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[SWING CREAKING] MARK ZDECHLIK: Central Park, nestled here in Northwestern Minnesota between Crookston's modest downtown and the winding Red Lake River is a place for local people to picnic, play ball, and to relax on rusty swing sets. It's also a temporary home for many families of Hispanic migrant farm workers.

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

22-year-old Nelly Montemayo's family camps at this site, 19 people, mostly children, who came to the valley from southwestern Texas, in hopes of working in the beet fields.

NELLY MONTEMAYO: This is my little sister Dalila Macias, my father Jesus Macias, my brother Elias Macias, Israel Macias, my little cousin.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Mata Mayho, her sister, and cousin sit at two picnic tables. Some of the children playfully kick an empty milk container about in the dirt. Seated at the makeshift kitchen, two women roll out handmade tortillas. Another woman browns them in an electric skillet and simmers a mixture of beef.

MATA MAYHO: They told us in another two weeks, we might be working. So it's looking pretty good.

MARK ZDECHLIK: And what will you do between now and that time?

MATA MAYHO: Look for a house, mostly, go out into other little towns and look for a house, an apartment, or something. Everything is full already, so it's hard to find a home right now.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Until the family finds a home or an apartment to rent, everything, from cooking, to washing, to sleeping, and bathing, demands patience and tolerance.

MATA MAYHO: This is a screen house. We fit, let me see, there's two, five, six, seven, eight people fit into the screen house. And then we have the car, the car. Three people sleep in the car, in the back seat. We just fix our bags into there, put a board in order for the mom and the two little children could fit into the back seat.

MARK ZDECHLIK: It's a warm summer afternoon. Perfect weather, says Mata Mayho, who's hoping it won't rain this day. When the weather's bad, she and her 18 relatives have to pack themselves and belongings into their old van and car. Estimates of how many migrant workers come to the Red River Valley each spring vary widely. Some think the number exceeds 20,000. Everyone agrees that there are more every year. But each year, there are fewer jobs. Advances in technology, better farm machinery, and stronger weed-killing chemicals continue to reduce the need for the laborers.

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

The job service office in Crookston is one of the first places migrant workers stop upon arrival in this part of the valley. Armando Cuellar, once a migrant worker himself, now helps match migrants with farmers. Cuellar says it's difficult to say how much work there'll be this year.

ARMANDO CUELLAR: It depends on how the chemical applications work. Some people say they're working for them, some say they don't. So it's just a matter-- I'd say we'd be able to know in a couple of weeks.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Whether they find work immediately or not, most of the migrants look for housing, hoping that something will come along. That's putting a strain on the availability of rental housing. It's also stressing the budgets of social service agencies up and down the Red River Valley. The vast majority of migrant families qualify for emergency assistance, food stamps, and help with rent once they find housing. Jan de Lage, the director of planning for the Tri-Valley Council here in Crookston, is working to secure federal funding to build a 28-unit complex of seasonal housing for migrant worker families.

JAN DE LAGE: The community has met monthly with the Social Concerns Committee for years. And this is one of the main problems that they've tried to address. And there's just never been anything that has come up that provides a decent solution, until this particular project came along. And like I said, we know it isn't going to be the answer to everything. But we're hoping that at least we won't have to have these families camping all summer in the park, for instance.

MARK ZDECHLIK: de Lage says the Red River Valley Sugar Beet Growers Association has written a letter of support for the proposed million dollar seasonal housing project. But so far, the growers haven't committed to help fund the development. Even though the billion dollar sugar beet industry needs the labor, de Lage says it's largely ignored the problems associated with the yearly influx of migrants.

Mark Dillon, the spokesman for American Crystal Sugar, declined a request for an interview. His office said American Crystal has nothing to do with migrant workers. The executive director of the growers association, Mark Weber, says farmers are stepping up efforts to accommodate workers needs. But Weber says the biggest problems arise from migrants who come north, who aren't needed in the fields.

MARK WEBER: We are working for some of those solutions. We have some growers that will go out and rent apartments on their own for their workers. We are trying to provide more housing on the farms. We're trying to fix up existing structures to comply and meet with some of the OSHA standards and some of the health requirements there. Again, we can't prevent them from coming up here. But we do feel that we do share in some of that responsibility to find good solutions.

MARK ZDECHLIK: In Crookston, many year-round residents are reluctant to speak on tape about migrant workers. Off tape, they say the vast majority of them don't come to the Red River Valley to work at all and instead make the trip to abuse social aid programs that are more generous here than in Texas. But others maintain a pervasive climate of racism is the real problem. Sister Justina Violet runs a homeless shelter in Crookston and has worked with migrant families for decades.

JUSTINA VIOLET: If it wouldn't be for the migrant workers that have come to Crookston and the areas around to do all the labor, I don't think we would have a beet factory because who would do the work in the field the way they do? They just get the work out of them and get the beets out, get the beets to the sugar beet factory. And I think it is their responsibility to at least afford housing for them.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Back at Central Park, just down the hill from Sister Justine's homeless shelter, another Hispanic family from southwestern Texas, the Baltazars, is also camped out, hoping for an apartment.

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

SPEAKER 2: Any place we could stay, as long as-- I mean, it doesn't have to be pretty or anything, as long as we can stay in there.

MARK ZDECHLIK: If the federal money comes through, Crookston could have a seasonal housing project for migrant workers ready by the spring of 1994. Reporting from Crookston, this is Mark Zdechlik, Minnesota Public Radio.

[SPEAKING SPANISH]