In a state that needs a diverse workforce, Ohio farmers have teamed up with big-city chambers of commerce to push for comprehensive immigration reform. Watch video
Nora Galvez-Rolero possesses a skill in short supply in northern Ohio. She picks apples, well enough to find steady work in the orchards of Erie and Huron counties for 13 straight harvests.
That career may be finished. On Aug. 25, the 38-year-old single mother was a passenger in a car pulled over by an Erie County Sheriff's deputy. His interest in a taillight quickly segued toward her citizenship.
Galvez-Rolero acknowledged she was an immigrant from Mexico "without papers," lacking legal status. With her seven-year-old son, Alex, she spent the night in a cold cell at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection complex in Port Clinton. It was the first stop in her likely deportation.
As Galvez-Rolero absorbed her calamity, in-the-know farmers mentally chalked up another loss. They rely upon laborers like her, migrant farmworkers who are typically immigrants, often undocumented and increasingly hard to find.
Fearful of lost harvests and rotting fruit, Ohio farmers are adding a rural voice to the call for immigration reform. They have joined big-city business groups -- those that represent manufacturers, research hospitals and tech companies -- to argue for action on the nation's much-criticized immigration system.
In a state where rural and urban economies demand a broad skill set, immigration reform is not the moral or civil rights crusade of other places. Rather, business groups, claiming smart economics, lead the campaign for change.
They say they need broader access to foreign-born workers with skills that will allow them to compete and to grow, thus creating more jobs for everyone.
Their cause suffered another in a series of discouragements Wednesday. U.S. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio declared he would not allow a pending immigration reform bill to come up for a vote in the House this year.
A vote could lead to negotiations with the U.S. Senate, which he said he wanted to avoid.
"We have no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill," he told a news conference in Washington, D.C.
Boehner, a Cincinnati-area Republican, said he prefers to take a piecemeal approach to immigration reform, with a series of separate, less-ambitious bills designed by the House.
Ohio business groups prefer the comprehensive approach taken by the U.S. Senate, which this summer passed a bill that addresses many of their concerns. Despite the latest setback, they intend to push on, motivated by economic realities of the Heartland.
Stricter scrutiny, rotten apples
"If you work for nine or 10 months to produce a crop, you want to know you can harvest it," said Bill Dodd, the owner of Dodd's Hillcrest Orchards in Lorain County.
Dodd, a fourth-generation apple grower, does not know Galvez-Rolero but is familiar with her plight. He's president of the Ohio Fruit Growers Marketing Association, a cooperative of about 40 orchards producing 20 varieties of Ohio apples.
To harvest the crop, growers each August hire crews of seasonal farmworkers, nimble men and women who clamber up and down ladders lugging 30 to 40 pound sacks. Most of them are immigrants from Mexico.
"These are skilled workers," said Dodd, insisting he is not able to find local laborers to do the job, even though the pay is above minimum wage.
"It's difficult work," he said. "You have to have the desire to do it."
Once, that was enough.
Stricter enforcement of immigration laws is drying up a labor stream that was steady if largely illegal. Farm groups say maybe half the seasonal workforce is unauthorized. Advocates for immigrants say it is higher than that.
All agree the migrant workers attract more scrutiny on their late summer return to Ohio than ever before.
Last year, a beefed-up U.S. Customs and Border Protection -- an arm of Homeland Security -- opened a $25 million hub in Port Clinton. It encourages county sheriff and small-town police agencies to work with border patrol agents to turn in suspected illegal immigrants they once ignored.
Farmers say their workers are getting pulled over by local police on the pretext of traffic stops and wind up in federal custody.
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Nora Galvez-Rolero talks with Veronica Dahlberg, the director of HOLA Ohio, and Rev. William Thaden, pastor of Sacred Heart Chapel, at a gathering at the Lorain church November 4, 2013.The migrants have grown fearful and the crews have grown smaller.
Dodd said he was short staffed this year by 10 to 20 pickers and he fears next year will be worse. Like other farmers, he said the current visa programs are outdated and inadequate. He's looking for a more efficient guest worker program, which he said the Senate reform bill provides.
