Immigrant Labor

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Several weeks ago, The Crimson printed an editorial by Laurie Grossman on Mexican immigrant workers in California ("California Contradiction," January 14). later, Saied Kashani '86, a native Californian, wrote The Crimson to "take exception" to the examples of racism and economic oppression mentioned in the article. Apparently, Mr. Kashani felt the article exaggerated the amount of racism inflicted upon immigrants and the rest of California's Mexican-American population. Now, as both a California and a Mexican-American, it is I who find it necessary to take exception to the remarks of Mr. Kashani.

Too often, our indifference to an injustice that threatens others is nurtured by our inability or unwillingness to see it through the eyes of the victim. Imagine, if you will, that you are an immigrant from Mexico who looks northward toward the United States in search of a job to feed your family. First, you have to get across the border; and, despite what a few conservative lawmakers would have us believe, that is always difficult and often dangerous.

Let's imagine that you survive the trip and arrive in the United States ready to reap the benefits of the American Dream. It's summertime and you find a job in California's San Joaquin Valley, which is rich in agriculture. You're working 10-12 hours a day, picking grapes and tree fruit in temperatures that rise above 100 degrees for weeks at a time. You're making minimum wage and workers' benefits like medical insurance and sick-leave are unheard of.

You pay a few hundred dollars a month to live in a one bedroom-one bathroom house with twenty other immigrants under sub-human conditions. In the fields, you're picking fruit that has been sprayed with hazardous chemicals, several of which have been outlawed by both state and federal agencies. With nothing to protect you from the pesticides, you become contaminated. And, since your employer is careful to "protect" you from "troublemakers" like Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, you have nowhere to turn for help.

As payday approaches, a government van rolls up. Your boss has just called immigration and set you and your family up for deportation rather than pay you what you've earned. You are sent back to Mexico with only fatigue and abuse to show for your pursuit of an elusive American Dream.

In closing, it seems that in her article Grossman barely scraped the surface of what is for millions of people a tragic way of life. In trying to absolve himself and people like him of the guilt for allowing such an unjust and repressive system to exist, Saied Kashani continues to lie to himself and others about the racial climate in our home state. As for those who accept what I have said but don't believe that all Californians should be held responsible for the acts of a few, for those who believe that Californians whose "hands are clean" have no reason to feel guilty for an injustice that has soiled the hands of their neighbors, there is indeed wisdom to be found in the words of Eldridge Cleaver. "If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem!" Ruben Navarette Jr. '89