The first day on the job for the 39 new hires at Jesus "Chuy" Medrano's landscaping firm started as soon as they stumbled off the bus in the early morning, groggy and stiff from the 13-hour trip from the Mexico border.
"Ready to work?" Medrano joked in Spanish—before the men had a chance to use the bathroom or eat breakfast. The 63-year-old grandfather, wearing a cowboy hat, stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and grinned.
Medrano, founder and owner of CoCal Landscape, had spent more than $32,000 recruiting and securing visas for the Mexican migrants after scrambling to find any American willing to do backbreaking work under the Colorado sun. With this crew's arrival, he thought, the season might be salvaged after all.
Medrano's extraordinary recruitment effort—which included three days in Ciudad Juárez while the U.S. Consulate processed the work visas—encapsulates the complex relationship between American employers and temporary foreign workers.
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