Gov. Gavin Newsom has embraced the position of migrants advocate on the nationwide stage, dueling with Republican governors who're making an attempt to attain factors with xenophobic voters by transporting asylum seekers out of their states to liberal locations.
However his protection of migrants abused by GOP leaders comes at a puzzling time for California immigrants awaiting his signature on a invoice that will shield tens of hundreds of them from abuse. Many concern he’ll veto it later this month.
“He’s criticizing one other governor for being anti-immigrant, however he’s doing the identical right here within the state,” Xochitl Núñez, a 52-year-old single mom and Tulare farmworker from Mexico, instructed me. “He’s doing the identical with farmworkers.”
Opinion Columnist
Jean Guerrero
Jean Guerrero is the creator, most not too long ago, of “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda.”
Núñez is certainly one of hundreds of people that marched 335 miles in triple-digit warmth with the United Farm Employees final month to stress Newsom to signal Meeting Invoice 2183, which handed the state Legislature with overwhelming help. The invoice would make it simpler for state farmworkers to unionize by permitting them to vote by mail in union elections if an employer agrees to not intervene with the trouble. If an employer received’t agree, voting would happen by means of a union-led petition course of.
Greater than 70% of farmworkers are undocumented, which suggests they’re typically weak to types of retaliation that jeopardize their existence on this nation, the place many have U.S.-citizen youngsters, houses, jobs and different deep roots. They don’t simply concern shedding their jobs; they concern being deported.
Final yr, Newsom vetoed a earlier model of the invoice, blaming “inconsistencies and procedural points associated to the gathering and evaluation of poll playing cards.” The invoice was later revised to incorporate 90% of the adjustments that his staff requested, in line with the United Farm Employees. This yr, Newsom’s spokeswoman Erin Mellon cited persevering with considerations about election integrity.
However on Thursday, she sounded extra optimistic. She instructed me: “The administration is in ongoing conversations with labor leaders to succeed in an implementable settlement that permits farmworkers to successfully arrange.”
In the meantime, the farmworker Núñez and others are holding vigil exterior the state Capitol.
Whereas marching, Núñez’s toes swelled a lot that her toenails fell off. One in all her many blisters received’t heal. She missed work and is behind two months on hire and different payments. However it’s value it for her. She has skilled sexual harassment within the fields and is aware of it’s a typical downside that may stick with impunity with out change.
One other farmworker from Mexico, 47-year-old Cynthia Burgos, a Bakersfield resident, instructed me about her rape within the fields and lack of penalties for the perpetrator. “If one thing occurs to you, the ranchero says, ‘Go away,’” she instructed me. “Then again, if we had a union, they’d need to struggle for our rights.”
The farmworkers have highly effective allies: President Biden himself issued a four-paragraph assertion supporting the invoice for Labor Day. “It's long gone time that we guarantee America’s farmworkers and different important staff have the identical proper to hitch a union as different Individuals,” he stated. Vice President Kamala Harris and Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi additionally expressed help for the invoice. And final Wednesday, guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Towards the Machine carried out exterior the Capitol in solidarity with the folks holding vigil there.
Newsom’s consideration has largely been elsewhere.
“That is completely sick — profiteering off of the trafficking of kids sounds an entire lot just like the enterprise of coyotes,” he tweeted a day after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew dozens of migrants to Martha’s Winery, a Massachusetts trip hub standard with Democrats. The relocation underneath false pretenses prompted a class-action lawsuit final week. A Texas sheriff can be investigating.
Newsom was fast to demand motion. He requested the Justice Division to launch a probe and challenged DeSantis to a debate. “I’ll convey my hair gel. You convey your hairspray,” he tweeted, coopting a DeSantis jab about self-importance.
Newsom’s pro-immigrant stance in a rustic that's more and more hostile to brown and Black newcomers isn’t simply rhetorical. He has authorised healthcare for undocumented seniors and COVID-19 assist for folks no matter immigration standing. Nativists launched final yr’s recall effort partially as a result of they noticed a menace to the xenophobia on the coronary heart of Trumpism. Latino voters, seeing an ally in Newsom, helped defeat the recall.
If the governor’s biggest energy is the immigrant group behind him, his Achilles’ heel is his elite air, which Republicans are keen to use, nevertheless hypocritically. That air is inseparable from his coziness with growers, given his background as a winery and vineyard proprietor. By turning his again on farmworkers, Newsom can be giving Republicans actual fodder to assault him.
And he’d be behaving like a typical institution Democrat: defending migrants solely when it’s a possibility to bash Trump and his ilk.
He ought to signal the invoice not solely as a result of it’s politically good, but additionally as a result of it’s proper to guard farmworkers. “They work very exhausting to place meals on our tables, and typically they don’t have sufficient to place meals on their desk,” United Farm Employees President Teresa Romero instructed me. “That's incorrect.”
Final week, Newsom gave closing remarks at a local weather summit in New York concerning the wildfires, drought and excessive warmth in California. Not as soon as did he point out the immigrant farmworkers disproportionately struggling underneath these situations. When he spoke of the energy of the state’s economic system, he uncared for to say that the spine of it are the very folks whose calls for he’s hesitating to satisfy.
Newsom should study to extra persistently inhabit the position that California delivered to him: the anti-Trump. He could be a true advocate for the individuals who’ve made this nation robust.
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