Two Sundays ago, frustration over low wages and lack of legal residency, adequate housing and other rights for Hispanics like Ramirez led to one of the largest farm-worker protest demonstrations ever seen in Washington. Ramirez and his family took part. It was intended, in part, to call attention to the drive by the farm workers and the national AFL-CIO for federal legislation granting amnesty to undocumented farm workers like Rodriguez who are virtually permanent American residents. The farm workers want a blanket amnesty program for undocumented workers like that passed by Congress in 1986, which let 2.7 million undocumented individuals become legal residents if they could prove they had lived continually in the United States for at least six years. Those who came after 1986 without obtaining legal residency are here illegally.
Worker advocates contend many have earned the right of citizenship.
Worker advocates contend that unscrupulous growers can exploit undocumented workers, whether by underpaying or otherwise abusing them. The Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates the number of undocumented immigrants at 5 million across the country and 52,000 in Washington. But Gamboa contends the actual numbers are higher. In the past 25 years, irrigation has transformed the lives of farm workers in southern Grant County, just as it has transformed agriculture around Mattawa, a community of humble, mostly prefabricated homes on a windswept plateau above the Columbia River. It is about 50 miles southwest of Moses Lake.