Chavez on my mind, part II

Happy Cesar Chavez Day!

I have felt for some time that an opportunity exists for agriculture, agri-business and those of us on the left to work together, make common cause, and make new friends:  immigration reform.

In an article Saturday the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/us/california-farmers-short-of-labor-and-patience.html?_r=1
explored the impact of lack of such reforms on agriculture in California, with the number of workers declining, and the stable immigrant work force aging out of heavy labor in the fields - workers are just a decade behind the aging farmer population, pushing 50 while the farmers approach medicare age.

One of the happy upshots of this situation is that growers and agricultural advocacy and lobbying groups are getting fed up with the Republican impasse in Congress.  Generations of loyalty to the right on the part of Central Valley growers is being challenged by the aggregate behavior of Republicans.  There are, of course, exceptions - the Times article notes Congress members Valadao and Denham.  But the GOP could lose a key faction of supporters it it doesn't start moving on some sort of immigration reform.

Between the drought and the immigration impasse these are tough times for agriculture in California.  Beyond the present stresses, I wonder about the long term impact on our wallets, our environment and our civic life.

hunger, immigration, and food (in)security

Illegal immigrants are critical to harvesting the country’s fruit and vegetables, working in meat-processing plants, and supporting the dairy industry. But that doesn’t prevent them from suffering some of the nation’s highest hunger and poverty rates.

Although national statistics are scarce, regional studies show that ffood insecurity surpasses 50 percent in some rural immigrant communities (compared to the U.S. national rate of 16 percent). A 2006 study in North Carolina found that 73 percent of the immigrant Latinos surveyed said they “worried whether our food would run out before we got money to buy more.”

Illegal immigrants and their children also suffer from high rates of poverty. More than one in five (21 percent) of all illegal immigrants live in poverty, and one-third of the children of illegal immigrants—most of whom are citizens—are impoverished.

http://www.bread.org/what-we-do/resources/newsletter/september-2010/hunger-and-immigrants.html

http://www.bread.org/institute/research/immigration/