After immigration raid, Sacramento nursery rebounds - but questions U.S. policy

"An ICE investigation last spring uncovered 61 undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America at Matsuda's – 60 percent of its full-time staff, including the company's longtime foreman.  In the middle of Easter rush – the busiest season of the year – managers Ryan Wallace, Jim Snyder and Tom Wing held painful exit interviews with workers who were found to be undocumented.  "They were crying, we were crying," Snyder said.  Now, six months after the ICE investigation, Matsuda's has rebounded, hiring new workers.  "We will grow and ship 1.2 million plants this year," said general manager Wallace, a University of California, Davis, environmental horticulture and agricultural economics graduate.  But the whole episode has left Wallace and his managers questioning U.S. immigration policy and whether the crackdown is causing more economic problems than it's solving.  "It chastised us, put a multimillion-dollar business in jeopardy, and put them on the street," said Snyder, the company's production manager."

Sacramento Bee, Oct. 11, 2011.