A heart-rending novel by a former U.S. Border Patrol agent that explores how Mexican migrant workers are willing to endanger their lives for the prospect of better ones in America.

After legal Mexican migrant labor is discontinued in 1965, Miguel’s first illegal entry into the United States terrifies him. A kindly farmer takes him in, but his Mexican-American farmhand, Ohscar, is so desperate to maintain his own family’s newfound financial stability that he reports Miguel’s presence to the Border Patrol, with disastrous consequences. Meanwhile, Ohscar’s teenage son Javier has few social or education options. In an act of rebellion, he agrees to be the driver for the moronic Chuy, a “coyote” who smuggles undocumented immigrants across the border and who foolishly wants to branch out into drugs. The lives of these three men and their families intersect for the next three decades as they experience successes and frequent misfortunes. They’re complex characters who occasionally do wrong things, but they all realize their errors or pay the price for them (with the exception of the irredeemably evil Chuy). Harpold’s sympathetic account touches on union organizing and Cesar Chavez, but more extensively explicates the naiveté, vulnerability and desperation of workers and the exploitation they still experience despite myriad changes in policy and law—not just from employers, but from “coyotes” as well. Harpold, a retired U.S. Border Patrol employee, interestingly depicts agents as vindictive and officious. If the novel has a flaw, however, it’s that it portrays some of its Mexican characters as almost childlike in their naiveté. Overall, this sad but realistic tale challenges its readers to examine the stereotypes of migrant workers and undocumented immigrants and the ultimate costs of cheap labor.

A debut novel about a timely issue elucidated with an insider’s understanding and sensitivity.

By Scott Bowlen
Ketchikan Daily News Staff Writer

     As a child, it was exciting to head north on Interstate Highway 5 from San Diego to Los Angeles.
     You knew the immigration checkpoint was there, just past the U.S. Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton. At night, its bright floodlights were visible long before mom or dad stopped the car for inspection. Sometimes the Border Patrol officers would wave us right through. Other times, they'd shine a flashlight into the car, scan its interior and ask a few questions.
     "How many people?" "Where are you coming from?" "Where are you going?" 
     You could see the cars and people who'd had to pull of the highway for further questioning or inspection. They didn't look happy.
     That never happened to us.
     The youthful me knew what the checkpoint was about. My mom's people had picked crops in California's Central Valley during the Depression. Immigrants, legal or otherwise, could be a touchy subject.
     But I didn't know any migrants. Despite growing up in an economic landscape shaped by immigrants, I -- probably like millions of other Americans -- have understood very little about the recent history of immigration and have viewed the ongoing political debates in the impersonal abstract.
     Therein lies one of the virtues of Ketchikan author Michael Harpold's book 'Jumping the Line.' With clearly drawn characters, a crisp storyline and illuminating details, Harpold succeeds in personalizing the story of agriculture-based migrants into the United States from Mexico. The motivation and situations of illegal and legal migrants fro the 1960s to the present day are brought into sharp focus, as are the economic and political forces at work. There are no abstractions here. These are people.
     "Jumping the Line" is a fictional account of Miguel Hernandez-Ochoa, a family man from rural Zacatecas, Mexico, who's anxious to get into the United States to work in the agricultural fields of California and send money back home to support his wife and children.
     Harpold describes Hernandez' life and travails as a illegal migrant worker, and branches out to track the lives of other people who've come into contact with Hernandez along the way.
     There's the farm owner who hires Hernandez, and the legal worker who's fired for alerting authorities to the illegal's presence on the farm. Each action provokes a reaction. Soon enough, Harpold is providing a rich perspective into how the circumstances of birth, citizenship and economic status have shaped the lives of his characters. He carries the story through to the next generations, helping us understand how policy changes and an evolving society affect the individual characters.
     As a story, "Jumping the Line" works well -- and it has the right of authenticity. The characters are fictional, but Harpold clearly knows these folks.
     He worked 35 years with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, beginning in 1962 as a border patrol officer at Calexico, Calif. His writing is evidence that he was an observant officer; perceptive of human nature and capable of seeing past the regulation book to understand the impact that those rules had on people.
     To Harpold's credit, "Jumping the Line" isn't a political tract. He's chosen to describe his subjects' lives with a simple, effective accuracy, avoiding the sort of rhetorical flourishes, philosophical asides and emotional overstatement that other authors might employ to promote their particular point of view.
     I appreciated that in "Jumping the Line."  It felt honest and real; informative but not preachy. Something of value.
     Not too long ago, I was back on Interstate 5, this time heading south through California amongst vast tracts of agricultural land. I thought about the Miguel Hernandezes and Ohscar Romeros of "Jumping the Line." The John Pinchneys and Janice MacDonalds.
     I was looking at a landscape in human terms, and continue to be thankful of Harpold for that perspective.

