From the beginning Immigrants built America and continues to power it, making up more than a third of workers in some industries. They continue to improve our economy, creating companies around two times faster than American-born citizens. According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, immigrants added approximately $2 trillion to the United States’ GDP in 2016 while contributing around $458.7 billion to taxes in 2018. The National Immigration Forum reported that “employment-based immigrants are critical to the U.S. economy as they meet the temporary and permanent needs of U.S. employers in diverse industries”. The importance of immigrant workers is shown especially in terms of food production on our farms. However, despite their importance to our economy, these immigrant farm workers struggle to make ends meet as they face danger and are treated without concern for their wellbeing both on and off of the fields.
According to the USDA’s Economic Research Service, about 73% of our current agriculture workers are immigrants, driving $1.053 trillion in the farm industry and placing food on our tables for families. America’s farms are mainly located in California, Iowa, Texas, Minnesota, and Nebraska. This means that the produce that is grown in these five states are the majority of the food that ends up on America’s tables and the immigrants working on those fields keep the industry going and America fed. They face dangers everyday while working with the heavy machinery and pesticides that are used throughout the seasons. For example, in drier states such as California, wildfires are almost a constant danger and add risk for these immigrant workers on our fields. The smoke and heat of these uncontrollable flames damage the crops, and inhaling smoke and chemicals can lead to negative impacts on the workers’ physical and mental health. In 2017, wildfires in Napa and Sonoma destroyed around 500 acres of wine grapes and caused about $75 million of economic damage. Overall, immigrant workers on farms feed our families and everyday, they face danger from potential natural disasters. On top of this, the employers of these immigrant workers often take advantage of their contracts and undermine their basic human rights. The workers struggle to feed their families, find proper housing, receive low wages, are excluded from basic workers’ rights protection laws, are unable to receive proper education, and face physical, psychological, and sexual abuse out on the fields. An immigrant worker named Patricia M. reports that one of the foremen at the farm she worked on repeatedly raped her until she became pregnant and was able to file for a lawsuit. Even after these acts of assault ended, it left her traumatized and “the rape continues to affect her”. Many of the workers are undocumented or on a guest visa, such as the H-2A visa, that allows employers to hire people from out of the country, forcing workers to live with the threat of being potentially deported constantly hanging over their heads. Also, on top of that, the wages that are provided are extremely low. A family of immigrant farm workers usually earn around $25,000 at most, even including other sources of income. This limits them in their housing options, forcing them to live in unsanitary and unsafe conditions without basic utilities and in extremely isolated areas. Furthermore, the average immigrant farmworker only receives up to an 8th grade education, and children as young as twelve years old work in the fields for around thirty hours a week. In some of the worst cases, these people who are living in extreme poverty are vulnerable to human trafficking and can be coerced into paying a ridiculously high price in exchange for being helped to cross the border. With this debt, these people are now forced to work and with the high prices of food and housing and the low wages, the cycle never ends.
Immigrant farmworkers are an essential part of the United States’ economy, making it all the more necessary that employers help them meet their necessary and basic needs. However, they often are not and even access to seemingly simple things like bathrooms and basic sanitation are hard to access. With the added precautions from COVID-19, conditions for immigrant workers continue to be devastating and add to the struggles that they face.
Sources:
“AGRICULTURE ROBERT RIVAS.” Assembly Agriculture Committee, https://agri.assembly.ca.gov/sites/agri.assembly.ca.gov/files/The%20Impact%20of%20Wildfires%20on%20California%20Agriculture%20Informational%20Hearing%20Report.pdf. Accessed 5 February 2023.
“Cultivating Fear: The Vulnerability of Immigrant Farmworkers in the US to Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment | HRW.” Human Rights Watch, 15 May 2012, https://www.hrw.org/report/2012/05/15/cultivating-fear/vulnerability-immigrant-farmworkers-us-sexual-violence-and. Accessed 5 February 2023.
“The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration.” The National Academies Press, https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/23550/the-economic-and-fiscal-consequences-of-immigration. Accessed 5 February 2023.
“Farm Labor.” USDA ERS, 15 March 2022, https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/. Accessed 5 February 2023.
“Immigrant Farmworkers and America’s Food Production - 5 Things to Know.” FWD.us, 14 September 2022, https://www.fwd.us/news/immigrant-farmworkers-and-americas-food-production-5-things-to-know/. Accessed 5 February 2023.
“Immigrants as Economic Contributors: Immigrants Fill the Temporary Needs of American Employers.” National Immigration Forum, https://immigrationforum.org/article/immigrants-as-economic-contributors-immigrants-fill-the-temporary-needs-of-american-employers/. Accessed 5 February 2023.
“Immigration Facts: The Positive Economic Impact Of Immigration.” FWD.us, 21 July 2020, https://www.fwd.us/news/immigration-facts-the-positive-economic-impact-of-immigration/. Accessed 5 February 2023.
“Issues Affecting Farm Workers - NFWM.” National Farm Worker Ministry, https://nfwm.org/farm-workers/farm-worker-issues/. Accessed 5 February 2023.
Jordan, Miriam. “Farmworkers, Mostly Undocumented, Become ‘Essential’ During Pandemic.” The New York Times, 10 April 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-undocumented-immigrant-farmworkers-agriculture.html. Accessed 5 February 2023.
“Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers.” U.S. Department of Labor, https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/training/migrantfarmworkers. Accessed 5 February 2023.
Sherman, Arloc, et al. “Immigrants Contribute Greatly to U.S. Economy, Despite Administration’s “Public Charge” Rule Rationale.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 15 August 2019, https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/immigrants-contribute-greatly-to-us-economy-despite-administrations. Accessed 5 February 2023.
Williamson, Molly Weston. “Protecting Farmworkers From Coronavirus and Securing the Food Supply.” Center for American Progress, 23 April 2020, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/protecting-farmworkers-coronavirus-securing-food-supply/. Accessed 5 February 2023.
Written by Sophia Huang
Edited by: Mirabelle Jiang
Gender Inequality in Industries