Thread: Basnight lauds farm worker program

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By George A. Chidi, Rocky Mount Telegram

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

N.C. Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight addressed graduates of a farm labor English training program Tuesday at Nash Community College.

"To learn the English language means a lot to us who were born and raised here in America," Basnight, D-Dare, told guests and 17 graduates of the English as a Second Language program. "We thank you first and foremost for your effort to better yourself, to better your opportunities and to better the United States of America."

The English for the Workplace program drew workers from Dale Bone Farms in Nashville into classrooms for eight hours a week of basic English instruction, said Rudolph Garbelotto, an English as a Second Language teacher at Nash Community College. The training was more vocational than strictly academic, he said.

"There's a contradiction between the language skills they bring and their survival skills," he said, describing the ability of a worker with limited English to navigate using street signs. "This will reinforce those survival skills. ... It's going to help them with their work."

Most of the vegetable sorters at Bone's farm speak Spanish on the line, while picking up English little by little, said Imelda Chavez, a worker on the farm.

"Now I can read better, to learn more," she said. "The class was very good."

The classes at the farm cost about $4,000 to provide, farm owner Dale Bone said.

A group of farm labor demonstrators from the N.C. Farm Labor Organizing Committee and the Carolina Interfaith Task Force on Central America met with Bone last week, urging him to support stronger regulations on migrant housing. Bone agreed to speak with Basnight about provisions in migrant housing legislation when it emerged.

The most recent bill strengthening housing rules introduced Thursday didn't appeal to him, however.

"It's very unworkable," Bone said, citing as an example a requirement to have deadbolt locks on every exterior door. "Agriculture cannot be singled out to furnish everything for the workers."

Bone said he favored a bill under development that would provide matching funds for housing renovations.

Basnight said he had not yet reviewed the legislation, but said the migrant labor pool had become essential to North Carolina's economy.

"I do not believe that we would be able to sustain ourselves" without migrant laborers, he said. "The food that we have to have as a people, daily, would not be there. We would have to find a new labor market. ... These conditions are well-afforded compared to what you might find in other places."

Basnight also reiterated his support for increasing North Carolina's tax on cigarettes and for establishing a state lottery.

"The (tobacco tax) increase should occur, and we should take that money to defray the expenses now associated with health care costs that come from other taxes, such as income taxes and sales taxes," he said. "I believe that we should pay a greater share of the costs associated with cigarette smoking."

The N.C. Senate has approved a lottery before and will do so again, but an upcoming vote in the House may be close, Basnight said.

"This lottery isn't going to affect the budget gap," he said. "This wouldn't come into effect for another year. ... It's not so much the money today as the people wanting it."

Basnight also addressed concerns stemming from his direction of money in a grants reserve, allocated at his discretion and that of House leadership toward projects that did not appear in the final spending bills.

Nothing was done illegally or improperly, he said.

"Where we made a mistake, and where I apologize for doing it in that fashion - I don't think we should do it in that fashion - but for the public's comfort, I think we should put it in the budget bill."


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COMMENT-

Here we have our own elected officials selling us out again. I'm really disappointed in Basnight and I think everyone in his district and those in NC should call him and tell him they're opinion on this.

They're teaching English as a "SECOND" language. To me, that says our politicians don't even respect American culture.

I have been telling all my kin in Beaufort County they need to vote Basnight out and fast.