More unions favor legalizing workers

[Omaha Steve]

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/mar/29/1m29farm231735-more-unions-favor-legalizing-worker/?zIndex=74335

Changes in labor force spur rethinking
By Leslie Berestein (Contact) Union-Tribune Staff Writer

2:00 a.m. March 29, 2009

The dynamics of the farm labor population have changed since César Chávez and others began organizing workers in California's fields.

In the early 1960s, a guest-worker program that had imported workers from Mexico since the days of World War II was drawing to a close. Those who were left picking crops were largely legal residents or U.S. citizens of Mexican and Filipino descent, along with working-class white and black Americans.

“Back then, probably 80 percent were documented, and about 20 percent were undocumented. Today it would be just the reverse,” said Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers, the nation's first farm labor union. The UFW was founded by Chávez, whose birthday is celebrated Tuesday.

The makeup of the nation's manual laborers – and in particular, farm laborers – changed as economic conditions in Mexico and other parts of Latin America coincided with a demand for cheap labor in the United States.

It is now estimated that as many as 90 percent of California's farmworkers are foreign-born, most of them here illegally. This resonates in San Diego County, home to more small farms than any other county in the United States, according to the San Diego County Farm Bureau. Agriculture has repeatedly ranked fourth or fifth among the county's top industries.

Nationwide, the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C., has estimated that while only 4 percent of unauthorized workers are employed in agriculture, such workers make up the vast majority of farm labor.

FULL story at link.

[David Dunham]

1. It's not going to happen now when Americans are losing their jobs