Connection: Call For Amnesty

Farm workers in Washington state are calling for amnesty for undocumented workers most of whom are Mexicans and other Latinos - as well as higher wages for apple pickers in orchards around the state.

Some 4,000 demonstrators marched along the Columbia River last weekend and attended a rally in a park in Mattawa, Wash.

Arturo Rodriguez, national president of the United Farm Workers of America, said undocumented workers should be offered amnesty.

“We have literally millions of Latinos and people of other ethnicities performing the work that other people don’t want to do … and they’re treated like second-class citizens,” he said.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that Washington had some 52,000 undocumented immigrants, and Idaho had another 16,000 in fiscal 1996, the most recent year for which such statistics exist. Although the nationalities of those immigrants aren’t known for each state, 54 percent of all undocumented immigrants to the United States are believed to come from Mexico, the INS reports.

About, 1,700, or a fourth of all legal immigrants to Washington state in fiscal year 1998, were also from Mexico, the INS reported. In Idaho, 984, or about two-thirds of legal immigrants, were from Mexico that year, which is the most recent for figures on legal immigration.