Workers Claim Racial Bias in Farms" Hiring of Immigrants VIDALIA, Ga. - For years, labor unions and immigrant rights activists have accused large-scale farmers, like those harvesting sweet Vidalia onions here this month, of exploiting Mexican guest workers. Working for hours on end under a punishing sun, the pickers are said to be crowded into squalid camps, driven without a break and even cheated of wages. Local unemployment in Vidalia is about 10 percent. But as Congress weighs immigration legislation expected to expand the guest worker program, another group is increasingly crying foul - Americans, mostly black, who live near the farms and say they want the field work but cannot get it because it is going to Mexicans. They contend that they are illegally discouraged from applying for work and treated shabbily by farmers who prefer the foreigners for their malleability. "They like the Mexicans because they are scared and will do anything they tell them to," said Sherry Tomason, who worked for seven years in the fields here, then quit. Last month she and other local residents filed a federal lawsuit against a large grower of onions, Stanley Farms, alleging that it mistreated them and paid them less than it paid the Mexicans. The suit is one of a number of legal actions containing similar complaints against farms, including a large one in Moultrie, Ga., where Americans said they had been fired because of their race and national origin, given less desirable jobs and provided with fewer work opportunities than Mexican guest workers. Under a consent decree with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the farm, Southern Valley, agreed to make certain changes. With local unemployment about 10 percent and the bureaucracy for hiring foreigners onerous - guest workers have to be imported and housed and require extensive paperwork - it would seem natural for farmers to hire from their own communities, which they did a generation ago. In fact, the farmers say, they would dearly like to. "We have tried to fill our labor locally," said Brian Stanley, an owner of Stanley Farms, which is being sued by Ms. Tomason and others. But we couldn't get enough workers, and that was hindering our growth. So we turned to the guest worker program. The vast majority of farm workers in the country are not in the guest worker program but are simply unauthorized immigrants. The plan to place those workers on a path to legal status would reduce the chances of their being exploited, the bill's sponsors say, and thereby also improve the status of Americans who feel they cannot compete against vulnerable foreigners. Mr. Stanley, like other farmers, argues that Americans who say they want the work end up quitting because it is hard, leaving the crops to rot in the fields. But the situation is filled with cultural and racial tensions. Even many of the Americans who feel mistreated acknowledge that the Mexicans who arrive on buses for a limited period are incredibly efficient, often working into the night seven days a week to increase their pay. "We are not going to run all the time," said Henry Rhymes, who was fired - unfairly, he says - from Southern Valley after a week on the job. We are not Mexicans. Jon Schwalls, director of operations at Southern Valley, made a similar point. "When Jose gets on the bus to come here from Mexico he is committed to the work," he said. It's like going into the military. He leaves his family at home. The work is hard, but he's ready. A domestic wants to know: What's the pay? What are the conditions? In these communities, I am sorry to say, there are no fathers at home, no role models for hard work. They want rewards without input. Such generalizations lead lawyers - and residents - to say there are racist undertones to the farms" policies. "I am not arguing that agricultural work is a good job," said Dawson Morton, a lawyer who focuses on farm workers" rights at the Georgia Legal Services Program, a nonprofit law firm. I am arguing that it could be a better job. If you want experienced people, train them. Just because people are easier to supervise, agricultural employers shouldn't be able to import them. It is not true that Americans don't want the work. What the farmers are really saying is that blacks just don't want to work. Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated where the Southern Poverty Law Center is based. It is in Montgomery, Ala., not Atlanta.