Señor Smith, Part Dos

[September 17th, 2008]

WALLA WALLA, Wash.—U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) reacted quickly last week when WW quoted multiple sources inside and outside Smith’s vegetable-packing plant in Eastern Oregon saying his company has long hired illegal immigrants.

The senator called the cover story, “Señor Smith” (WW, Sept. 10, 2008), completely “false.”

“I have never had such a hit-piece hatchet-job slimeball done to me before in my 16 years in public life,” Smith told KXL radio host Lars Larson the same day WW published “Señor Smith”. “The policy of that company is to obey the law and document every worker.”

That same day, the 56-year-old lawmaker appeared on KGW Channel 8 to defend his family’s multimillion-dollar company of 450 employees again.

“It’s very important that people who come here to work obey the law, and that they learn English, and that they be here legally to work, and there’s a process for providing for that, that is consistent with civil rights in this country,” Smith told KGW. “That’s what we do.… Everyone that works at our plant has a Social Security number. Now, there’s a process to find out whether those are accurate. That’s the process that we follow.”

WW returned to Eastern Oregon and Washington last week and found five workers who are—or were—undocumented when they worked for Smith Frozen Foods or a second related business owned by Smith, who’s running for re-election against Democrat Jeff Merkley in one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races.

One of the five is Tomás Salgado, who speaks with experience when he says Smith Frozen Foods depends, in part, on the work of undocumented immigrants.

In March 1982, Salgado was 19 years old when he paid a smuggler $250 to sneak him across the U.S. border with Mexico. He soon moved to Walla Walla, about five miles from the Oregon border, and he’s lived there ever since. His first job was cutting asparagus. When that season ended, he picked onions.

In August 1982, Salgado says he started working at Smith Frozen Foods in Weston, Ore., because, unlike most other businesses that hired undocumented workers at the time, it promised nearly year-round employment.

He worked for Smith in Weston until December 2005 after suffering several debilitating injuries that impaired the hearing in his right ear and strength and flexibility in his back.

Records from Smith Frozen Foods’ private insurer, Salgado’s attorney and Oregon’s workers’ compensation division conflict whether Salgado’s injuries occurred at Smith Frozen Foods. But stacks of documents with the Smith Frozen Foods logo stored in a brown plastic suitcase at Salgado’s home do confirm he worked there. And scars that run along Salgado’s left elbow and left shoulder confirm the surgeries to treat his injuries.

Salgado was an illegal immigrant in this country until 1986, when President Reagan issued an amnesty granting citizenship to millions of undocumented workers like Salgado then living clandestinely in the United States.

When Salgado went to Smith’s for a job in 1982—while the multimillion-dollar business was under Smith’s direct control—he had no papers permitting him to work in the United States, not even fake ones. When he filled out his application to work for Smith Frozen Foods he simply made up a Social Security number, he says. What’s more, so did his brother.

Tomás Salgado wasn’t the first undocumented worker to pack vegetables at Smith Frozen Foods, and he wasn’t the last. To say otherwise denies the truth, says Salgado—a short, heavyset 45-year-old man with a round face and buzz-cut hair.

“What they’re doing is an injustice,” Salgado says in Spanish of Smith Frozen Foods. “Undocumented workers have always helped [Smith]. In reality, they helped grow the plant. And right now they’re still bringing the senator riches.”

On Sunday, Sept. 14, Salgado drove with this reporter through Walla Walla and identified homes where undocumented workers now employed by Smith Frozen Foods live. Currently unemployed in part because of his injuries, Salgado knew these workers were in this country illegally because they had confided in him.

WW learned Salgado was right, because two of the Smith workers he pointed out confirmed their undocumented status in interviews with WW. One other worker did not deny it.

Separately, WW spoke with a fifth undocumented immigrant who worked for more than a decade at Garrett Packing—a second business owned by the senator that supplements the shipping of Smith Frozen Foods vegetables from Eastern Oregon.

For fear of losing their jobs or possibly facing deportation, none of those workers agreed to be identified or photographed.

Their stories, however, were similar. All were longtime employees. A few said Smith Frozen Foods’ policies against hiring undocumented workers were more lax when the senator ran the plant before 1997.

One worker, the man who was employed by Garrett Packing for more than 10 years, shared his story with WW before the publication of WW’s story last week. But he offered more details about his life last week after Smith declared all of his company’s workers had Social Security numbers.

This man, whom we’ll call José, was issued a valid Social Security number by the federal government more than a decade earlier after he submitted his initial application for a work permit, he says. His father was legally in the country, and because José was unmarried at the time, he qualified under federal law to apply for lawful status, too.

When José got married, he lost that right. José was no longer lawfully permitted to work in the United States, he says. But he continued to work at Smith because his Social Security number appeared valid, he says. His other papers no longer were.

A woman who currently works at Smith Frozen Foods’ Weston plant says she used a fake Social Security card and number to get a job inside the plant. Today she lives in a small, two-bedroom apartment. An aquamarine sofa takes up an entire wall. Her children’s school portraits hang near the front door. A desk and a large-screen television are the only other items of furniture in the apartment.

Her children’s father, who is also undocumented and also once worked for Smith, is quiet. “It doesn’t benefit us to talk about this,” he says.

Smith, who was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996 and is seeking a third term, did not respond to a request for comment hand-delivered to his Pendleton home Friday, the day before he hosted a private fundraising breakfast in his front yard. On Tuesday his Senate office did not respond to a request for comment.

“I think this means trouble for Gordon Smith,” says KXL’s conservative talk-show host Lars Larson, who’s usually in Republicans’ corner but is a critic of Smith on this issue. “If it turns out he has employed people illegally when he has claimed he has not, that’s a problem.”