbreakers. He's the spokesman for the group “Americans for Border Security Now”.

RICK OLTMAN: The illegal workers, they need to be identified and they need to be turned out of these jobs. We know anecdotally from other places around the country where immigration and customs enforcement have sought to enforce the law and businesses have lost a lot of illegal alien workers that they had that Americans are lined up to take those jobs.

MARGOLIS: But all the farmers I met in the San Joaquin Valley, like cherry farmer Robin Butterfield, disagree with that.

ROBIN BUTTERFIELD: I would say we have 100 percent Hispanic workers picking, in my field anyway.

MARGOLIS: Will Americans do these jobs?

BUTTERFIELD: No. Well, I've not been able to get them to do it. I mean, my kids will go out and do it because they have to, because they're my kids.

MARGOLIS: Farmers here say if the undocumented were sent back to Mexico, agriculture in California would simply collapse. All the farmers I met say they don't knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Butterfield says she plays by the rules.

BUTTERFIELD: We get their names, we get their license numbers – you know, the contractor has all that ahead of time, and I try and verify that the people that he hands me the paperwork for are the ones who actually come to the field. That's about the best I can do.

MARGOLIS: Do you think they are all who they say they are?

BUTTERFIELD: I hope they are. I hope they are. You know, short of maybe taking a DNA sample and running it to the lab, I have no real way of knowing. Bottom line, none of us do.

MARGOLIS: That's part of the problem. It's common for farmers to hire seasonal teams of workers through contractors. Butterfield is a small farmer – she works alongside her employees. But many large farm owners don't. They're a step removed from the hiring and payment process. If the workers turn out to be undocumented or exploited, the farm owner can claim ignorance. Many say the system is rigged against the worker.

DOLORES HUERTA: When people cannot speak for themselves, they don't have any kind of labor protections. This, I believe, is a form of slavery.

MARGOLIS: That's Dolores Huerta. 40 years ago, Huerta and Cesar Chavez organized farm workers in California. They led the Delano grape strike and boycott. It lasted more than 5 years. In the end, the workers won: they got better wage concessions and better conditions in the fields. But Huerta says those rights haven't trickled down to many of the undocumented workers today.

HUERTA: They don't get paid the proper wages. They don't know that they have rest periods, that they should have a clean toilet in the field or cold drinking water. Types of conditions we fought for and gained for the farm workers. They often don't have those kinds of protections. And then they're afraid to speak up because they're afraid if they speak up, somebody will get them deported.

MARGOLIS: Huerta is now 79 years old and still very much in the fight. She hopes that immigration reform improves conditions out in the field.

HUERTA: I think there's a great possibility. We know what President Obama has said he's for immigration reform, but as I like to say to people, the President can only sign what comes to his desk, right?

MARGOLIS: Just this month, Congress introduced a bipartisan bill called “AgJobs”. It proposes legislation to make it easier for growers to hire more temporary immigrant workers. It also includes a path to legal status for the undocumented, if they have clean records and pay fines and back taxes. Similar bills have been introduced recently in Congress. They've never reached the President's desk. For The World, I'm Jason Margolis, Bakersfield, California.

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