Farmworkers may be considered “essential,” but the undocumented workers who pick the nation’s food are excluded from the CARES Act.
Published on April 1, 2020 By David Bacon
In fields and rural communities across the United States the nation’s 2.5 million agricultural laborers are waiting for the shoe to drop – for the first cases of coronavirus among farmworkers. As they wait they are already feeling sharply the effects of the measures taken to contain the virus’s spread.
Co-published by the American Prospect
Francisco Lozano, a farmworker in Santa Maria on California’s central coast, says poverty makes this crisis much worse. In the winter, when there’s no work, families live off meager savings from the previous season, and when those are exhausted, they borrow from family and friends. “This is the time work starts up again, picking strawberries,” he says. “But instead of pulling ourselves out of debt, our situation is worse now than ever. The fruit is bad, and they’re paying by the hour – minimum wage [California’s minimum wage is $13 per hour.] That’s not enough to live on.”
Working conditions themselves have deteriorated. “Because of the rains we’re working in the mud,” he explains. “We work close to each other so social distancing is impossible. They tell us to wash our hands, but there are lots of people for each station and the soap runs out. People normally have colds at this time of year, and many of us have to work anyway because of the economic pressure. With the virus, that’s dangerous. But the growers just want production.”
In Washington state one of the few farm jobs in March is cutting tulips, and Skagit County normally hosts a Tulip Festival in April. But three crews, each with 80 to 100 workers, started cutting only to be told that most would be laid off. According to Ramon Torres, president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, the state’s new farmworker union, “Growers told them that no one is buying tulips. But the workers also suspect growers couldn’t comply with the governor’s orders to maintain social distancing of six feet between people. And now the workers who lost their jobs haven’t been able to find any others.”
Luis Jimenez, head of the Alianza Agricola in New York state, charges that the needs of farmworkers are ignored. With 4,000 farms the state produces more yogurt and sour cream than any other area of the country, and most workers live in housing provided by the dairies. “But we can’t buy food until we get off work, and by then the store shelves are empty – no rice or eggs or meat,” he says. “The growers tell us we have to stay home when we’re not working, but then how do we eat?”
Like all workers interviewed for this story, Jimenez fears the arrival of the virus. “We live 8 to 10 people in a house, so how would we isolate? Some have their own room, but I know one farm where everyone sleeps in bunk beds in a big room. At work we have to help each other all the time, like when we have to move a cow. You can’t do this alone, and the job requires it. The ranchers say that health is important, but I feel they’re really only concerned with getting the work done.”
Who Are These Essential Workers?
For the first time in U.S. history farmworkers have been officially declared “essential workers.” Without their labor there would be no fruits, vegetables or dairy products in the stores. Yet the economic situation of farmworkers has never reflected that essential status – nor does it now. The last National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) by the U.S. Department of Labor in 2017 found that the average farmworker family had an annual income between $17,500 and $20,000.
More than half relied on at least one public assistance program, with 44 percent using Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California). A third received either food stamps or WIC nutrition assistance. But most telling as they face the pandemic, less than half of farmworker families have health insurance, and among them, only a third got it from their employer. A third of farmworker families paid cash for doctor visits, and a quarter relied on Medicaid or Medicare.
Guiillermina Ortiz Diaz, Graciela, Eliadora, Ana Lilia and their mother Bernardina Diaz Martinez sleep and live in a single room in a house in Oxnard, where three other migrant families also live.
Exacerbating these problems, according to NAWS, half of all farmworkers are undocumented. Lack of legal status makes workers ineligible for almost all public benefits. Emergency rooms normally must accept people with serious conditions regardless of status, but otherwise, no papers usually means no healthcare.
Sandy Young, a family nurse practitioner at the Las Islas Family Medical Group clinic in Oxnard, California, says that “it’s always been true that undocumented people fear that if they go to hospitals or clinics, their names will be given to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. In our present situation that lack of free access can be critical.”
