VZCZCXRO6616
RR RUEHCD RUEHGA RUEHGD RUEHHA RUEHHO RUEHMC RUEHMT RUEHNG RUEHNL
RUEHQU RUEHRD RUEHRS RUEHTM RUEHVC
DE RUEHME #0723/01 0692324
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 102324Z MAR 09 ZDS
FM AMEMBASSY MEXICO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5586
RUEHC/DEPT OF LABOR WASHINGTON DC
RHMFIUU/DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY WASHINGTON DC
INFO RUCNCAN/ALL CANADIAN POSTS COLLECTIVE
RUEHXC/ALL US CONSULATES IN MEXICO COLLECTIVE
RHMFISS/CDR USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL
RUEHRC/DEPT OF AGRICULTURE WASHINGTON DC
RUEHGT/AMEMBASSY GUATEMALA

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MEXICO 000723 
 
C O R R E C T E D    C O P Y (ADDED GUATEMALA AS INFO) 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR DRL/AWH AND ILSCR, CA/VO, WHA/MEX AND USDOL FOR 
ILAB AND ETA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ELAB ECON CVIS EAGR PGOV SOCI PINR MX
SUBJECT: UNTIED FARM WORKERS CONTINUES TO SUPPORT H-2 VISA 
FARM LABORS FROM COLIMA 
 
REF: 08 MEXICO 3493 
 
MEXICO 00000723  001.2 OF 003 
 
 
¶1. SUMMARY: In 2008 a large group of laborers were recruited 
from the Mexican pacific coastal state of Colima to do farm 
work in California and Iowa.  According to the United Farm 
Workers (UFW) union, the Colima laborers entered the US with 
the hope of working there legally after complying with all of 
the requirements needed to receive H-2A visas. 
Unfortunately, upon their arrival in the US the UFW says that 
their employers failed to abide by the terms of their 
contractual agreement with the workers.  As a result the UFW 
contracted the services of two labor rights advocacy firms to 
file a class action suit on behalf of the Colima laborers. 
Ultimately the law firms hope to have about 100 laborers take 
part in the suit.  Mission Mexico,s Labor Counselor recently 
traveled to Colima to meet with representatives of the law 
firms and learn more about the basis for their legal action 
on behalf of the aggrieved farm laborers.  The law firm 
representatives have started working with the GOM,s Foreign 
Ministry on this matter and they expressed their gratitude 
that the USG was also interested in seeing justice done for 
the Colima laborers.   For the law firm representatives this 
case was mostly a matter of defending their clients.  For the 
UFW this case holds greater significance as an indication of 
some of the problems with the H-2A visa program.  END 
SUMMARY. 
 
COLIMA WORKERS EARN LESS THAN PROMISED 
¶2.  In July 2008 roughly 200 agricultural laborers were 
recruited from the Mexican pacific coastal state of Colima to 
work on farms in California and Iowa (Reftel).  The workers 
were recruited by a relatively inexperienced labor contractor 
who, allegedly with the consent of various US employers, 
promised them the full range of housing, meals and salary 
benefits as stipulated under applicable H-2 visa provisions. 
For the laborers the best thing they thought they had been 
promised was a guarantee of earning USD 100 per day and a 40 
hour workweek for a period of at least six months.  In order 
to obtain the jobs promised by the recruiter the workers were 
all required to pay USD 600 to cover visa processing and 
travel costs.  Unfortunately for the Colima workers, it 
appears that none of the promises made to them were kept. 
¶3.  Upon arrival in the US the laborers were reportedly 
placed in substandard housing, provided meals that consisted 
of little more than beans and were rarely, if ever, given the 
40 hours of work per week they had been promised. In some 
cases the laborers were never offered the full-time 
employment they had been promised; in other instances they 
were reportedly not paid in full for the work they actually 
did.  With the help of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union 
the workers were organized into a group that would ultimately 
be represented by the California Rural Legal Assistance 
Foundation (CRLA) and the Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, Inc. 
(TRLA).  These two labor rights advocacy firms have filed a 
class suit against the recruiter and the US employers on 
behalf of the Colima workers to obtain the promised wages and 
benefits. The case was filed in the California Eastern 
District Court on August 20, 2008.  The defendants listed in 
the case are:  &SGLC, INC., Cesar Hugo Ibarra Ceja, Abraham 
Jimenez Bueno, Jaime Lopez Ramos, Salvador Gonzalez, Julian 
Gonzalez and Salvador Gonzalez dba Salvador Gonzalez Labor 
Contractor.8 SGLC, Inc. is a firm that largely operates in 
the areas of Galt and Clarksburg, California.  The H-2 
petition number in this case is: WAC 0818-251501-012. 
¶4.  The UFW, CRLA and TRLA all attempted to enlist the 
assistance of the GOM and the state government of Colima to 
help the workers obtain some form of redress for their 
grievances.  For the most part these efforts have been 
unsuccessful with respect to the state authorities in Colima 
but, this past January, the GOM,s Foreign Ministry began 
working with CRLA and TRLA to look into the workers 
complaints. Unfortunately for the workers the support of the 
GOM, while welcome, did not come until all of them had 
ultimately returned home to Mexico.  In, the end workers were 
forced to pay their own way home, having earned less than the 
net cost of their original outlay for coming to work in the 
US.  Moreover, upon their return to Mexico many were 
allegedly threaten by agents of the original recruiter as 
well as by Colima state government authorities to withdraw 
from the class action suit or be forever banned from the 
possibility of obtaining legal employment in the US. 
 
