Leaders in business and agriculture, including voices connected to Kern County are calling for immigration reform and pushing back against anti-immigrant narratives they say are hurting communities and the economy.

Speaking during a virtual forum hosted by the Bay Area Council, panelists discussed how undocumented immigrants are deeply rooted in California life including in the Central Valley and how fear and politics have blocked long-overdue solutions.

“When it came to tariffs and it was affecting the auto industry, guess what? The big three called the president and said, you need to stop this, and he did,” said George Rodriguez, founder and CEO of Building America’s Future.“It’s the same thing here, but for some reason we feel like we can’t stand up.”

George said he’s talked to many business owners who privately support immigrant workers but are too afraid to speak up. “I don’t know how many business owners I’ve talked to that say, ‘George, I don’t agree, but I’m just too scared to say anything.’ And I’m like, you are worth billions of dollars. What is there to be scared of?”

Kern County relies heavily on farm labor, much of it from immigrant workers. In places like Bakersfield, Delano, and Arvin, the region’s farms, dairies, and packing plants depend on a workforce that’s been here for decades.

“We’ve been talking for years about the fact that our workforce, our people, have been here in many cases for decades,” said Brian Little, director of labor affairs for the California Farm Bureau Federation. “They have children who are U.S. citizen children. They are settled in their communities. They rent homes, own homes. And they pay taxes just like all the rest of us do.”

Little said it’s wrong to label these workers as criminals. “We talk about how our people who work and grow your food are not criminals. That’s been part of our advocacy from the beginning.”

He also criticized the idea that undocumented immigrants should be forced to leave the country and return later, a concept known as “touchback.”

“When you’ve been here for 30 years, there’s no place for you to go back to. It’s an absurd idea,” he said. “You can’t amnesty someone who came here using the only avenue they had available to them at the time.”

Huy Tran, senior campaign strategist with Pillars of the Community added that changing the narrative about immigrants needs to start at home.

“I spoke to a group of Asian American activists recently, and I told them flat out: y’all, we’ve gotta have hard conversations with the people we care about the most,” Tran said. “We all know folks in our family who are buying into this. For some reason, that narrative has taken hold.”

Tran said misinformation often spreads through unmonitored social media groups like YouTube, Facebook chats, and WhatsApp. “We discovered that in 2016, and then we kind of forgot about it in 2020, and it just kind of took hold again.”

Huy said it’s important to challenge those ideas, even when it’s uncomfortable. “I had a conversation with my sister, my mother, my father to try to pull them back from the precipice.”

The panel also discussed solutions. Little mentioned his recent meeting with the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Sacramento working on immigration, housing, and farmworker support.

He said groups like the California Farmworker Foundation, which works throughout Kern County are helping create a Farmworker Advisory Council to bring real farmworker voices into the legislative process.

“That way legislators can hear voices directly from farmworkers about what their concerns are, what they think they need, and what they think they want,” Little said.

Rodriguez encouraged people to support the Dignity Act, a federal immigration reform bill backed by Republicans and Democrats.

“I encourage people to get educated about the Dignity Act that just was presented by Congresswoman Salazar,” he said. “You can sign a petition to be able to support both of those bills. I encourage you to do that.”

He also urged residents especially in agricultural regions like Kern County to call their elected officials.

“If you don’t like what you’re seeing, you have to participate,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter whether you’re on the left or the right or in the middle you just gotta show up.”

Panelists agreed that undocumented workers are not strangers; they’re part of our schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces.

“We are neighbors, we’re family. Our kids play together. We grow old together,” Rodriguez said. “It’s really time to start putting this to bed.”

For those who missed the event, the full report and resources can be found at bayareaeconomy.org.