Nate Whitley

This weekend I was fortunate enough to attend a school trip to a local tulip farm. We learned about the challenges facing small farmers and the relations between the government and farmers in our area. There are many big ideas to unpack in this alone, however what I was interested in was the work force behind these small farms. Many if not most of the workers at the farm were immigrants, legal or illegal they did not want to specify. The owners of the farm spoke to us about how unsafe their workers felt sometimes at a days end, they explained that on some days the workers would stay on the farm for hours after hearing that immigration was waiting at their houses or along the streets waiting to catch illegal workers heading home for the day. Many of these workers have spend some if not most of their lives in this country and are making the lives of others easier by doing so. Immigrants take unwanted or dirty jobs, and are then treated as less than and live in constant fear of deportation. This is no way to live. There needs to be a reform in the way we handle illegal immigrants in Oregon, and America. I'm not sure what this change should look like exactly, however it is my belief that if there are illegal immigrants who live in this country for over a certain number of years and act as model citizens, they should be allowed citizenship and rights which other people have to this country and to this land.