The Plight Of The Immigrant Farmer Worker Essay

Over the past couple decades the number of undocumented immigrants involved in American agriculture has increased by the hundreds. They have dominated the fields on the west coast and have been put to work in some very harsh conditions. Many people in the US believe that these men, women, and even children are occupying jobs that legal citizens could have. We realize that even though much of our agriculture these days is harvested by modern technologies, a big part of the agriculture’s economy is made up of labor intensive from people, such as harvesting grapes, strawberries, pistachios, raspberries, etcetera. As we dig deeper into this topic we will realize why our agricultural

     After the devastation left from the Civil War, many field owners looked for new ways to replace their former slaves with field hands for farming and production use. From this need for new field hands came sharecroppers, a “response to the destitution and disorganized” agricultural results of the Civil War (Wilson 29). Sharecropping is the working of a piece of land by a tenant in exchange for a portion of the crops that they bring in for their landowners. These farmhands provided their labor, while the landowners provided living accommodations for the worker and his family, along with tools, seeds, fertilizers, and a portion of the crops that they had harvested that season. A sharecropper had “no entitlement

The sharecroppers paid "rent" with a share of the crops that they raised, with roughly one-half of all they produced belonged to the white owner (Ransom and Sutch, 1977). The landowner also advanced money to the farmer to purchase seed and other necessary farming equipment. The problem was the sharecroppers rarely, if ever, made enough money from the sale of their crops to pay back their debt. This often led to what some called "debt peonage," and it effectively bound sharecroppers to the land, and the landowner (Bowles, 2011). This was a veiled form of slavery, much like convict leasing was.

Sharecropping and tenant farming began during the end of the Civil war all through the great depression. Sharecropping is an agreement between a tenant and a landlord in which a tenant farmer is allowed to work and live on a piece of land for free, but in exchange for living there for free, they give the landlord a share of the crop they grow. Sharecropping was mainly big in the southern states where slavery was once legal. The pay for being a tenant farmer was very low and the living itself was not very desirable.

The culture of every ethnic group is beautiful in its own way and worth cherishing. Today, America is known as the great melting pot not for the number of immigrants it has but rather because of the wonderful cultures and traditions the immigrants brought with them. Immigrants do not need to forgo their mother tongue, significant celebrations or customs to become American. However to be socially accepted, they will need to learn English, take part in celebrating national holidays and fulfill their patriotic duties Americans like every other U.S citizens.

America is traditionally a country of immigrants. Very few people today have relatives who were Native Americans, many of them because of religious persecution, and others because of they were just looking to start a new life on the exciting untouched frontier. For instance, in Florida, the first arrivals were European, beginning with the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon who explored the land in 1513, following French and Spanish settlement during the 16th century. From the past, America was seen as a country of opportunities. People from all over the world have moved here looking for better opportunities. There are a lot of reasons why immigrants should live in this country, but I would like to mention three of them.

California is one of the largest agricultural centers of the world, has many farms with different crops that feeds more than half of the United States. When it comes down to the labor on these farms, looking closely we find that the people on these farms are illegal immigrants who are picking and packing all the fruits and vegetables that are sold in the supermarkets. In a New York Times article written by Dean Murphy, back in 2004, in California alone, there is an, estimated 8 million to 10 million illegal immigrants. The supply and demand that farmers have to meet here in the United States is higher than anywhere else in the world, and without the access to skilled workers that happen to be illegal immigrants, farmers would lose out on

As the population of Latin America and the Caribbean raised in 1995 with a 190 percent increase (Gonzalez 199), the job markets in Mexico are becoming scarce and competitive. The living conditions of residents in provincial towns like in Cheran, “whose timber-based economy is in tatters” (Martinez 9) are greatly affected. Mexican immigrant workers are forced to cross the border and find a greener pasture in the United States, because “in 1994, Mexico was crippled by a profound-and-prolonged-economic crisis” (Martinez 8). With the huge influx of Mexican immigrant workers coming to the States in search for better jobs, the US citizens are concerned about the economic impact: jobs, government and public services. However, the Americans’ concern that the immigrants are draining the nation’s resources, is a sweeping statement, it is based on a myth. There are many recent studies that the immigrant’s population living in the United States helps the economy. Similarly, the Mexican government and immigrant families are grateful for their immigrant workers for lifting the ailing economy and the status of immigrant families. Immigrant workers, legal or illegal, are positively reshaping the economy of sending and receiving countries through these major myths.

A comment was made in Facebook about Illegal Immigrants; for example, an acquaintance wrote a comment that said, “I would work in the fields, but not for minimum wage!” Illegal Immigrants work the fields picking legumes for less than minimum wage; farmers pay these rates so that food cost can be minimal for citizens. People are happy when cost of food, goods, and services are low, but once prices go up we complain. Small companies and farmers hire Illegal Immigrants because these people are afraid of deportation. Some employers abuse Illegal Immigrant by overworking, and not providing health care. For instance, employers know that if the person complains they only need to call Immigration and he will be replaced by another. These people encounter obstacles to arrive in the United State and reach the American Dream. Sometimes they even

Holmes’ purpose in conducting his fieldwork with the migrant workers (specifically the Triqui of Mexico) of California and Washington fruit agriculture was to gain understanding from a perspective many do not consider and that has not been assessed in this way before. Similarly, the goal of this book was to pass that understanding to the common reader, the average American, those who are affected directly and those who are believe they are unaffected by the migrants of American agriculture—and to distinguish that they are not unaffected. Doing so creates the potential for change, even if by only a small factor like

"Where there 's a will, there 's a way" is a phrase often used here in America and it holds true to all walks of life including migrant workers. The desires range from the simple want to make an honest living to wanting to support the family to just wanting to live the American dream. However, the "way", does not always possess the same innocent light of the optimistic saying. In Eric Schlosser’s article, “In the Strawberry Fields” he discusses exactly that. Immigrants often end up doing the laborious farm work most Americans are unwilling to do with good reason. More specifically, he discusses the working conditions of migrant workers in strawberry fields, one of the most difficult row crops to grow. This work is largely done in California where the farming industry is allowed to bend laws as they please, routinely exploiting the vulnerability of immigrants’ legal states. Though, the concepts of small fruits and workers ' rights are not completely relatable to one another until we move past the happy connotation of the vibrant red, juicy fruit and into the grittier efforts that go into making them what we know in grocery stores. Many of us have the pleasant memories of the cool fruit on warm summer days but this image is quite the opposite to its production. Bent at the waist, hundreds of migrant workers, pick fruits under the sweltering summer sun and it would seem like a way a farming that vanished long ago but it is most certainly here. Though the conditions are worsened

    For thousands of years people have left their home country in search of a land of milk and honey. Immigrants today still equate the country they are immigrating to with the Promised Land or the land of milk and honey. While many times this Promised Land dream comes true, other times the reality is much different than the dream. Immigration is not always a perfect journey. There are many reasons why families immigrate and there are perception differences about immigration and the New World that create difficulties and often separate generations in the immigrating family. Anzia Yezierska creates an immigration story based on a Jewish family that is less than ideal. Yezierska’s text is a

Migrant workers are people who leave their hometowns to live and work in other cities or countries. Everyday, there are people moving from one place to another, it may because of wanting to change a working condition, to break away from unemployment, or to find new opportunities for self-development. Someone may against that they bring a lot of negative impact on the places they moved to live and work, but in my opinion, whenever in economic, cultural and social aspect, they bring much more advantages to those places.

Wednesday September 13, a cold and ominous fog was present in Strasbourg, a mood antithetical to the mood in the European Parliament. A mood that had been missing for many years, a sense of optimism and hope. As President of the European Commission this new sense of optimism for the European project gave this year’s State of the European Union address a weight that had not been seen in too long. It is no secret that in 2016 Europe was battered and bruised to its very foundation. The forces trying to destroy the EU seemed unstoppable but it is said that times of extreme crisis bring about the greatest change because people are most persuaded to act swiftly and decisively. For the EU in 2016 there was no shortage of crises, whether it be

The World Bank conservatively estimates that $80 billion in work remittances were transferred from immigrants to their countries of origin in 2002 (World Bank Group, 2003). Immigrants are also contributes to the receiving countries’ economies by paying taxes. They are needed to sustain the workforce in rich countries with aging population and to protect industries that rely on immigrant labor (Hayter, 2002). The problem comes when the immigrants are illegal despite some countries like United States depend heavily on illegal farm workers to do work such as fruit and vegetable