State prepares for Mexican leader’s visit

YAKIMA – At age 16, Ernesto Gonzalez crossed the desert border from Mexico with his father and brothers to work the fields in the United States. Now 42, Gonzalez is a legal U.S. citizen, construction business owner and president of the Yakima Hispanic Chamber of Commerce – and he can’t imagine how his life would be different if he had stayed in Mexico.

Gonzalez isn’t alone. In the agricultural Yakima Valley, with acres of apples, cherries, grapes and hops, thousands of Mexican immigrants harvest crops and manage their own businesses. It is their stories that will make the first impression when Mexican President Vicente Fox begins his visit to Washington today.

The two-day visit to Yakima and Seattle is believed to be the first by a Mexican president to Washington and comes as the U.S. Senate considers sweeping immigration reform.

Gov. Chris Gregoire specifically pressed Fox to stop in central Washington to see firsthand the role Hispanic workers play in the region’s economy.

Agriculture remains the state’s top industry. Thousands of workers – many of them illegal immigrants – labor in the agricultural industry, from planting and harvesting crops to packing and processing fruit. In some farm communities, Hispanics comprise up to 90 percent of the population.

Trade will be a major topic of discussion during the visits. Mexico is the nation’s top export market for apples, and the cherry industry recently began promotions there after gaining access to the market. But the country remains just the 11th export market overall for Washington products and crops, according to the U.S. Customs Bureau, and other hurdles remain.

In Yakima, Rene Garcia plans to press for duty-free apple exports in Mexico, where U.S. shippers pay a 46 percent tariff. Fox will visit Garcia’s 700-acre cherry, apple and pear orchard and apple-packing warehouse.

“There’s a lot of products, on both sides of the border, that we could benefit from in terms of enhancing our relationship,” said Michael Sotelo, president of the Washington state Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which is sponsoring a luncheon for Fox in Seattle.

Given the timing of the visit, though, immigration will be the topic of interest at each stop. Nowhere will the tension be stronger than in Yakima, where farmers are raising concerns about a shortage of workers this year amid a border crackdown.

“It’s looking like we’re going to have a tough time this year,” Garcia said of his G&G Orchards. “It’s a bigger crop, so there are fewer people to go around.”

State Rep. Jim Clements, a Selah Republican, needs immigrants to work in his orchards, but doesn’t like the social problems he believes comes with having an entire population living “in the shadows.”

“Some are above ground and some are underground, but by God, it’s going on,” Clements said. “How would I, as a state representative, say we don’t need farmworkers, we don’t need farm labor. On the other side of it, I don’t want the crime, I don’t want the drugs.”

Law enforcement officials have identified Yakima as a hub in drug trafficking from Mexico.

Since taking office in 2000, Fox repeatedly has called for immigration reform that would legalize the millions of undocumented Mexican workers living in the United States. In Washington, that number is estimated in the thousands.

Some say all the talk of immigration reform misses the biggest point: without economic reform in Mexico, any attempts at a border crackdown could be futile.

“I don’t see a lot of assurance from the Mexican government to start producing more industries to keep (Fox’s) people in Mexico,” said Alex Santillanes, executive director of Barrios Unidos, a community group that works with at-risk youth in several Eastern Washington communities.

“As tight as the borders have been, and even tighter, the magnet is still here for the dollar,” Santillanes said.

People in desperate situations will find a way to come north to make money regardless of any attempt to strengthen the border, said state Sen. Margarita Prentice, a Renton Democrat and the influential chairwoman of the Senate budget committee.

Prentice, a Mexican-American and registered nurse who has been a vocal advocate for farm workers in the Legislature, also called the immigration problem an economic one.

“Workers feel like they’re making a lot, and they’re willing to live 10 to a room in order to have money to send back home,” she said.

In Washington, those dollars could be huge. Gonzalez, who received amnesty several years ago, estimates up to 70 percent of the Hispanic people who work in the Yakima Valley send vast amounts of money back to Mexico.

He, and others, recognize Fox’s visit as more of a “farewell tour” for a lame duck leader leaving office later this year. At the same time, Gonzalez hopes Fox sees and hears the bigger message from his countrymen and -women to the north.

“I hope he gets the point, or the message, that if I had a choice, I would rather live there. But there’s no future,” he said. “I wouldn’t have the opportunity of owning my own business, with a little bit of money, owning a car, let alone having money to spend.”