Fresno and Central Valley leaders have hopes Biden visit is about immigration reform
First lady Jill Biden’s planned visit to the central San Joaquin Valley represents a major change from the Trump administration’s era and brings high hopes for immigration reform, area leaders say.
The first lady is set to tour the vaccination site set up to target farmworkers in Delano at The Forty Acres, the first home of the United Farm Workers of America.
Wednesday, March 31, also marks Cesar Chavez Day.
The visit could be a sign that the Valley, immigration and farmworkers are front and center, according to Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias.
“We regularly see a president’s administration in the Central Valley during the campaign,” he said. “We rarely see them after they’re in office.”
President Joe Biden on his first day in office sent Congress an extensive immigration proposal that could have big implications for California.
The plan, known as the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, would provide a pathway to citizenship to the 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. About 2 million of them live in California.
Fresno City Councilmember Esmeralda Soria, who is a daughter of farmworkers, said a visit from the Biden administration carries meaning for families and descendants of farmworkers.
“We all know that we have a broken system,” Soria said. “I’m hoping that they do reinforce the fact that immigration is still a top priority.”
The pandemic highlighted the plight of farmworkers, who were deemed essential and continued working despite the threat of the virus, she said. It also brought attention to the inequities in health care.
Biden has been to the Valley before. She stopped in Fresno in February 2020, weeks before the pandemic hit, on the presidential campaign trail for her husband, visiting Fresno City College and Los Panchos Mexican Restaurant and Cantina in downtown.
The last member of a sitting presidential family to visit the Valley was Ivanka Trump, the daughter of then-President Donald Trump, who stopped in Fresno in June 2018.
Comparing Biden to Trump
The Biden immigration proposal comes within his first 100 days in office, a far cry from an era that saw President Donald Trump anger many with his remarks. When he announced his bid for office in 2015, he said that Mexicans coming across the border included rapists and drug dealers: “And some, I assume,” he said, “are good people.”
The Biden administration has already been more favorable to farmworkers, according to Paul Chavez, the president of the Cesar Chavez Foundation and son of the civil rights leader.
He said the first lady’s visit “speaks a ton” that the relationship is improving.
“In the past four years, the Latino community and immigrants in particular have been demonized,” Chavez said. “I think it’s really signaling a dawn of a new era. A time when Latinos will not be excluded.”
Chavez said he was proud to see the bust of his father placed behind the Oval Office desk where the president sits.
He went on to say that Jill Biden’s visit to The Forty Acres holds significance because the site is so often referred to as “sacred ground.” It’s where the elder Chavez fasted on more than one occasion in protest of the treatment of farmworkers in the 1960s and ‘70s.
“It was the first home of the farmworkers movement,” Chavez said.
Jill Biden’s team has said she wants to speak with farmworkers and observe the vaccine clinics without interrupting distribution, Chavez said.
This story was originally published March 30, 2021 at 2:38 PM with the headline "Fresno and Central Valley leaders have hopes Biden visit is about immigration reform."
