Hillary: Growing Up in Chicago Area, It Was ‘Farms Fields As Far as the Eye Could See’

Tuesday at Rancho High School in Las Vegas, during an immigration roundtable, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, said “believe it or not, when I was growing up in the Chicago area, it was farm fields as far as the eye could see.”

“On a personal basis, the first time I ever met anyone in our country working was when I was about 12 years old, as I recall,” she said. “Through my church, I was recruited, along with some other girls in Sunday school, to serve as babysitters on Saturday for the small children so the older children could join their parents in the fields. Because believe it or not, when I was growing up in the Chicago area, it was farm fields as far as the eye could see. The migrants, immigrant laborers would come up, up through the Midwest, up to Chicago, up to Michigan. We were asked to try to help out.”

“I remember going to the camps where the families lived,” she added. “Taking care of the little kids, while kids my age were doing hard work. What stuck in my mind was how at the end of the day there was a long road from the camp that went out to a dirt road in the middle of the field. And the bus that had the workers that came back around four in the afternoon, stopped and let off the parents and the older brothers and sisters. And all of these kids started running down the path to see their moms and dads and their big brothers and sisters. And they were all scooped up by these really tired people. I just watched this and thought, they are just like me and my brothers. When my dad comes home from work, we go out to see him after he has come back from his day of doing what he had to do to support us. I’ve never gotten that experience out of my mind. So, for me, this is about what kind of people we are and what kind of country.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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