Little City Gardens

If we’re to talk about agriculture, we must also talk about immigrant rights.  We’d like to share a few thoughts sparked by SB1070, the draconian immigration legislation signed by Arizona’s Governor last week.

As humans who believe in human rights, we are deeply disturbed by the aggressive racism inherent in this law – and the blatant racial profiling that it enables.  As gardeners/farmers who believe in the right to a respectable livelihood as agriculturists, we know how much immigrant rights are tied to our food system.  With the passage of NAFTA in 1994 and CAFTA in 2005, Mexico and Central America incurred devastating price destabilization of agricultural commodities and thus disturbance of agricultural communities and economy. Through designing and enacting these oppressive trade policies, our government created one of the largest root causes of migration.  Now, conveniently for US Agribusiness, there is a legally marginalized population to be manipulated. The immigrant population now fuels our own agricultural economy.  Many immigrants who come to the US, especially to California, end up employed as farm workers. They work hard, long hours and deserve serious respect for the work of growing the nation’s food supply. Instead, for the most part, they are paid poorly, their health is put at risk, and they must live in fear of being deported.

First and foremost we believe that immigrants should have the right to a healthy stable livelihood in their own countries. The present reality is that many people do not have this privilege. We believe that all immigrants, including farmworkers, deserve admiration and respect for making an arduous journey to the US, for persevering (despite racism and separation from family and community), and for contributing their labor to this economy and their culture to our lives.

Arizona is not our state, but it could be. Tomorrow, May Day, we’ll be joining millions of others to declare this law unacceptable.