"It has large implications for our economy," Dodd said. "If we can't produce the food ourselves, we're going to be reliant on someone else to produce it for us."
Suddenly, the orchardman can count upon kindred spirits in downtown Cleveland.
City folks unite with farmers
The Greater Cleveland Partnership, the regional chamber of commerce, long took a narrow view of immigration reform. It lobbied for more visas for engineers and scientists, people whose special skills are needed by local employers.
GCP president Joe Roman sees an issue of economic competitiveness.
"If a company is trying to grow and export and innovate, getting the needed skills is critical to that growth," he said.
As the debate broadened, so did the view of Ohio's largest chamber, which now supports a comprehensive approach that addresses the concerns of farmers, universities, software developers and immigrant families.
"We thought that's what was going to move," Roman said.
The GCP, along with most of the Ohio's big city chambers, has come out assertively behind the Senate reform bill. The new law would, among other things, free up more temporary visas for both high and low skill immigrants and introduce a new guest worker program for agriculture.
More controversial, the legislation would offer a path to citizenship to immigrants who have been living and working in the country illegally. This provision captures the support of many farmers, who appear to have a closer kinship to their workers than their urban brethren.
Mark Gilson of Gilson Gardens said he hires 35 to 50 seasonal workers a year at his tree farm in the nursery belt near Perry. Many come back year after year. If they are not completely legal, he would like to see them treated with respect and compassion.
"They're a great group of people," Gilson said. "They're a key part of the success and the survival of this industry."
Opposition to reform -- especially reforms that let in more immigrants -- comes from think tanks like the Center for Immigration Studies. Steven Camarota, the organization's research director, says employers are using immigrants to avoid recruiting, training and adequately paying local workers.
"There's no evidence we have a shortage of STEM workers," he said, referring to workers with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math. "I also think employers have become accustomed to paying low wages. They've become accustomed to not hiring from a local network. When the season comes around, they panic."
More impassioned opposition comes from grassroots groups like Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC. Steve Salvi, the group's founder, contends immigrants take jobs from native- born Americans and that immigration "is harming American families."
Business leaders like Roman take strong exception to that view. He said the research shows immigrants are economic catalysts.
"They're entrepreneurial. They create companies and they create jobs," he said.
A GCP team took that message to Washington two weeks ago. They joined a one-day, Oct. 28 lobbying blitz organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Partnership for a New American Economy and the tech industry's FWD.us.
The Ohio delegation included representatives of Ohio employers, farmers, clergy and law enforcement. It met with staff of all 16 of the state's congressional offices, including Boehner's, and argued in support of the Senate reform bill.
The Speaker's response via the Washington press corps left many deflated.
"The people on the other side, they have the ear of too many of our legislators," said Mark Gilson, who was part of the Ohio team.
He expressed amazement that an overwhelmingly Republican group of business leaders had so little influence with Republican politicians.
The seasoned lobbyist on his team preached persistence. Nick Gattozzi, the vice president of government advocacy for the GCP, said the business groups were witnessing Washington-style politics.
"I think what the Speaker is saying, very firmly, is that when immigration reform happens it is going to be on the House's timetable," he said. "We'll remain steadfast and make sure our voices are heard. When it comes up for a vote, we hope we're on the winning end."
That may be too late for Nora Galvez-Rolero, who is unlikely to benefit from legislation she in a small way inspired. She's scheduled to make her initial appearance in U.S. Immigration Court in Cleveland in early December. Fighting deportation is costly.
A hat was passed around on her behalf at a recent meeting of HOLA Ohio, a grassroots Hispanic group, in the basement of Sacred Heart Chapel in Lorain. Spanish-speaking farmworkers, landscapers, apple pickers and wait staff filled it with about $100 worth of small bills.
Galvez-Rolero, through an interpreter, said she believes her son will have a better life in America and she hopes she can stay. She also said she believes she has picked her last bushel of Ohio apples.