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May 20, 2016 CapitalPress.com Immigrant goes from boxing to picking fruit By DAN WHEAT Reform needed to increase labor supply, immigrant workers say Capital Press ROCK ISLAND, Wash. — One night in June of 1981, Victor Hugo Vega approached two men in Tijuana, Mexico, and asked them if they’d ever been to the United States. They said they hadn’t. “Vamonos (Let’s go),” he said to them, and a short while later they crossed into San Ysidro, Calif., at a spot where the border fence was down. To their knowledge, no one saw them. They felt no danger. “We started walking along the railroad tracks toward San Clemente,” says Hugo, who was then 23. “We were not afraid. We were young.” Hugo and his two com- panions walked more than 60 miles to San Clemente during the next few days, sleeping in the hills. In San Clemente, a friend a gave them a ride to Los An- geles. There they went their separate ways. Hugo found a cousin who pointed him to her brother-in-law’s place in Oro- si, Calif., between Visalia and Fresno. “There’s work there,” Hugo recalls her saying. Soon he was picking nectar- ines and oranges, earning $350 a week. It was a lot of money compared with 3,000 pesos ($250) a week he’d made at a gasoline reinery in Vera Cruz. He planned to stay just a short while. But the pay was good and so was the life, so he decided to stay ive years. Five years became a life- time. Hugo is one of millions of people who have illegally en- tered the United States from Mexico over the past several 15 By DAN WHEAT Capital Press Dan Wheat/Capital Press Guadalupe Campos holds a lier from Mexico advertising a boxing match for her husband, Victor Hugo Vega, 40 years ago. They were in their home in Rock Island, Wash. decades. Most say they did it for better-paying jobs. Government and private sources say there are now 1 million to 3 million migrant farmworkers in the U.S. plant- ing, cultivating, harvesting and packing fruits, vegetables and nuts. Besides California, Texas, Washington, Florida, Oregon and North Carolina have the largest populations of farmworkers, according to Student Action with Farm- workers. Hugo was born in Apatzin- gan, near Zamora, in the state of Michoacan to Purepecha Indian parents in 1957. They didn’t speak Spanish but he learned it as a boy. When he was 18 he be- came a featherweight boxing champion in Morelia, having trained in Mexico City. After his trek across the border, he spent several years working the fruit crops in the San Joaquin Valley and began migrating seasonally to pick fruit in Orondo, Wash. In 1987, he decided to move permanently to Orondo. About that same time, he took advantage of the Immi- gration Reform and Control Act of 1986, often called the Reagan amnesty, and got his green card. In 1997 he be- came a U.S. citizen. On a trip home to see fam- ily in 1991, he met Guadalupe Campos. They married two years later in Mexico. She came to Orondo with him ille- gally but was able to become legal through their marriage and became a citizen in 2002. They’ve spent their lives picking and packing fruit in the greater Wenatchee, Wash., area, eventually settling in Rock Island, where they’ve raised three daughters. The oldest is now 21 and studying political science at Washing- ton State University. Her goal is to become a lawyer. Hugo enjoyed picking ap- ples more than any other or- chard job. His best money on piece rate was $1,000 a week back in 1996. He was a “fast picker and very good worker,” says Cam- pos, 47, but he fell from a fruit ROCK ISLAND, Wash. — The shortage of tree fruit workers in Central Washington is signiicant and immigration reform is needed, say a couple who have spent their lifetime picking and packing fruit in the greater Wenatchee area. Migration of workers to the region for cherry har- vest following California’s cherry harvest has dropped in half in the last two years, says Guadalupe Campos, an area tree fruit worker since the mid-1990s. A light crop and rain re- sulted in such a bad harvest in 2013 that migrant pickers didn’t make a lot of mon- ey and didn’t want to come back, she says. Pickers working for growers of Stemilt Grow- ers LLC, Wenatchee, can’t earn as much as they want because their days are short- ened to maintain fruit quali- ty, Campos said. Migration also has been slowed by greater fear among illegal aliens of get- tree while thinning branches in an Orondo orchard in 1996 and suffered a stroke the next year. They think the fall and stroke are related. The stroke left him without full use of his left hand and with an impedi- ment to his speech. Since then he’s done jan- itorial work at local packing ting caught by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as they travel, partic- ularly just after crossing the Columbia River bridge into Washington from Biggs, Ore., she said. “So they’d rather stay in California where they know their work even though they don’t make as much mon- ey,” she said. “We are missing a lot of people. The store (at Rock Island) has noticed they don’t get as many pickers coming in anymore,” she said. Campos and her hus- band, Victor Hugo Vega, say they think most illegals are willing to pay some sort of ine to gain legal work sta- tus. Noting companies are hiring increasing numbers of H-2A visa guestworkers from Mexico, she said that system needs to be made easier for more workers to come. Campos said her broth- ers, a biologist and a chem- ical engineer, can’t ind work in Mexico. “A lot of people in Mex- ico would like to come up and work,” she said. sheds and, for a while, at the Wenatchee Post Ofice. On May 2, at age 58, Hugo turned in an application for cherry season janitorial work at Stemilt Growers’ 12th an- nual job fair in Wenatchee. He says he needs to keep working as long as he possi- bly can. News When You Need It! Latest agricultural news and monthly reports from throughout the West updated daily. VIEW ALL CLASSIFIED ADS ABSOLUTELY FREE! CALL 1-800-882-6789 TO SUBSCRIBE NOW! Register to get ALL the benefits of your subscription: weekly newspaper PLUS e-Edition available 24/7 on any device, anywhere! Less than $1 per week! 21-2/#13 INSTANT • EXCLUSIVE • UNLIMITED NEWSPAPER • E-PAPER • MOBILE • WEBSITE • E-MAIL UPDATES 1-800-882-6789 capitalpress.com