Tue. Mar 19th, 2024

From today’s Denver Post:

Lulu Guerrero wakes up at her home in Wiggins, sometimes as early as 3 a.m., to get out to the farm fields that spread across Weld County in every direction and start her days planting and harvesting watermelons, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and pumpkins.

Guerrero, who entered the United States illegally nearly 20 years ago and has worked in Colorado’s $41 billion a year agricultural industry ever since, lives in constant worry about her future and that of the hundreds of thousands of other immigrant workers who labor in America’s farm fields.

“We were called essential during the pandemic — all we want is the opportunity to get out of the shadows and stay in the country,” she said through a translator.

Guerrero, 53, spent last week in Washington, D.C., pushing for the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, a federal bill that would create a path to legal residency — and potentially eventual citizenship — for undocumented farmworkers in the United States.

It passed the House last year — with 30 Republicans signing on — but has yet to get a hearing in the U.S. Senate. It needs 60 votes in the Senate to make it to the president’s desk for his signature.

Antonio De Loera-Brust, spokesman for the United Farm Workers, said time is of the essence as Congress is now in a lame-duck session following the midterm elections. With Republicans poised to take back control of the House in January, De Loera-Brust said the bill needs to get a vote before the end of the year.

Read the complete story here.

By Editor