Thread: Group calls for strike by Fla. farm workers

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Wants undocumented immigrants legalized

By David Plazas
dplazas@news-press.com
Originally posted on January 16, 2006

A newly formed group that supports the legalization of undocumented immigrants has called for a statewide strike of farmworkers and other laborers.

Leaders of the United Latino Immigrants of Florida on Sunday officially inaugurated their group and announced their plans for the strike at a rally at the soccer fields on Walston Avenue just south of Highway 70 in Arcadia.

The purpose of the strike is to show government leaders the money Florida businesses would lose if undocumented immigrants stopped working. That would include workers in the farm, construction, roofing and services industry.

The strike could come as early as late February, but leaders are still working to gain support from farm-labor crew leaders, laborers and other immigrant-rights advocacy groups, said group president Luis Ybarra.

"We want to hit the government hard so that they feel the economic losses in the state of Florida from not having immigrants work," he told a crowd of a few hundred people in Spanish.

"We don't want to be the sacrificial lambs anymore, blamed for all the problems of the country," he added. "We want our driver's licenses or an amnesty. Most of all, we want the legal papers we need to live here â€â€

Go ahead and go on strike. Please, Tomorrow would be a good day to start.

To expand on this line of thinking, if all illegals were to be deported tomorrow, it would produce a severe negative impact on our country for several months. Then, recovery would begin, and the economy would adjust.

The solution is to instill workplace enforcement, and put fear into the illegals and employers, so that more people would be deported and voluntarily leaving the country, than would be entering the country illegally. Over the next 10 years, we would wean ourselves off of this illegal alien addiction, and restore our integrity. We would need seasonal workers for agriculture (who would only be here for three or four months, then return home), but for most other industries, we could go back to using American and legal immigrant workers exclusively.

It would take many years to solve the problem...it couldn't be solved in three months. In time, though, we would have our country back, as more and more illegals leave, and less arrive (thus producing a net loss to their illegal population.)

Joe