Washington State Democratic Chairs Organization

I attended the Ag and Rural caucus forum on Immigration at Moses Lake on Saturday and was pleased at the range of issues discussed.

Our speaker during the lunch break was Mike Gempler, Executive Director, Washington Growers League, speaking on "Working with Congress"

He detailed the possible courses of action to attack the question of illegal immigrants presently within our borders and came up with several conclusions:

1. We must treat them as decent and fellow humans who provide a very significant slice of our necessary work force in Agriculture, construction, health services, and the food and housing industries.

2. We must provide a way for them to continue providing these services since the USA is not reproducing fast enough to provide enough workers now or in the future to perform these job functions.

3. We must stablize our borders or we will have the same problem all over in another ten of fifteen years.

The most important idea he gave us in the speech was that we Democrats must stand up for the good points these folks give to the society and state these at the potlucks, partys, Etc where those folks that want to send them all home or punish them harshly, ideas constantly served up by Fox News and Lou Dobbs et al. rule the hour because we don't give replies to their misconseptions.

Cheers! W.N.(Bill) McCaw