a cup without immigrants

Forgive me if my post today seems political, but today's "Day Without Immigrants" protests have put me in mind of how important immigrants are to our favorite industry.

Consider:

-Coffee itself is an immigrant, originating in Ethiopia, and migrating around the world. Its first excursions as a crop into Asia, which triggered the worldwide propagation of the plant, were certainly against the restrictive laws set by the Arabians.

-Today, many of the folks who pick our coffee in the wintertime in Latin America migrate north to the United States during summer to harvest other food crops in California and Texas. Most lack work documents. Also, coffee pickers in many countries cross borders illegally to pick coffee in neighboring countries.

-Most coffee farmers in Latin America are unable to visit their roaster partners in the United States because even temporary visas are incredibly expensive, hard to come by, and are often distributed as political favors.

-The first coffeehouses in London and Paris were founded by- you guessed it- immigrants to those countries. (from Sicily. Go paisani!)

-Alfred Peet, founder of the seminal specialty coffeeshop Peet's, immigrated from Holland. Erna Knutsen, the woman who coined the term "Specialty Coffee", is from Norway. A ton of other of the most influential and significant coffee companies (too many to name) have immigrant roots.

As you might have guessed, this is a personal issue for me, too. My own grandparents immigrated here, fleeing the poverty, famine, and corruption of the "old country".

In my own life, I was taught to speak Spanish by Jose-Luis Garcia, a undocumented coworker at my first coffeehouse job. In addition to friendship, Jose gave me one of the greatest and most useful skills I now posess.

Food for thought today.

Peter G