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Local activists decry Arizona law; migrant farmworkers vow to stay away.
By Robin Urevich
Hundreds of
“What we hear is, they’re not going anymore,” says United Farm Workers
organizer Efren Barajas.
The law allows local cops to demand immigration papers from anyone they
suspect is in the country illegally.
Barajas says local ag giants like D’Arrigo Brothers, Dole, and Tanimura
& Antle will probably have a tough time finding workers to join their
crews in and around Yuma this year, while workers will struggle to find
a way to eke out a living locally.
Barajas contends that employers will understand the workers’ dilemma.
“I don’t think they’re going to force workers to go,” he says.
Calls to D’Arrigo, Dole and Tanimura & Antle were not returned.
The farmworkers are not alone. San Diego Padres first baseman Adrian
Gonzalez, a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States, has said he
won’t show up at next year’s All-Star game in Phoenix if the state
doesn’t repeal the law, while major league baseball’s player’s union
also called for repeal. The union says the measure will have a negative
effect on foreign-born players on 15 teams that attend spring training
in the state.
The Arizona law was also on the minds of activists who organized this
year’s May 1 immigrant rights event at El Sausal Middle School in
Salinas, as were a recent spate of letters to the editor of a Greenfield
paper which blamed Oaxacan immigrants for everything from litter in
parks to high unemployment.
Catholic Bishop Richard Garcia led a lineup of elected officials
including county supervisors Simon Salinas, Fernando Armenta and Jane
Parker, and the mayors of
Currently, local police agencies don’t participate in the program.
“We’re not interested in enforcing federal law,” says Salinas Police
Chief Louis Fetherolf, adding that the city only calls on immigration
authorities when it does its so-called gang round-ups. “They only focus
on hard-core criminals,” Fetherolf says.
“We don’t want people to be afraid to talk with us about about crimes
because they might be in the country illegally,” says Monterey County
Sheriff’s Office Spokesman Mike Richards, adding that his department has
been hit too hard by the economy to take on the work of a federal
agency.
Still, the Sheriff’s office is one of about a dozen in the state
recently selected by federal immigration authorities for a program in
which arrestees’ fingerprints are automatically forwarded to U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement to determine whether they appear in
Department of Homeland Security’s data bases. The program has resulted
in some 300 immigration holds in just five weeks, Richards says.
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