Bob Sakata knows a little something about immigration. Through Sakata Farms Inc., he hires several hundred farmworkers annually to work his vegetable fields in Adams and Weld counties. He also comes from a family that immigrated to the United States to seek better lives. He is closely following the debate in Washington on solutions to illegal immigration. "What do we do with all the illegals? That's the real problem," Sakata said.

The debate is one not likely to be settled soon or have easy answers. One camp wants to place harsher restrictions on illegal immigrants to allow for more jobs for American workers; opponents say that would create a worker shortage -- because most Americans wouldn't work those jobs -- and drive up prices that consumers won't pay.

The other side wants a guest-worker program, which proponents say could help keep the regular flow of cheap labor and costs down. Opponents, however, believe such a program couldn't work or be enforced any better than the current system. The debate may rage in Washington, but locally, Sakata and many employers watch with interest and argue with animation.

"There are people who feel strongly on both sides, but the reality has got to come into play here," said Chris Fetig, who hires seasonal migrant workers every year for her landscaping business, Alpine Gardens and Highland Nursery, 5030 20th St. "I'd like to see something in place that makes it something we could all live with. Tell me how to check these people out, and I'll do it in a heartbeat. But also make sure you're letting them have a chance."

Employers say immigrants aren't necessarily taking Americans' jobs.

Sakata, along with Dewey Zabka of Zabka Farms and Martin Produce of Greeley, said the public doesn't understand the importance of migrant workers to agriculture. Right now, Zabka has 80 workers transplanting onions that will be harvested starting in July. That planting process will be completed in about three weeks, and workers won't be needed again until harvest, when about 160 workers will be hired to harvest and process the crop.

"I cannot afford to keep that volume of workers year-round," Zabka said. "People want to go home when they are done with their work, but they stay here because they are afraid if they go home, they won't be able to come back." Fetig, whose annual work force is 30 percent migrant or seasonal, does not favor strict legislation against immigration.

"How many white Americans do you see in the onion fields pulling weeds?" Fetig asked. "Americans are spoiled. They want lots of money and don't want work to be too hard. If we (restrict immigration), we'll all have to pay more money and get less work, which means our products will cost more, and people won't want to pay. I'm not sure that's a reality" many people want.

Many employers say they favor a guest-worker program, but one that also provides better regulation and enforcement.

Sean McHugh, spokesman for Swift & Co., which heads up Greeley's beef-packing plant, said under current regulations, employers are required to verify the identity and employment eligibility of anyone they hire. Employers must complete and retain an I-9 form, which lists 29 acceptable documents new hires may use to establish their identity.

"We train people on what those documents are and what they look like," McHugh said, but added with today's technology it is reasonably easy to make "good replicas" of many of those documents. "What we really need is a common-sense solution that will protect employers who are trying to do the right thing. "It's a complex issue. As a company, what we would like to see is a plan implemented that would protect employers who hire workers in good faith."

Fetig, exasperated with the system, agrees. "I don't find that the government makes it any easier for us to find if someone is illegal. There really is no resource. The only clue we get is when we get a report once a year from the Social Security Administration saying Social Security numbers don't match names. And they say we can't take any action against them."

Sakata suggests a guest-worker program that gives immigrants a one-year deadline to learn English. His father came to the United States in 1904 from Japan as a guest worker to grow rice in California. With the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Sakata, then 15, was uprooted and moved to a relocation camp in Utah.

Public pressure, he said, was the reason behind the evacuation of 110,000 Japanese-Americans from their West Coast homes to camps. He fears that same public pressure is a part of the problem now, but wonders how the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. could be evacuated, if that was to become a part of any new immigration legislation.

He said it wasn't until 1955 that a law was passed that allowed his father to become a U.S. citizen. At that time, he said English classes were started in the Buddhist temple in Brighton and they were jammed full of immigrants. "Within six months, people learned English, the Constitution and became citizens of the U.S.," he said. "So it can be done.

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