SAN JOSE — When customers enter Mi Pueblo Food Center to do their weekly shopping, the goal is to make them feel at home.Well, complying with the law might be a good reason, although I love the reconquista entitlement mentality.
Each of the grocery chain's 21 outlets, which are scattered throughout the Bay Area, Monterey Bay region and Central Valley, is styled to emulate a distinct Mexican region. Boisterous rancheras stream from the stores' speakers. Vivid primary colors and architectural references cover the walls: the adobe church of San Juan Nuevo, Michoacan, in San Jose's flagship store; the Maya pyramid of Chichen Itza in the Salinas market.
Mi Pueblo's employees, all bilingual, wear name tags that list their hometowns.
It's a formula that helped turn the business founded more than two decades ago by an illegal immigrant from the town of Aguililla into a $300-million enterprise.
"Those of us who don't speak English, we come here because we're comfortable," Yoselina Acevedo of San Jose, a 53-year-old immigrant from Michoacan, said while shopping one recent day.
So the company's announcement late last month that it was participating in a voluntary federal program that checks the immigration status of all new hires elicited anger and confusion from workers and customers alike.
Company officials said that, although they were critical of E-Verify, they felt "tremendous pressure" from immigration officials to sign up. Community organizers have pledged to launch a shoppers' boycott Oct. 8 if Mi Pueblo founder Juvenal Chavez, who is now a legal U.S. resident, does not change his mind.
"He says he has suffered the pain of being an immigrant. I don't believe it," said Rogelio Marquez, 37, who said he was laid off from the Gilroy store after becoming active with a workers union. "We support the economy of this country. Why is this man now checking papers?"
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