The Las Islas clinic has a specific program to provide care in Mixteco, the language of the valley’s main population of indigenous Mexican immigrants. Young describes them as “a young population, which in the current crisis is a plus factor. But their general health is bad, and they usually get healthcare in a hospital emergency room, which is the most dangerous place.”
The new interpretation by the Trump administration of the “public charge” policy would disqualify anyone from applying for a visa if they were deemed likely to receive public healthcare, housing or nutrition benefits. Undocumented families, therefore, fear that getting healthcare will stop them from gaining legal status in the future or being able to reunite families. People might stay at home with the coronavirus rather than seeking testing or treatment, she fears.
Further, without sick pay the pressure to keep working is intense. “We won’t stop working,” Jimenez declares. “We’re willing to risk the virus. But I didn’t come here to die. I came so that my family in Mexico will live. We don’t know what will happen to those who get sick. How will we pay our bills and send money to help our families survive?”
Undocumented workers are not the only farmworkers who are particularly vulnerable. Another such group are workers in the H-2A visa program, through which growers and contractors recruit workers in other countries, who then work for the duration of a contract and afterwards must return home. Last year over 250,000 workers were brought to the U.S. under that program.
For these workers, living conditions make maintaining a social distance of six feet virtually impossible. Housing for H-2A workers in central Washington often consists of prefab dormitories, in which four workers sleep on bunk beds in a single small room, and many workers share a common kitchen.
According to attorney Corrie Arellano with California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), the legal aid organization for the state’s farmworkers, growers and contractors bring about 800 workers to Santa Maria each year. “At first they filled up almost all the inexpensive motel rooms in town,” she said. “Now they’re renting out houses and apartments and pushing up rents.” In a case filed by CRLA attorneys in Santa Maria, Jose Gonzalez, Efrain Cruz, Ana Teresa Cruz and Rosaura Chavez were held in a house in which 18 to 20 workers slept in two bedrooms and were told they could leave only to go to work. One Santa Maria residence (at 1318 North Broadway) was listed as the residence of 80 of these workers.
According to Mary Bauer, general counsel for the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, a group that advocates for the rights and welfare of H-2A workers, “It is unclear how workers will access medical care or be able to self-isolate if conditions require them to do so. Employers are not currently required to provide housing which allows workers to be quarantined where necessary.”
Despite the Trump administration’s toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric, it has, in the middle of the pandemic, directed U.S. consulates to process H-2A visa applications by growers and contractors, while most other visa applications have been stopped. It even dropped a previous restriction in which visas would be given only to workers who had been contracted in previous years.
As Congress began discussing a possible bailout and relief package, unions and community organizations began drafting proposals and demands. Thirty-six organizations signed a letter to the administration drafted by the Washington, D.C., advocacy organization Farmworker Justice, calling for more protections for H-2A workers. The recommendations included safe housing with quarantining facilities, safe transportation, testing of workers before entering the U.S., social distancing at work, and paid treatment for those who get sick.
For its part, CRLA provided two pages of bullet-point recommendations. Included were free testing and coverage for all COVID-19 related care regardless of insurance and immigration status, suspension of co-pays and sliding fee payments at clinics, improved food and nutrition services, and expansion of Medi-Cal eligibility to all ages regardless of immigration status.
The Food Chain Alliance was among several immigrant rights groups that have called for eliminating immigration status as a barrier to benefits, eliminating the public charge rule, and ending immigration enforcement against the undocumented and H-2A workers during the pandemic crisis.
The final $2 trillion bailout and relief package adopted by Congress, however, includes a bar forbidding the undocumented from receiving its benefits. The legislation, the CARES Act, provides extended unemployment and one-time cash payments to low and middle-income families. People who lack legal immigration status, and even U.S. citizen children who have at least one undocumented parent, are excluded, however. That exclusion encompasses the majority of the nation’s farmworkers, and in California, as many as 70 percent of them.
