Former migrant workers look to recoup retirement funds

MEXICO CITY -- Mexicans who worked in the United States during and after World War II intensified efforts to collect unpaid retirement funds, meeting Thursday with Mexico's interior secretary about millions of dollars that disappeared and never was paid out.

Claims by the workers have gained momentum since President Bush proposed similar savings accounts as part of a temporary work program for new migrants. The money for the old program disappeared somewhere between U.S. and Mexican banks.

Mexican migrants, known as "braceros," toiled in the United States between 1942 and the mid-1960s under a guest worker program that required a portion of their earnings be deducted for retirement in Mexico.

Like Bush's plan, the money was collectible only in Mexico, an incentive for migrants to return home.

But the workers never received the money, and demands for the deferred wages have been under investigation for decades. The former migrant workers warn the new migrants won't get their money either.

About 200 former migrant workers gathered Thursday, waiting to show Mexican officials old U.S. Justice Department identifications and yellowed work contracts. They said they want a meeting with President Vicente Fox, and concrete promises they will be paid.

"We aren't asking for charity," said Federico Alvarado, who spent the late 1950s and early 1960s picking crops in Texas, Arkansas, California and Michigan. "This money belongs to us."

Jose Cristobal Fernandez, coordinator of the National Braceros Association, says the Bush savings plan has prompted renewed demands for payments from the old plan.

"If you're going to open a new account today, well then settle the old one first -- it's real simple," said Fernandez, whose group includes former temporary workers in Mexico and the United States.

Last Saturday, hundreds of former migrant workers pushed past security guards at Fox's ranch, 185 miles northwest of Mexico City, and spent about four hours protesting on the property.

Migrant worker leader Ventura Gutierrez said the migrants plan to return to Fox's ranch on Saturday and apologize to the president's family.

"We've had to resort to radical action for the government to take this subject seriously," said Rosa Martha Zarate, who coordinates a chapter of the National Braceros Association in California.

"We hope that regardless of the consequences that the government will pay the braceros ... and pay the consequences for a theft that has been set aside by several administrations. Unfortunately, now it's up the President Fox."

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On the Net:

http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/?NLangen&x6&y14

http://www.farmworkers.org/benglish.html