Podcast interview with www.MariaSanchezShow.com click here to listen.

A 35-year career in the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Michael G. Harpold visits with Maria about the mid 60’s when he had the opportunity to meet Cesar Chavez, president of the National Farm Workers Association and their continued relationship.

Click here to read this article at Idaho Press Tribune

By Michael Harpold

Keeping an eye out for harvest crews one day in 1965, my partner and I drove in our U.S. Border Patrol van along a highway lined with vineyards east of Delano, Calif. A small, black car pulled up close behind us and the driver waved us to stop.

A stocky, pleasant-faced Mexican-American man got out and introduced himself as César Chavez, president of the National Farm Workers Association. Coming right to the point, Chavez said his members were complaining that the growers were hiring illegal aliens.

New to the area and enthusiastic about our duties, the Border Patrol had opened an office in nearby Bakersfield just four months earlier. We assured Chavez that we were concerned about the problem and would help. He explained that the growers would break his striking union if we did not prevent them from hiring illegals; he would provide us carefully-screened information to act on.

In 1965, the Border Patrol’s only recourse was to arrest individual illegal aliens. It would be more than two decades before Congress would enact a law barring employers from hiring illegal immigrants.

The year before, Congress ended the Bracero Program, a law that brought hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmworkers annually to the western states to harvest crops. A coalition of church, labor and community leaders insisted, correctly, that the braceros competed with American farmworkers, marginalizing their opportunities and wages. The braceros were gone, but California growers continued to pay American farmworkers the wages they had been required by law to pay the braceros, $1.10 an hour, setting the stage for a strike.

That summer, the former braceros began to return, illegally crossing the border. Chavez saw illegal immigrants as not only a threat to his union but as having different interests than the U.S. workers he sought to organize. The illegals slipped across the border, worked for a short time, then returned to Mexico. They were interested only in wages, he said, and not the benefits important to domestic farmworkers and families.

As much as we wanted to help Chavez, the task proved impossible. Mexican border apprehensions rose from 55,000 in 1965 to more than 200,000 in 1969, and this was just the beginning. Border Patrol staffing did not increase; our vans were simply replaced by buses.

Nonetheless, through strikes and boycotts, Chavez won contracts. By the 1970 season, grape harvesters earned $1.75 an hour plus 25 cents a box. The federal minimum wage was $1.20.

Chavez had begun organizing by signing up farmworkers for burial insurance, a benefit of great importance to them. Now he sought multi-year contracts for his members that would not only permit bargaining with the growers for wages, but for improved working conditions including sanitary facilities in the field, a fair system for rehire, and health care. Hire-back clauses reduced the uncertainty in migrant families’ lives. With grower funding, the union established health clinics for members and their families. Through the NFWA’s lobbying with the California Legislature, the backbreaking short-handled hoe was outlawed.

The golden era for California farmworkers lasted just less than two decades. Some observers blame internal difficulties within the NFWA that caused Chavez to stop organizing. By 1993, he didn’t have a single contract with grape growers. But according to UC Davis farm labor economist Philip L. Martin, “Continuing immigration was the main reason that, in the 1990s, contractors and other agricultural service firms could undermine unions by organizing and deploying workers on farms.”

After the loss of bracero labor in 1964, growers had relegated themselves to working with Chavez, but by the 1980s, with plenty of illegal workers available, they no longer had an incentive. Contracts were lost to the rival “company” unions established by the Teamsters. Wages and working conditions for farmworkers regressed. Benefits were lost. Labor-saving agricultural innovation ceased.

By 1978, annual apprehensions of illegal Mexican border crossers exceeded 1 million, remaining at that level until 2008. In 1987, 22 years after the end of the Bracero Program, a new law made knowingly employing illegal immigrants a crime. It proved ineffective, easily subverted by the use of phony Social Security and immigration documents. A pilot program included in the legislation to electronically verify employment documents has remained just that for 27 years.

Today, an estimated 2.1 million immigrant, citizen and undocumented farmworkers work an average of 100 days or less a year, earning less than $10,000, and living in poverty little different than that John Steinbeck described in Grapes of Wrath.

