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(Bloomberg) – As coronavirus cases erupt in U.S. farms and food factories, foreign migrants who collect fruits, white shellfish and sort vegetables become trapped in cramped dormitories where the disease spreads like gunpowder. They often leave unless they are willing to threaten deportation.
In Oxnard, a small town outside of Los Angeles, an outbreak of Covid-19 passed through a bedroom where farm staff slept seven per room. By early July, 198 out of 215 citizens had tested positive. About 160 miles north in Santa Maria, California, at least 85 other people felt inflamed in public housing within weeks. And in Coldwater, Michigan, about 70 guest employees hit the virus in a barracks on a production farm.
In Crowley, Louisiana, Reyna Alvarez also became ill. A 36-year-old mother and three children from a village in northwestern Mexico was running into a crayfish processing plant when the virus swept through two bedrooms housing about a hundred people. He went to a nearby hospital for treatment. When she rejoined and in a position to return to work, she learned that she had been rejected for the transgression and reported to immigration authorities.
“They gave us all sick, like a hundred workers, and they did nothing for us,” Alvarez said from his home near Los Mochis, Sinaloa state, Mexico. It all started with a single worker who got sick, but was left in the same accommodation as everyone else, with non-unusual kitchens and bathrooms. Infections spread rapidly, Alvarez said. “They said no one can come in or out” to work.
“We like the undead, like zombies in the factory.”
Many sick migrants are part of the federal government’s guest employee program, which provides transitional visas for seasonal jobs.
The documented guest staff met all required needs across the United States to enter. However, much of their lives are in the shadows. They have little influence to seek security measures because their prestige as legal immigrants depends on their employer: they cannot simply leave and settle for a new task under less harmful conditions. They come into debt with employment staff and then paint remotes in rural communities where they don’t know anyone or speak the language. Many of them are hired through independent contractors rather than farmers, blurring the account.
Agricultural visas, known as H-2A, require employers to provide housing. Even in general times, this is not really an advantage: situations are narrow and amenities scarce. Now the bedrooms become Petri dishes for diseases.
It’s not just farmworkers. Employees with H-2B visas, issued for transient non-agricultural work, are also at risk. Although the Department of Labor does not require housing for such contracts, employers or contractors provide housing, and infrequently deduct the hiring of workers’ wages.
For any of the staff teams, there are not many housing options in rural communities for a poorly paid seasonal staff attack that does not have private transportation to and from work. And when housing is a component of their salary, they have little ability to pay their low-wage rent.
These are some of the most vulnerable populations in the U.S., and yet it would be almost impossible to feed the country without them. That’s grown increasingly true over the past decade as more of the often back-breaking labor critical to food production has shifted to these workers. The U.S. last year issued 205,000 H-2A visas for seasonal farm workers, up from 60,000 a decade earlier. There were 98,000 H-2B visas for seasonal workers in food processing and other occupations, up from 45,000 in 2009.
Although President Donald Trump interrupted the maximum number of new visas for the pandemic, he exempted critical foreigners running in the food supply chain. Figures from the U.S. Customs border crossing and the U.S. Border Patrol show that more H-2A guest personnel have entered the country this year until June 30 compared to the same time in 2019.
The original economies of these workers, such as Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia, have remittances sent to family circles and enjoyed. In May, cash sent through Mexicans rose by nearly 3% over the past year, unexpected economists expecting a decline. As the disease spreads, these remittances may be at risk.
Epidemics among agricultural and food staff can spread further in rural communities when staff move on to buy food and wash clothes, or even contact colleagues who are permanent residents. Among those inflamed by the outbreak of Santa Maria, a 51-year-old U.S. citizen working as a team foreman and bus driving force for Alco Harvesting. He died of Covid-19.
Alvarez, the Louisiana crayfish worker, said she was nauseous, hurt, even hurt, her eyes hurt, and she struggled to breathe. Authorities told her and other colleagues on May 15 that they were being transferred to remote cabins to quarantine them, but she and a friend, Maribel Hernandez, went to a nearby hospital for treatment.
“I didn’t accept them as true because they hadn’t done anything until then to help us,” Alvarez said.
When he called after recovering to say he was fit to return to work, a manager told him that they had all been fired and reported to immigration authorities, Alvarez said. Hernandez said she also fired and lost the status of her visa, forcing her to return to her small outdoor town in Tampico, Mexico.
“I just looked for a remedy and then back to work,” Hernandez said, adding that he couldn’t “believe it” when he found out he’d lost his job.
“It’s so unfair. We’re so sick.
Whistleblower complaints
Both women filed court cases of whistleblowing as opposed to their former employer, Acadia Processors. In the complaint, Hernandez says he asked a manager to go to the hospital, but told him that he could not leave the accommodation provided through the employer. She and Alvarez went to the hospital anyway later that day.
Contacted by phone, an Acadia Processors representative declined to comment on or give his name, saying the incident was now a legal factor due to federal complaints. He referred to a company owner Scott Broussard gave to the Lafayette Daily Advertiser. Broussard is quoted in the paper as saying that the two women “have fled the scene”, while the rest of the staff is “very grateful for what we have done for them.”
Courtney Catalano, spokesman for Reiter’s subsidiaries, which operates Las Brisas Villas, the dormitory in Oxnard, California, said in an email that the virus had exploded on the premises despite “numerous” measures” to prevent its spread, and added further cleanliness.
Julia Shreve, a spokeswoman for Maroa Farms in Coldwater, Michigan, said the company also took safety measures against the viruses, added temperature controls for staff and provided facial blankets.
Jeremy MacKenzie, general manager for Alco Harvesting, which runs the group housing in Santa Maria, California, said the company “strictly follows state and federal worker safety laws and guidelines” and took steps like providing masks and gloves and installing handwashing stations.
“Feeding the country”
The “vast majority” of employers of guest workers haven’t had a Covid outbreak, said Jason Resnick, general counsel of the Western Growers Association, a trade group representing farms.
“It’s in everyone’s interest to avoid spreading the virus so staff can stay healthy and productive,” Resnick said. “Without that staff, we couldn’t feed the country.”
The groups of workers, in addition to the Migrant Rights Centre and Polaris, an anti-trafficking charity that has a national hotline, handle complaints. Some staff members are even afraid to tell employers that they have symptoms, for fear of losing their jobs and being forced to return home, said Andrea Rojas, director of strategic labor trafficking projects at Polaris.
“We have won dozens of reports from staff who have Covid disorders ranging from living in unhealthy housing, having access to medical care and insufficient non-public protective equipment,” said Evy Peña, communications director at the Migrant Rights Center. , which is founded in Baltimore and Mexico City.
“They have to make the most unlikely decision between running a pandemic in dangerous situations or returning home with insurmountable debt.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention And the Occupational Health and Safety Administration have jointly issued recommendations on the protection of agricultural and food employees, but they are voluntary. A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Labour, which administers the guest employee program, said in a statement that responding to the pandemic is “a very sensible priority” and that CDC and OSHA rules “allow flexibility to respond” to conversion conditions.
“The tens of thousands of sick food workers are proof that recommendations are not enough,” said David Michaels, who headed OSHA for eight years under President Barack Obama and is now a public health professor at George Washington University. “Without mandatory rules, we have a race to the bottom: Employers who are trying to protect employees are at a financial disadvantage.”
(Updates with additional detail from whistleblower complaint in 20th paragraph)
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