MONTERREY Hundreds of would-be Mexican emigrants jammed into the U.S. consulate in this northern city this week after it was announced that agricultural firms in North Carolina were interested in hiring 8,000 laborers. The heavy crowd forced the U.S. mission to release a media statement saying that it was not calling for or recruiting workers to offer them jobs in the United States.
The consulate added in the statement that it would only help in the process of issuing visas, as opposed to soliciting for workers.
Last Monday, the president of the U.S. Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), Baldemar Velásquez, announced the signing of a labor agreement among several union organizations and agricultural firms in North Carolina to hire 8,000 Mexican workers.
He also said that FLOC would open a hiring office in Monterrey, as well as issue a call for people to work on harvesting North Carolina's various crops.
He said that the agreement permits the authorization of visas for the 8,000 Mexicans. Each year, several thousand more than that number of undocumented Mexicans come to North Carolina to find work.
The U.S. consulate's statement said that the office would expedite the issuance of two types of visas for temporary farm workers.
However, the statement also said that obtaining the visas depends upon the U.S. firms, which must first present a request to the U.S. Labor Department.
The statement said that the U.S. consulate in Monterrey is the U.S. government office that handles the most temporary agricultural labor visas in the world.
Mexico has asked Washington to negotiate a migrant worker agreement to regularize the legal status of the 4.5 million undocumented Mexicans who work in the United States.
