DAYTONA BEACH NEWS-JOURNAL

September 24, 2006

Farmworkers' glove campaign seeks path to citizenship

By BRITTNEY BOOTH
Staff Writer

DELAND -- The soiled gloves Honorio Mendoza wears show traces of the hours he spent hunched over, clipping fern stems in a Pierson fernery.

As he surfaces from the rows of leafy ferns where he has worked most of the morning, Mendoza removes the cloth gloves, wrapped partly in duct tape, covered in stem hairs and wet from sweat, water and pesticide. He hands them to Marcos Crisanto, the Farmworkers Association coordinator in Pierson.

His brother, Manuel, watches the exchange as he wrings out his own drenched work gloves. He tells Crisanto he will bring more pairs to the association's office.

Mendoza's gloves, along with hundreds more the association has collected over the last two months, will be delivered Wednesday to the Orlando offices of Florida's U.S. Sens. Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson, Crisanto said.

The work gloves symbolize the work immigrants do in this country, said Jeannie Economos, program assistant for the association's Apopka office. The association, a membership organization that works to empower farmworkers, is based in Apopka but has offices in Pierson and Princeton.

"There's a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment, and this is to show solidarity and support for immigrants," Economos said. "They are not a threat to our national security. They are strong supporters of this country and a great part of our labor force. They make significant contributions to our society and our culture in a lot of different ways."'

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates between 11 million and 12 million immigrants are in the United States illegally.

The Farmworkers Association began its statewide campaign to collect work gloves in August and planned to continue the campaign until October. But as the House of Representatives considered three bills toughening enforcement of immigration laws last week, Economos said association members felt they could not wait to "make this strong statement about the support for comprehensive and fair immigration reform."

The House passed all three bills Thursday. They affirm state and local law enforcement agencies' powers to enforce federal immigration laws, make it easier to deport illegal immigrants with criminal records and make it a felony to dig tunnels under the border. All of the measures must still be approved by the Senate and signed by the president.

Immigration reform emerged as one of this year's most divisive political issues last spring when tens of thousands of Latino workers staged spring rallies opposing the House's passage in December of a bill that would make illegal immigration a felony.

And members of the Republican Party openly broke ranks with President Bush after he proposed temporary guest worker status for some immigrants here illegally.

The Farmworkers Association glove collection is not part of an effort to seek amnesty or automatic citizenship for undocumented workers, Economos said.

Rather, they are calling for the government to provide a way for people already in the United States to gain legal status by paying a fine, learning English, maintaining employment and other requirements. They've included a letter campaign, asking politicians to create a "pathway to citizenship" for immigrants who are already living and working here, she said.

The Pierson office alone has gathered between 400 and 500 pairs of gloves since August, Crisanto said. They are also collecting fern clippers, and other offices have gathered items symbolic of the work immigrants do in that area, such as construction gloves or latex gloves used in nurseries.