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From Farm To Table: The Lives Of The Immigrants Who Grow Your Food
The majority of Americans refuse to work in these conditions.
It’s not my kind of job. It’s just messy. I’m surprised that they don’t get a shitload of Mexicans willing to do that. They ship them all back to Mexico? These were the responses of four unemployed Americans in search of work when asked if they would consider working on a dairy farm. In the same area, when asking a Puerto Rican if he would do the work, he said “Yeah, if there’s work to do, I’ll start right now.” The average pay for one of these immigrant workers is $12 per hour from 2 a.m. to 12 p.m., with additional compensation of a living area on the farm. Simply put, the majority of Americans refuse to work in those conditions, and with 78 percent of farm workers in the United States foreign-born and 60 percent of farm workers in the United States undocumented, it’s no wonder why farm owners across the U.S. are panicking at the thought of immigration reform. Chances are the food you ate today was planted, plucked, and packed by workers who were born in Mexico or central America.
In the United States, facilities known as immigrant detention centers are required to fill their beds with illegal immigrants every night. Even workers who have been employed at these farms for years and whose employers…
