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.
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