Cesar Chavez fought to bring farmworkers into the mainstream of American economic life, and the millions of consumers who supported his boycotts aided his quest. But the great opportunity afforded by the end of the Bracero Program was lost, not by Chavez, but because powerful economic interests working in Congress blocked reforms that would have ended agriculture’s access to exploitable illegal workers.

Published in Latina Lista, read the article here.

By Michael Harpold 

In the State of the Union speech, President Obama said, “Americans overwhelmingly agree that no one who works full time should ever have to raise a family in poverty.” Who would disagree, I thought. And then, I remembered farmworkers.

Fifty years ago, César Chavez fought to lift farmworkers out of poverty, and it is a struggle that is by no means over. Forty-four percent of immigrant children today are poor, and most farmworkers are immigrants. Two-thirds of farmworker children who live with both parents remain poor.

Raising the minimum wage as the president proposes won’t help the 2½ million immigrants and undocumented workers who today work in agriculture. Employers are quick to point out that their workers are paid as much as $12.50 an hour, but as most farmworkers find only 100 to 150 days of work a year, wages don’t tell the full story.

Improving their standard of living depends on increasing the number of workdays available within a reasonable commute of their homes and their children’s schools. It can be done.

In 1964, persuaded by church, labor and community advocates, Congress ended the Bracero Program that had brought up to 450,000 Mexican contract workers annually to the southwest to harvest crops. Competing with braceros for jobs, American farmworkers had to relocate as many as eight times during the year to earn at most $10,000 in today’s dollars.

Then and now, most farm work was highly seasonal, and despite pooling their earnings, many families lived in cramped housing in rural slums. Their children often lagged two years behind by the end of grade school. Few finished high school; most went to work in the fields, repeating the poverty of their parents.

When the braceros were gone, farmers who had not had to think about the availability of local workers, overnight were forced to innovate. When expansion of a California water project opened up new acreage for crops in 1965, it was not by chance that growers planted thousands of almond trees. The mostly mechanized harvest required relatively few workers, and in January and February when workers were needed for planting, pruning and training the trees, they were available in local communities.

Because braceros were no longer an alternative, César Chavez was able to win contracts for the grape and lettuce workers he organized. Farmworker wages increased 40%. Despite fears fueled by Chavez’s critics, consumer prices for produce increased only 2 to 3 percent.

Hire-back clauses in contracts provided security for workers and took uncertainty out of seasonal relocations. Union-sponsored, employer-funded, clinics provided healthcare for farmworkers.

The golden age for farmworker families lasted just fifteen years, ending when, as Chavez had feared would happen, growers, not barred by law, hired undocumented workers in overwhelming numbers. No longer essential, innovation ceased and so did the union contracts.

Proponents of immigration reform say that legalization will enable farmworkers to regain bargaining power. But the importation of guest workers, as many as 500,000 are proposed, will turn the clock back fifty years to the days of the Bracero Program.

The guest workers will cost employers less because they will not be eligible for Social Security or unemployment insurance. Because they will be available anywhere, anytime, growers will not have to consider the availability of local workers when planning new crops.

The return of foreign guest workers to U.S. farms and orchards will bring agriculture jobs full circle, and those who depend on them, including the newly legalized, will have gained nothing. The children of American farmworkers will continue to be raised in poverty.

By Michael Harpold

I have spent most of my adult life on the front lines of immigration, including serving as a United States Border Patrol officer in California’s San Joaquin Valley during the early years of the Grape Strike led by Cesar Chavez.

That’s why I believe I’m able to spot the flaws in immigration policy proposals coming from both sides of the political aisle.

There’s plenty of advocacy for increased numbers of immigrants and new guest worker programs, but not much discussion about the consequences.

For instance, both houses of Congress have passed legislation creating new programs that will guarantee growers a huge pool of new, low-skilled workers, but will do nothing to improve the lives of those already in the states working on farms. Growers will not have to pay into Social Security and unemployment for guest workers.

Despite immigration reform, domestic farmworkers will continue to live as an impoverished underclass. If we want to help immigrant and U.S. citizen farmworkers, we can’t bring a new flood of low-skilled workers into the country who will compete for their jobs.