THE WORKERS AND THE LAWYERS 
 
MEXICO 00000723  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
¶5.  When the CRLA and TRLA originally took up the case of the 
Colima laborers their client group consisted of some 35 
workers.  That group has now grown to just over 50 workers 
and the two farm labor advocates hope to have a group of 
approximately 100 by the time the case is ready for trial. 
In most such cases the workers who apply to do farm labor in 
the US are nearly almost always men but in this case, perhaps 
because the laborers were able to legally enter the US on 
H-2A visas, some 15 percent of them were women.  As noted 
above the laborers were recruited to work in California and 
Iowa.  While the overwhelming majority of the workers were 
sent to California the criteria used for determining which 
workers went where seemed to be more a function of when they 
signed up to go.  There does not appear to be any significant 
difference in the treatment either group received; which is 
to say neither group received the wages or benefits they were 
promised. 
¶6.  In connection with a mass meeting with aggrieved workers 
in Colima organized for the CRLA and TRLA by the Foreign 
Ministry, Mission Mexico Labor Counselor met with the two 
head labor lawyers involved to get their assessment on the 
status of the case.   The two farm labor advocates were 
guardedly optimistic about the prospects for this particular 
suit but indicated that what happened to the Colima workers 
was not unique.  Such things as failure to pay the minimum 
wage, breach of contract, violations of labor and housing 
laws and failure to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act 
were problems the labor advocates indicated they had often 
seen before.  In representing the workers the labor advocates 
repeatedly asked Labor Counselor for advice on what could be 
done to prevent future abuse by unscrupulous recruiters and 
employers. 
¶7.   The most common problem the labor advocates described 
was a threat that workers who stood up for their legal rights 
would be falsely accused of failing to abide by the terms of 
their H-2A visa and consequently banned from ever again 
working legally in the US.  This, the labor advocates said, 
was exactly what was happening in Colima and while they did 
not seem overly concern about being able to help this 
particular group of workers they were clearly searching for 
some way they could advise other workers to take preventive 
action to ensure their fair access to the H-2A visa program 
in the future.  When asked why this particular case might be 
easier to champion than some others the labor advocates 
indicated that the amounts involved where not that large.  If 
everything went their way and they won everything they were 
asking for the most any aggrieved worker would get would be 
around USD 10,000.   This is might be a lot for the workers 
but not for most large Argo-businesses.  The CLRA 
representative did not rule out the possibility that an out 
of court settlement could be reached in this case. 
 
UFW WANTS TO PROTECT WORKER ACCCES TO H-2A PROGRAM 
¶8.  Over the course of a series of phone calls and emails 
with a UFW official prior to traveling to Colima Mission 
Labor Counselor got the impression that union did not 
specifically blame the recruiter for what happened to the 
Colima workers.  However, the official opined that the 
situation with the Colima workers might never have happened 
if the H-2A visa program had more effective oversight.  Such 
oversight, he averred, might have prevented someone like the 
inexperienced recruiter from ever being authorized to 
contract foreign laborers in the first place. 
¶9.  Of equal and perhaps greater concern to the UFW than the 
amount of oversight being given to the H-2A program was the 
fact that there appeared to be a concerted effort to prevent 
the Colima workers from pursuing their grievances via the US 
legal system.  According to the UFW representatives of the 
Colima state authorities have repeatedly threatened the 
complaining workers to try and get them to withdraw from the 
class action suit.  The workers are being told that they will 
be blacklisted and prevented from ever being able to receive 
an H-2A visa unless they immediately halt their involvement 
in any legal action against the recruiter or the US 
employers.  The UFW had hoped that the involvement in this 
case of the GOM,s Foreign Ministry would send a clear 
message to desist to whoever was threatening the workers in 
Colima.  Unfortunately, during the recent visit to Colima, 
Mission Labor Counselor saw no indication that the state 
authorities had been approached or in any way asked to help 
resolve this case. 
 
COMMENT 
 
MEXICO 00000723  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
¶10.  In Mission Mexico Labor Counselor,s discussions with 
the UFW the union steadfastly expressed its firm support for 
the H-2 visa program but said that as currently implemented 
it was causing problems on both sides of the border with the 
situation in Colima being a good example.  The two farm labor 
advocacy firms focused more on the problems of their clients 
in this particular case than they did on the broader 
functioning of the H-2 program but they clearly were aware of 
how the threat of denying access to the program was a 
reoccurring dilemma for agricultural workers from Mexico. 
Although it may appear that the recruiter and whatever US 
businesses it represented were the one completely at fault 
this case may not be that simple.  Anecdotal information 
suggests the recruiter may not have done a particularly good 
job of matching up workers with businesses that actually 
needed agricultural laborers.  This entire matter seems be 
have been handled in a fashion where the recruiter focused on 
getting the workers to the US legally and just assumed that 
potential employers would be beating down their  door to get 
the laborers.  Once that did not happen no one really knew 
what to do with the workers the recruiter had on hand.  From 
talking to the UFW, the CLRA, the TRLA and listening to the 
workers involved in this case there appears be a clear need 
for H-2 visas and a strong desire by the unions, the workers 
and even the GOM to find a way to make it work. 
¶11.  This message was cleared with AmConsul Guadalajara. 
 
 
Visit Mexico City's Classified Web Site at 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/mexicocity and the North American 
Partnership Blog at http://www.intelink.gov/communities/state/nap / 
BASSETT