Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack speaks at the Mexican Legal Defense and Education Fund Gala this evening at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)

In one of the most impassioned speeches of his tenure as Agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack tonight told the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund gala dinner that the Agriculture Department is committed to passing immigration reform and that he has tried to clean up USDA’s “sordid civil rights history.”

The program opened with an account of MALDEF’s recent legal victories, and Vilsack said he was so moved by the organization’s successes that he was tempted to resign as secretary to go back to being a lawyer.

But Vilsack quickly switched to telling a story of going with his son Jess, a high school senior, in 1996 to McAllen, Texas, to join an organization called Global Volunteers in building farm worker housing.

Vilsack said he entered an “austere” building that had a mural depicting the history of farm workers. At the beginning of the mural was a worker with a short hoe, and he asked for an explanation. A long time ago, he was told, farm workers had to use a short hoe because overseers wanted to make sure they could not take a break, but over time the handle of the farm worker’s hoe has been lengthened.


Tom Vilsack
“There are still people who are operating with a short hoe, maybe not figuratively or literally,” Vilsack said, adding that he was thinking of people who came to the United States 20 or 30 years ago to do back-breaking work “without all the legal papers.”

“Fast-forward to 2014 and here we are in the greatest democracy on Earth” waiting to pass an immigration reform bill, Vilsack said. Politicians have been saying for far too long, he added, that “we can’t do the hard work to create an immigration system” that works for people who have worked so hard.

“We at USDA are committed to immigration reform because we understand there are folks still working with a short hoe,” he said.

“Why is the secretary of Agriculture so wound up about immigration?” Vilsack asked, answering that it is because American agriculture cannot reach its full potential without workers. He recounted a United Farm Workers’ failed attempt to find Americans to pick fruits and vegetables.

Vilsack also said that when he took the job of Agriculture secretary he did not realize the department had a “sordid civil rights history,” but that he has spent the last five years trying to improve the situation.

The U.S. Forest Service has a lot of visitors, he said, and some need translation. The Forest Service was using U.S. border patrol officers as translators, but now has “neutral translators,” he explained.

“We want people to be welcome in our forests, not frightened,” he said.

He also noted that in some of the poorest rural areas of the country people were not participating in USDA programs because they could not understand the English language. The Obama administration’s “strike force,” which attacks poverty in the poorest 700 rural counties in 20 states, has made sure the information on USDA programs has been translated and works with local leaders to encourage participation in the programs, he said.

MALDEF’s dinner was supported by a wide range of corporations, including Walmart, which had a bag on every seat to hold the program. Vilsack urged the corporate representatives present to support summer feeding programs for children who eat free or reduced price meals during the school year but may go hungry in the summer without them.

The summer feeding program served 168 million meals last summer, Vilsack said, and he wants 10 million more meals served this year.

“We should never have a child who goes to bed hungry,” he said.

Vilsack ended the speech by noting that he was adopted and telling members of the audience, “You are lucky you know your heritage” and that he hopes they can all say with pride, “I come from America.”

▪ Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund