Migrant Farm Workers In America

     All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to      the      jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State      wherein they      reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge      the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State      deprive any      person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor      deny to any      person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws      (http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Amend.html ).

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the

The book Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States illustrates the fieldwork of the author Seth M. Holmes by explaining the myriad aspects of migrant workers’ lives in the U.S.—from the politics to the social environments to the physical body. By not only studying, but living, the lives of these migrant workers, Holmes brings the reader a view unseen by the vast majority and provides the opportunity for greater understanding through the intense details of his work. The voices of vastly different characters—real people—are captured and expounded on without judgment but with deep consideration for all factors that contribute to each person’s life, opinions, and knowledge. Ultimately, a picture of intersectionality is painted in the colors of migrants, mothers, fathers, children, doctors, soldiers, executives, the poor, the rich, and more.

The Joads arrive in California and are disappointed when they realize that there aren’t as many opportunities as they had hoped for. Floyd goes on to explain just why that is. Since many of the migrant workers are disorganized and don’t put any emphasis on improving their pay, they allow owners to continue to take advantage of them leaving them powerless. By fighting with each other they naturally weed out a few workers to the owner’s benefit. The competition between the workers permits owners to worsen working conditions and provide lower wages. At this point, the best thing for the workers to do is ban together and

about their basic rights as immigrants in the U.S. U.S. immigrants must realize that even though their stay in the U.S. maybe temporary they still have many of the basic rights that U.S. citizens have. Undocumented immigrants do have legal rights under the U.S. Constitution and federal statute. As far back as 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that: “The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens. It says: ‘Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within

The population discussed was the migrant farm workers in El Paso, TX, Las Cruces NM, and rural areas in between. There needs included that they live in poverty, they have low levels of education, they have a lack of healthcare, and there is a big issue connected with wage theft among this population. Some of the community resources available for migrant farm workers include an organization called Café. This organization is a Las Cruces based advocacy group that works towards polices that affect residents of Las Cruces and the surrounding burrows. Another community resource is the Texas Rural Legal Aid which provides legal help and education to the Migrant farm workers of Texas and New Mexico. An example of help they receive is legal help with

Another question worth debating or rather examining is, is an illegal immigrant still a lawful person under the U.S. Constitution? Legal and lawful are distinctly different for a good reason. Lawful has only

The agricultural sector in the United States is a significant contributor to the economy. The agricultural sector depends on manual labor that is provided by farm-workers who are involved in harvesting, planting, plants processing, houses packing and facilities preparation that are connected to farming (Bruhn 79). Most of the farm-workers are Latin American migrants and minor representations from other regions. Migrant farm-workers in America are a representation of one group that exists among the most marginalized and less served population in the state. A migrant farm worker is described as a person whose primary employment lies in the agricultural sector on a recurring basis and exists in houses that are temporary. In America currently,

Once working in the U.S., undocumented migrant laborers are perfectly exploitable. Because they are not citizens or on work visas, they essentially have no rights in the minds of some farms. Farms may provide poor quality housing, but no other work benefits. Agriculture doesn’t have to pay hourly minimum wage, so instead workers are paid by piece rate: employment in which a worker is paid a fixed rate for each unit produced no matter the time invested. In some areas, farms make it appear that they are paying laborers minimum wage by requiring laborers to pick enough produce to equal a full day’s pay. Over exhaustion induced by this is typically untreated because of the lack of proper medical care available to migrant workers; either because of personal funds, or ignorant lenses through which doctors view Mexican migrant patients (Holmes, 2013, p. 113). Then if a laborer expresses any issues to their employers, employers will use the labor’s undocumented status against them. Essentially, they’ll threaten the laborer with deportation if the laborer were to make any action against the farm because of labor rights violations--first hand manipulation of the social divides of labor.

It is clear that this typified mindset of the migrant workers is a social fact that has been carried through from generations and generations. It has transcended generations because it has long been the only way to survive and make a living for these migrant workers and their families. Social facts within this community seem hard to break out of due to the fact that they have provided incentives and work for these workers and will continue to do so as long as American consumers desire their services. Unless our agricultural wants and needs change, we will require the work of migrant workers.

What would happen if immigrant labour was to disappear tomorrow? America would be brought to not only a halt, but a recession. Immigrants are what this country was built upon. Especially in the agriculture industry, immigrant forces get the dirty work done and strengthen its health. These workers have gone from thankless hands, to fully protected assets for a reason.

Harsh labor conditions, and the exploitation of work performed by migrant populations has longstanding, deeply-seeded historical roots and in part can be explained by the shift of the American and global economy through post-industrialization. In the book, Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy, author and activist Grace Chang reasserts this notion, stating, “First World imperialism and development policy in the Third World and resulted in resource depletion, debt and poverty for many people in these nations,” (Chang, pg. 2). Chang goes on to highlight the ways in which migration rooted in the promise of economic opportunity in a new country does not fully account for the ways in which that seemingly more fruitful, and economically viable nation has held a complicit role in disenfranchising the country from which these immigrant laborers are fleeing. In her piece, Mexican Immigrant Women and New Domestic Labor, Maria de la Cruz Ibarra, reiterates this, asserting that migration of laborers from the third world to the first is not random, and instead can be contextualized through a historically analytical framework, where taking into account the economic advancement and

Our presentation will inform the class with information and statistics about migrant workers, and the unbalanced relationship between migrant workers from the Global South and the developed countries. Even though everything in the developed countries are better than their home countries, migrant workers do not receive equal rights as the local workers and are often working without job security, health, safety benefits, and are discriminated because of our society’s misconception that most migrant workers are criminals with no legal status. Therefore, It is important for us to emphasize the mass cases of exploitation and abuse of migrant workers. They should not allow their employers to treat them unfairly or rudely. They should always watch

The U.S. Constitution guarantees that all of its citizens are equally protected under the law, and these rights are now enforced throughout the country regardless of race or ethnicity.

“Visa regimes both reflect and reproduce globalized hierarchies between nation-states… At the same time, these national hierarchies become a means by which employers justify the unequal treatment of specific nationalities of workers” (Rodriguez, 2010, 30). This quote elucidates how migrant workers from poor, non-Western countries citizens are disadvantaged in both the process of receiving a visa and working abroad due to the unequal structure of the international system. In fact, as citizens of a “peripheral” country, Philippine citizens must jump through multiple hoops to become a migrant worker, including private training/certification course and government fees (Rodriguez, 2010, 30). Nonetheless, workers are “less likely to be granted visas