October 1995, Volume 1, Number 4
Rural America
Mendota: Wave of the Future?
The west side of the San Joaquin Valley became productive farm
land in the 1960s after federal and state water projects made
irrigation water
Hispanics in Iowa Meatpacking
Hispanics and Asians now dominate the labor forces of midwestern
meatpacking, an industry that has come full circle in the 20th
century. It was
Oregon and Washington Rural Towns Changing
The 110-mile long Willamette Valley south of Portland has become
home to a dozen computer chip manufacturing factories, one reason
President
Colonias in New Mexico
Disease and a cold spring reduced the New Mexico chile crop by 30
to 40 percent, doubling chile prices and decreasing farm worker
employment and
Population and Politics
Some pundits assert that the most important political dynamic in
California and the southwest is the gap between population shares and
political
Farm Workers
Agricultural Guest Workers
Despite strong statements against agricultural guest workers in
June 1995 by both President Clinton and the Jordan Commission on
Immigration
Mixtec Farm Workers
There are an estimated 50,000 Mixtec farm workers from the
southern Mexican state of Oaxaca employed sometime during a typical
year in California
Media Covers Farmworkers
A New York writer spent several weeks in California strawberry
fields and concluded that cheap and flexible migrant workers are the
key to the
UFW Organizes
Striking strawberry harvesters at VCNM Farms, which sells "Well
Pict" berries, voted 332-50 on August 17, 1995 to have the UFW
represent them. On
Texas A&M Settles Farm Worker Suit
Texas A&M admitted on August 15,1995 that it wrongly paid 400
farm workers employed at 10 of the university's 18 agricultural
experiment
US Sugar Mechanizes in Florida
US Sugar, the nation's largest employer of H-2A temporary foreign
workers for over 50 years, announced in late June that it would
harvest all of
Immigration
Gatekeeper and Farm Workers
On October 1, 1994, the Immigration and Naturalization Service
launched Operation Gatekeeper, an effort to prevent unauthorized
aliens from
Regulating the Immigrant Labor Market
On July 11, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich held a press
conference near Fresno, California to announce that so far in FY95,
DOL had assessed
Immigration Reforms in Congress
The Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration held
a hearing September 13 on legal immigration reform, and another on
September 28
INS: Apprehensions and Naturalizations Up
Apprehensions at the US-Mexican border were up 26 percent to 1
million in the first 10 months of FY95--there were 815,000
apprehensions in the same
Other
NAFTA and Mexico
On October 10, Mexican President Zedillo came to Washington, and
repaid ahead of schedule $700 million of the $12.5 billion Mexico
borrowed from
Americanization and English
The Commission on Immigration Reform on September 12 issued its
recommendations on reforming the legal immigration reform system. The
Commission
West Texas Latinos
West Texas is experiencing a dramatic demographic shift. In 1960
only 11 counties had an Hispanic population of at least 15 percent.
In 1990, 49 of
Hearing on Prop. 87
One year after its approval by a vote of 59 to 41 percent,
California's Prop. 187 remains tied up in court.
There are two distinct cases
Editor's Note
This is the fourth issue of Rural Migration News, but the first to
be distributed throughout the US. We are sending you this issue of
Rural