OXNARD, CA – The family of Lino Reyes are Mixtec migrants from San Martin Peras in Oaxaca. He and his wife work in the strawberry fields, and live in the garage of a house on the outskirts of town.
In California many farmworkers can’t find decent places to live, or even any place at all. When the grape harvest starts in Coachella Valley, families of pickers bed down in the Mecca supermarket parking lot. In Sonoma County wine country, workers live outdoors and under bridges.
To alleviate this crisis, Hollister Assembly member Robert Rivas authored AB 1783, which aims to help create more housing for resident farmworker families, and keep them from being displaced by H-2A contract workers. It passed the Assembly and Senate by large majorities, and now awaits Governor Newsom’s signature.
MECCA, CA – Rafael and his grandson Ricardo Lopez work picking grapes in the Coachella Valley. They come from San Luis, Arizona, and live in their van in a parking lot in Mecca during the harvest. Ricardo says, «This is how I envisioned it would be working here with my grandpa and sleeping in the van. But it would be better if they put up apartments for us to live in. It’s hot at night, and hard to sleep. There are a lot of mosquitoes, and the big lights are on all night. There are very few services here, and the bathrooms are very dirty. At night there are a lot of people here, coming and going. You never know what can happen, it’s a bit dangerous. But my grandfather has a lot of experience and knows how to handle himself.»
In 2016 growers brought 11,106 workers to California under the H-2A guest worker program. Last year they brought 18,908-up 70 percent from two years earlier. Growers say heavy immigration enforcement at the border has created a labor shortage, and they need guest workers to get crops harvested.
Critics of the program say it creates a workforce vulnerable to abuse. H-2A workers can work only for the duration of a contract lasting less than a year, after which they must return to their home country. While in the U.S. they’re tied to the grower who recruits them. If workers protest mistreatment and are fired, they must leave the country.
The H-2A program does, however, require growers to furnish housing, but in rural California that’s hard to find. With the number of H-2A guest workers mushrooming, labor contractors and growers are packing them into motels and houses in working class neighborhoods. Last year Future Ag Management was fined $168,082 for providing housing in Salinas for 22 people, an arrangement that had them sharing one shower and a bathroom infested with insects.
ROYAL CITY, WA – An H2A contract worker in the room he shares with three other workers in the barracks where they live in central Washington. Workers live in the barracks and work several months, but must return to Mexico after the work contract is finished.
MECCA, CA – Enrique Saldivar, Leoncio Mendoza and Alfonso Leal come from Mexicali, on the US border 100 miles to the south, to pick grapes every year. At the height of the harvest they eat and sleep next to their car in the parking lot of a market in Mecca.
SANTA ROSA, CA – Juan, a Chinanteco migrant farm worker from Oaxaca, makes a fire in front of the where indigenous migrants sleep under the trees in Sonoma County.
SHOULD CALIFORNIA SUBSIDIZE GROWERS’ LABOR CAMPS?
By David Bacon
Capital and Main, October 4, 2019
https://capitalandmain.com/should-state-subsidize-growers-barracks-for-guest-workers-1004
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2019/10/should-california-subsidize-labor-camps.html