Here’s where I see political ideology going wrong on the immigration issue:

1. Illegal immigrant farmworkers are not self-entitled freeloaders: More than half of workers employed on farms, and a huge portion of those hired in food processing and meatpacking, are not U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. Many were driven off their farms in Mexico because they couldn’t compete with American corn exports. Out of necessity, more than 50 percent of farm families in Mexico have one or more family members working illegally in the U.S. Tacitly invited by unscrupulous U.S. employers seeking cheap labor, the vast majority slipped across land borders or were smuggled, facing incredible danger and hardships.

2. A relaxed border policy is a bad idea: Our immigration laws have been refined over decades to reunify families, provide needed workers to U.S. business and provide a haven for political refugees. To that end, more than 1.2 million new immigrants are brought into the U.S. each year in addition to more than 40 million visitors.

Liberals say the system is broken and the law is being violated because not enough visas are being granted, but there will always come a point when the country needs to say no. No system can be fair if the regulations governing it are not enforced, as has occurred throughout the past 2 1/2 decades. Relaxing our immigration standards, as some liberals support, allows for a constant stream of new immigrants, grinding wages to the floor and guaranteeing a state of perpetual poverty for farmworkers.

3. Immigrants face the same problems as U.S. citizens: The fact that manufacturing jobs have moved overseas has been a significant blow to the American workforce. Earlier immigrants from Europe had next-level jobs and industries to climb their way out of entry-level jobs, but those next-level jobs are no longer there for immigrant farmworkers. Wages for meatpackers and construction workers have fallen as those occupations have become overloaded with job-hunting, low-skilled workers.

The way out for most farmworkers means standing on a street corner near a Home Depot hoping to be hired for day labor.

Progressives need to remember that it’s not fair to invite immigrants here, only to have them discover the American dream is on hold indefinitely. Conservatives need to accept that many of the estimated 11.5 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. are already deeply integrated into our economy and society.

Until relatively recently, illegal immigrant farmworkers were simply integrated into the system after a period of time. Congress should enact a law allowing them to remain legally and work until they can qualify for a green card — something that’s been done in previous immigration policy.

Read more: Cleveland Daily Banner - Viewpoint Both sides are wrong on immigration debate 

From quienestuamor.com, click here for original post

Escrito de Gracias a: Azafatas en girona 
Ketchikan, AK (PRWEB) 07 de enero 2014 En su nuevo libro, Jumping the Line, Michael G. Harpold, un veterano del Servicio de Inmigración y Naturalización (INS) de 35 años, arroja luz sobre la importancia factores en la conversación nacional la reforma de inmigración.
experiencia

Harpolds incluye servir como un oficial de la Patrulla Fronteriza de EE.UU. en Californias Valle de San Joaquín, durante los primeros años de la Huelga de Uva encabezados por César Chávez. Su perspectiva de base que, dice, que le permite señalar posibles consecuencias no deseadas en las propuestas de reforma de inmigración procedentes de ambos lados del pasillo.

políticos de todas las tendencias pueden tener buenas intenciones con respecto a la reforma migratoria, pero eso no es suficiente, dice. El proyecto de ley de trabajadores agrícolas invitados propuesto, por ejemplo, podría causar graves daños a los trabajadores agrícolas ya existentes.

El proyecto de ley de trabajadores agrícolas invitados propuesto atraer a más inmigrantes dispuestos a trabajar por salarios aún más bajos, lo cual sería desastroso para los trabajadores del campo ya está aquí, dice. Los progresistas necesitan recordar que no es justo para invitar a los inmigrantes cuando el sueño americano está en espera de manera indefinida debido a que el flujo constante de nuevos inmigrantes mantiene los salarios bajos, dice.

conservadores tienen que aceptar que muchos de los aproximadamente 11,5 millones de inmigrantes ilegales en los EE.UU. ya están profundamente integrados en nuestra economía y sociedad.

Hasta hace relativamente poco, los trabajadores agrícolas indocumentados fueron simplemente asimilados después de un período de tiempo, dice. El Congreso debería aprobar una ley que les permite permanecer legalmente y trabajar hasta que puedan calificar para thats algo se ha hecho en la política de inmigración anterior una tarjeta verde, dice.

Las capturas de cuentos y mantiene la atención de los lectores con un desgarrador relato a menudo de la lucha contra mans fuerzas económicas y sociales que son mucho más grande que cualquier personas sueños y deseos, escribe revisor Amazon Lori Ortiz, quien dio el libro de cinco estrellas . Es una lectura que hace que el lector se detiene y piensa en la ética, la justicia y las dificultades de establecer una política justa y viable de inmigración en los Estados Unidos.

pesar de la reforma de inmigración, los trabajadores agrícolas nacionales pueden continuar viviendo como una subclase empobrecida, dice Harpold.

