Farmers, workers want better immigration reforms

Washington farm owners and farm workers want Republicans in Congress to go even further than President Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration reform.

Leaders and workers of Central Washington’s fruit and dairy industries are lobbying for changes in immigration laws they hope to see passed in the coming months. Those include greater border security measures and an improved guest worker program.

“We need to accept the fact that we need the labor force,” said Brenda Alford, co-owner of Alford Farms outside Pasco. “We also must control the flow of people coming across our borders.”

Alford joined several representatives of state growing organizations and national politicians calling this week for the Republican Party to lead the charge in the new Congress to address what everyone acknowledges is a broken immigration system. Alford said she has supported Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ work in House leadership on the issue of immigration. The Spokane congresswoman joined her GOP colleagues in condemning the president for his executive order, saying in a prepared statement Thursday night that it “blatantly disregards the will of the American people.” “This is a conservative base saying we want this, we need this,” said Roger Bairstow, an executive at Broetje Orchards in Prescott.

Luis Vazquez, 55, said through an interpreter Friday that he agrees with employers that more far-reaching reforms are needed.

Vazquez has worked on a dairy farm near Pasco for the past 10 years. He originally came to America on a tourist visa, he said, and remained here after conditions deteriorated in his hometown in Mexico. He’s one of the estimated 230,000 unauthorized immigrants living in Washington, according to the most recent study by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

Vazquez was interviewed by phone through interpreter Indira Trejo, who works for the United Farm Workers of America.

He said he works for $93 a day, sometimes putting in more than 15 hours milking cows. He said he and his co-workers want to speak up, but are afraid of being deported.

“The way that can happen is through better documentation,” Vazquez said.

Vazquez credited Obama for taking steps to correct immigration issues, saying he understood the president was under a lot of pressure to do so.

Jon DaVeny, president of the Washington Fruit Tree Association, previously worked as a staffer for Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco, in the nation’s capital. He said Republicans have a unique opportunity in the next session to proffer a long-term legislative solution to the nation’s mounting immigration problems.

“I really hope it’s something the new Congress will put at the top of its agenda,” DaVeny said this week, before Obama spoke Thursday night. “I hope they put forward a specific proposal, rather than saying they’re not pleased with the president’s proposal. If you don’t have your own proposal, you shouldn’t be criticizing what the president proposes.”

In a speech on the Senate floor this week, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray also called for a long-term legislative fix, saying Obama’s actions are just a “Band-Aid.” She criticized House Republicans for not taking up a bill, written by both Democrats and Republicans, that was passed by the Senate last year, a theme Obama echoed in his address Thursday night.

“But it is better than nothing,” Murray said of Obama’s executive order. “And nothing is what House Republicans are offering.”

Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Eagle, has joined several House GOP members condemning Obama for what they see as circumventing Congress to enact a policy for political purposes.

“(Obama) violated his promise to champion reform in his first term, sabotaged bipartisan House negotiations in his second and bred distrust by failing to faithfully enforce the law throughout,” Labrador said in a prepared statement Friday.

But Labrador dropped out of those bipartisan negotiations last summer, citing differences of opinion in who would pay health care costs for undocumented immigrants. Of the immigration bills that have made it past committee votes in the House of Representatives, all have been approved along party lines.

Vazquez, through his interpreter, said he understood why it has taken so long for immigration issues to be addressed. But he said his co-workers are clamoring for better documentation to improve their working conditions.

“All we want to do is improve the labor conditions,” Vazquez said. “This is not a war against the company, it’s just a call for us to have our rights respected.”