Guest Column
May 1 Boycotters Say Yes to Citizenship, No to Guest Worker Programs
- By Roberto Lovato
- New America Media, Commentary,
- Apr 29, 2006
If
anyone has everything to lose by participating in the May 1 boycott called
by some immigrants' rights activists, it's Jesus Nunez Vela. Despite the
risk of losing his job as an agricultural worker on a farm in North
Carolina, the 57-year-old "guest worker" is not going to work on Monday and
will instead hop on a bus headed to a march against punitive immigration
proposals in Washington, D.C.
I met Vela as he was getting off another bus -- for the 15th time -- in
rural Vass, N.C. He had just finished an 18-hour ride from Nayarit, Mexico,
when I met him in the offices of the North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA).
Vela has, since 1991, come to the United States as a temporary guest worker
to pick tomatoes, yams and the most painful crop, tobacco, which forces
workers to bend over for more than 10 hours a day in fields filled with
pesticides. After the harvest ends, Vela returns to his home in Durango,
Mexico. Though he is grateful to be making more than the 50 pesos
(approximately $5) per day he made back home, he does not recommend the life
of the H-2, or "guest worker," to anyone.
"I've been temporary for more than 15 years and I'd like it to stop," says
Vela. "I'm doing this because I have a wife and four kids who depend on me.
They (the U.S. government and politicos) keep us under the ilusion that we
will one day get our papers." As he says this he sits and waits to get
processed in the NCGA office before reporting once again to his employer on
the farm.
Vela's situation reminds me of my cousins from El Salvador who have toiled
under the tyranny of temporary status as maids and housekeepers in cities
like San Francisco. When I think about my cousin Maria, who had not seen her
now-mustachioed son since he was 3 years old, I have a hard time
understanding how we can afford not to boycott.
Under the little used H-2 program (only about 120,000 Mexican workers are
covered in the entire country), Vela and other workers are allowed to enter
the United States to work for a specific employer, and must leave soon after
the picking season ends each year. He and boycott organizers are marching,
stopping work and organizing other activities to discourage President Bush
and Congress from extending such temporary programs to the more than 12
million undocumented rural and urban workers. He and all immigrants rights
advocates want a path to citizenship as a solution to the plight of the
undocumented like Vela who have worked in the United States for years. "I'm
going to Washington to remind them we're still waiting," he says.
But not all immigrants rights advocates agree with Vela and boycott
organizers about stopping work or student walkouts called for this Monday.
Critics like some of my friends at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR)
National Capital Immigration Coalition and other nonprofit immigrants rights
advocates believe that the risks to immigrant workers are "too high," that
such measures as work stoppages and school walkouts are "too extreme." I
don't agree.
After spending time in the labor camps with Jesus and other workers
organized by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), and after more than
eight years of heading up an immigrants rights organization, I think that
the treatment of Vela and other undocumented and temporary workers is "too
extreme." I think that the perpetual fear sowed by Immigration and Customs
enforcement raids like those conducted recently are "too extreme."
In search of a good answer for those who fear or don't support a boycott, I
asked FLOC's leader Baldemar Velasquez, who is a visionary leader on par
with Cesar Chavez, whom he knew well and worked with, how and why FLOC is
mobilizing five busloads of undocumented and temporary farm workers. In
response, he shared what was told to him by Martin Luther King Jr. during
the Poor People's Campaign in 1967. "When you impact the rich man's ability
to make money, anything is negotiable," he says.
Such a perspective is lacking among too many Latino politicos, "community
leaders" and media representatives. After yelling, "We support immigrants
rights -- but don't boycott," many of these same "leaders" will be toasting
"Hispanic heritage" at tequila-shooting, taquito-stuffed, popular and posh
Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Washington and across the country. Meanwhile
Jesus Vela will be returning to the tobacco fields to start another cycle of
temporary work.
- Roberto Lovato is a free lance writer based in New York.
- New America Article at: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=a5ca324f3c933deb50d01ecebc05f61b
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