October 1995, Volume 1, Number 4

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

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

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

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