Acerca de Michael G. Harpold

Michael G. Harpold comenzó su carrera de 35 años en el Servicio de Inmigración y Naturalización de los EE.UU. (INS) cuando una patrulla inspector fronterizo en la frontera mexicana. Más adelante en su carrera, mientras estacionado en Bakersfield, California, conoció a C? Sar Ch? Chávez. Sus caminos se cruzaron porque Chávez cree que cruzan la frontera ilegales eran una amenaza para sus esfuerzos por construir un sindicato para los trabajadores agrícolas. Harpold sirvió dos años en Vietnam con la Agencia de EE.UU. para el Desarrollo Internacional y, después de regresar al INS, se convirtió en un oficial del sindicato de empleados, lo que hace frecuentes apariciones ante comités del Congreso que declaren a la legislación de inmigración propuesto y el presupuesto del INS. Harpold sirvió cinco años en el Ejército de EE.UU. y ganó un nombramiento competitivo a West Point. Obtuvo una licenciatura de la Universidad Estatal de California en Fresno y asistió a la Escuela de Derecho de la Universidad Golden Gate en San Francisco.

Written by Ginny Grimsley, see the press release here. 

Former Border Patrol Officer Michael G. Harpold debunks bad ideas driving immigration reform discussion.

In his new book, “Jumping the Line,” Michael G. Harpold, a 35-year veteran of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), sheds light on important factors in the national immigration reform conversation.

Harpold’s experience includes serving as a U.S. Border Patrol officer in California’s San Joaquin Valley during the early years of the Grape Strike led by Cesar Chavez. It’s that grassroots perspective, he says, that allows him to point out potential unintended consequences in immigration reform proposals coming from both sides of the aisle.

Politicians of all stripes may have good intentions regarding immigration reform, but that’s not enough, he says. The proposed guest farmworker bill, for instance, could do serious harm to existing farmworkers.

“The proposed guest farmworker bill would bring in more immigrants willing to work for even lower wages, which would be disastrous for the farmworkers already here,” he says. “Progressives need to remember that it’s not fair to invite immigrants when the American dream is on hold indefinitely because the constant stream of new immigrants keeps wages low,” he says.

“Conservatives need to accept that many of the estimated 11.5 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. are already deeply integrated into our economy and society.”

Until relatively recently, undocumented farmworkers were simply assimilated after a period of time, he says. Congress should enact a law allowing them to remain legally and work until they can qualify for a green card – something that’s been done in previous immigration policy, he says.

“…The tale captures and holds the reader’s attention with an often gut-wrenching tale of man’s struggle against economic and social forces that are much bigger than any one person’s dreams and desires,” writes Amazon reviewer Lori Ortiz, who gave the book five stars. “…It’s a read that makes the reader stop and think about ethics, justice and the difficulties of establishing a just and workable immigration policy in the United States.”

Despite immigration reform, domestic farmworkers may continue to live as an impoverished underclass, Harpold says.

ThinkTechHawaii Skype interview with Jay Fidell. Click here to listen.

Why Liberals and Conservatives are Both Wrong about Immigration
Longtime INS Employee Says Proposals from Both Sides of the Aisle Will be Bad for Legalized Farmworkers

Michael G. Harpold has spent most of his adult life on the front lines of immigration, including serving as a United States Border Patrol officer in California's San Joaquin Valley during the early years of the Grape Strike led by Cesar Chavez. That's why he's able to spot the flaws in immigration policy proposals coming from both sides of the aisle.

"There's plenty of advocacy for increased numbers of immigrants and new guest worker programs, but not much discussion about the consequences," says Harpold, a 35-year veteran of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and author of the new book Jumping the Line (www.jumpingtheline.com), which gives readers a realistic glimpse into the lives of two farmworker families.

For instance, he says, both houses of Congress have passed legislation creating new programs that will guarantee growers a huge pool of new, low-skilled workers, but will do nothing to improve the lives of those already in the states working on farms. Growers will not have to pay into social security and unemployment for guest workers.

"Despite immigration reform, domestic farmworkers will continue to live as an impoverished underclass," Harpold says. "If we want to help immigrant and U.S. citizen farmworkers, we can't bring a new flood of low-skilled workers into the country who will compete for their jobs."