By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
CASSOPOLIS – Guillermo Martinez, a "Mexican born in Texas and raised in Michigan," takes the immigration debate personally as the product of illegal aliens who crossed the river into America.
"We did migrant farm work here in southwest Michigan until I was 15," he recalls. "I remember going to my dad and saying I didn't want to do agricultural labor: 'I don't want to work in the fields anymore.' "
So he got a job in a nursery.
"A greenhouse," he smiled. "Basically the same thing."
His father came to the United States in 1901 and worked for a railroad for four years before returning to revolutionary Mexico.
The 35-year-old man married a 20-year-old Mexico woman.
They had 14 children, of whom Guillermo is the youngest.
They raised their large family in a small village in central Mexico.
Martinez's father, along with one of his sisters and one of his brothers, returned to the United States in 1942-43, crossing the Rio Grande.
"They worked and made money until my mom and other siblings started coming," he said. "They established a residence in Donna, Texas. I was just there last week. My sister and I were born in the United States. I tell you that because I'm a product of undocumented aliens who crossed the river," brushing past a floating body in the process.
"Economics," he said. "My parents came to the United States to make money. My father's employer, Ross Crockett, was actually a descendant of Davy Crockett. He liked how he worked and wanted him to become a resident, so he got immigration papers for my father. That's how we became citizens. My father never went back to Mexico. He died in Michigan in 1972 at 83.
"Our family numbers about 340," Martinez said Wednesday night at the William Lozier VFW Post as a panelist for the Minority Coalition forum on racism and immigration.
More than 25 people attended.
Several thanked the Minority Coalition for sponsoring the dialogue and said they should occur more frequently.
Quoting civil rights leader the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Martinez said, "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for hateful words and actions, but appalling silence."
"That's why we marched," Martinez said of huge protests like those which swept America in April and May.
To shatter that silence.
"People say there are 11 million undocumented aliens out there as we speak," he said. "If they were to spend $1 a day, those 11 million are spending $4 billion.
"Migrant farm workers in this area spend 60 to 70 percent of their hard-earned dollars in the very community where they work. In southwest Michigan, including Cass, Berrien, Van Buren and Allegan counties, we have approximately one third of the influx of migrant farm workers for the whole state of Michigan. There's about 49,000 migrant farm workers, and one third of them are here in southwest Michigan. Migrant farm workers only get about 15 percent on the dollar in wages.
"At 5 years old I picked asparagus. My family did so well the first year we came up with a contractor, riding in the back of a truck, bunched up with about five other families. The second year, thanks to God and our perseverance, we were able to purchase our first vehicle. You multiply that by 49,000 migrant farm workers, we're talking economics. Why did we march? Because of that. Because we do produce," he said.
"Any immigrant who came to the United States from any country in the world came here not to burden anybody. They came here to make a better living and to raise their families in a free, democratic society," Martinez asserted.
"A lot of us have literally run from our countries because of persecution. Why do we march? We did not want to be silent anymore. We needed to let everyone know that there is a positive presence. Yes, we have our bad apples, like anyone else, but our first casualty in our war with Iraq was a Latino. Not a citizen, but a registered alien from Honduras. Do we fight for our country? In Vietnam, almost 40 percent of the Congressional Medals of Honor went to Latinos. Do we produce? Yes. Do we fight for our country? Yes."
Martinez is past president of the Southwest Migrant Resource Council, as well as a musician and "poet/philosopher."