My new Kentucky home: the cutting edge of illegal immigration used to be Los Angeles. Now It's Owensboro

Washington Monthly, Jan-Feb, 2005 by Peter Laufer

A sign high on the wall advises, "This farm has pride in tobacco."

"It's been real good this time." Elliott is pleased with the harvest. The Elliott farm is 90 acres of tobacco and 1,800 acres of corn and soybeans. Fifteen Mexicans work the place, all in the United States legally on H2A visas. "They're really very good," Elliott says. For some of them it's a regular, if seasonal, job. Elliott has been hiring them and bringing them to Kentucky for several years. "We been to Mexico," says Elliott. "We seen their problems."

Elliott says he spends $100,000 to $120000 a year on labor, up to a third of his gross income, and much of that money goes to Mexico. Under the federal government's H2A visa program for temporary workers (one of the programs President Bush wants to expand), Elliott's responsibilities include transportation and lodging for his workers. He hires a farm labor broker in Kentucky who works with contacts in Mexico to find workers, handles the logistics of bringing them to Kentucky, and satisfies the U.S. government rules and regulations. The broker arranges for visas and passports at a cost of a couple of hundred dollars for each laborer.

"I have probably a few more than I need," Elliott says. "But I don't mind. One of my workers, Alex, stayed home five months and worked construction about ten hours a day. When he finished each day, what he could find to eat somewhere he cooked on the job site. He got cardboard and slept on the job site. For a dollar an hour. He's up here working for $7.20. You think he ain't happy? Now he's got a new baby who was born two months early, who needed lots of care. Where was he at? Right here. Did he want to go home? Yes. Could he go home? No, he needed the money. It cost him $1,500 [for the postnatal care], so he's lost just about everything he's made up here just because of the baby."

Though he believes that those suspicious of the new immigrants amplify the strain they put on local social services, Elliott admits such a strain does exist. "We've had different things--operations that cost $4,000 to $10,000. The hospital has to take care of that. I can't pay it, the Mexicans can't pay it. An operation for appendicitis is $8,000. They can't pay it. They're going to die. What are you going to do? Let 'em die?"

Elliott shows off the two concrete bunkhouses he's built for the workers, quarters that meet or exceed federal standards for H2A workers. "We done insulation. We done it right, all the way around. After work hours they relax. They go fishing here on the farm ponds."

The Kentucky Housing Authority considers Elliott's operation a model for treating farm workers properly. He received a $30,000 grant from the commonwealth to expand one of the bunk houses. "We ended up putting a porch on it. That was really the nearest thing."

Beds are separated with shelves and a clothes rack, offering slight privacy enhanced by curtains. The industrial-looking particle-board walls are punctuated here and there with ad boc decor: an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, for example, alongside a calendar featuring Old Glory blowing in the wind.