Fox visits Yakima

YAKIMA – Mexican President Vicente Fox told a mostly Latino crowd Wednesday that he has done what he could to influence U.S. lawmakers on immigration reform that provides security, legality and order to the flow of migrant workers from his nation.

But ultimately it is the decision of the U.S. Congress, and “we must trust that it will make the right decision for its people and with respect for the people of Mexico,” Fox said during a tour of Washington state’s largest Latino-owned fruit orchard and packing operation.

That decision could become closer to reality as early as today when the Senate is expected to vote on its latest version of an immigration bill. No matter the outcome, the legislation will have a tremendous impact on the growers and workers here.

The Yakima Valley is home to tens of thousands of Hispanic workers, including illegal immigrants, many of whom work in the agriculture industry.

Fox, believed to be the first Mexican president to visit Washington state, was the guest of Rene and Carmen Garcia, owners of the 700-acre G&G Orchards west of Yakima. He was accompanied on his brief sojourn to central Washington by Gov. Chris Gregoire, who arranged the trip.

“As a land of immigrants, when we talk about immigration policy, we must do so with compassion and understanding of the contributions of these immigrants,” Gregoire said, calling the Latinos who toil in Washington’s orchards and fields “the finest workers to be found anywhere in the world.”

In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau found more than one-third of Yakima County’s population is Latino, mostly of Mexican ancestry. That population has grown considerably since then. About 60 percent of school students here are of Mexican ancestry.

No one can say for sure how many of the state’s estimated 93,000 agricultural workers are in this country illegally, though.

The national immigration debate has particular significance here. About 250 orchards from the Yakima Valley to Tonasket are owned by Latinos, many former field hands themselves.

Rene Garcia is the son of Mexican Americans from Texas who settled in the Yakima Valley in the 1950s. Carmen, who was a farm worker on the Garcia’s orchard, fell for Rene and they were married. Together they turned his parents’ 20-acre farm into a 700-acre business that employs 50 full-time workers and 175 more during harvest. Carmen spoke for them both on Wednesday.

“If I am speaking slowly, it is because I have no education,” she said in Spanish. “When I was 17 I came to the United States to work. I have never stopped working.”

Rene Garcia looks out on his cherry trees laden with fruit and wonders whether he will have enough workers to harvest his crop in July.

“Last year we had fewer cherries and not enough workers,” he said.

His dilemma also serves to illustrate the economic dimensions of the immigration debate.

Even if the reform bill that emerges from Congress includes a guest worker provision, growers ask how will such workers clear the bureaucratic red tape necessary to cross the border in time to help with this year’s crop or even next year’s?

Luz Bazan Gutierrez, director of the Greater Yakima Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, believes a guest worker provision would not be an issue if farm workers were paid enough.

“The bigger issue is we need a more comprehensive legislation for the people who are already here,” Bazan Gutierrez said. There needs to be a process for legalization. If there has to be a penalty (for those here illegally), people are willing to deal with that.”

Though Fox used his Yakima stop to call for a U.S. immigration policy that respected the contribution of Mexican workers, he did not endorse specific proposals.

Gregoire, however, had no qualms about endorsing legislation that included both a temporary guest worker program and some form of “earned legalization” for undocumented workers.

To many Americans, however, immigration reform is about law and order.

An estimated crowd of 70 demonstrators, shunted to a remote vacant lot on Fox’s route to and from the Yakima airport, protested Wednesday. They were led by Bob Baker of Protect Washington Now.

Baker’s message to Fox is for him to “go home immediately and take his 12 million to 20 million Mexican nationals currently in this country with him … pronto.” He estimates undocumented immigrants are costing the United States $26 billion a year in social services while paying only $16 billion in taxes.

Representatives of his group, as well as the Washington chapter of the Minutemen, exchanged words with pro-Fox supporters on Wednesday, but there were no physical confrontations despite being assigned the same taped-off area by Yakima police, witnesses said.

Tomas Villanueva, a former United Farmwokers official who spoke at G&G Orchard, said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks created a wave of racism “that was hidden before and is now out in the open.”

But Villanueva might have agreed with Baker on one issue: the exploitation of migrant workers from Mexico. Both called on Fox to oppose the injustice of allowing this vulnerable population to toil without adequate pay or living conditions.

Immigration may have taken center stage in America of late, but in Yakima it shares the stage with another issue just as pressing – trade.

Specifically, the Garcias and other growers want Mexico to lift its tariff of 46.6 percent on Washington apples. First imposed in 1997 as a response to perceived “dumping” of gold and red delicious apples on the Mexican market, the tariff is now imposed on all but a handful of Washington’s biggest shippers.

Carmen Garcia said small growers believe that is unfair.

Fox bid his audience goodbye, telling them that they are loved in Mexico and its people who understand “how much you suffer living away from your culture, your music and your families.”

He advised them to seek an education for a better future. “I recommend you study,” Fox said. “That is what you can give your kids.”