A Boise State University group has angered area Hispanic leaders and other organizations by promoting a speech with a “food stamp drawing” that requires climbing through a hole in a fence and offering fake identification for a shot at wining a dinner at a Mexican restaurant.
The school’s College Republicans organization is offering the dinner for two to promote a speech it is sponsoring by Canyon County Commissioner Robert Vasquez, a vocal critic of U.S. immigration policy who is planning to run for the U.S. Senate in 2008.
The speech, scheduled for Thursday, is in the midst of the university’s Cesar Chavez Week, sponsored by the Boise State Cultural Center.
As part of the weeklong event, students and professionals who came from a farm-working background will discuss their personal history, and a documentary film follows immigrants traveling to the United States from Nicaragua.
Chavez championed the rights of farmworkers and helped found the United Farm Workers Union. He died in 1993, but events such as BSU’s Cesar Chavez Week are held in many areas in association with Chavez’s March 31 birthday.
