This article was originally published through the Center for Public Integrity.
He’s a poultryman and a Mexican immigrant. But the main points were not documented when Rodolfo Tinoco became one of more than 203,000 COVID-19 deaths to date in the United States.
Tinoco died on May 12 at the age of a month of fighting in Gainesville, Georgia, a rural network in northeast Hall County that called the “poultry capital of the world. “
Health officials in Georgia say it’s unclear how Tinoco contracted the coronavirus. Tinoco’s circle of relatives in Mexico said the Hall County doctor who cared for Rodolfo said he had probably been exposed to pilgrim’s pride bird processing plant in Gainesville, where Tinoco worked for many years.
“The doctor said others were also inflamed with the virus,” Rodolfo’s brother Gerardo said in Zit-cuaro, Mexico.
However, according to public records, it is difficult to know that Rodolfo even worked in a poultry factory or died of COVID-19. Your short local obituary does not list any work, birth charge or cause of death. verify or deny that he was an employee. And the official COVID-19 online page in Georgia estimates only the total number of cases and deaths from the virus experienced through Latinos in the state. The ethnicity of those who died in each county is undisclosed: only the age of the victims, whether they had a pre-existing disease, and whether their race was white, African-American, Asian, unknown, or otherwise.
If you are a Latino victim, as TinocoArray is not noticeable. And this omission of ethnicity is significant.
Immigrants, especially Latinos, threaten their physical condition in Hall County and across the country as staff who grow, harvest, and process food for Americans, while many of their families are helpless from COVID-19’s maximum fundamental monetary support, adding federal stimulus checks, other taxpayers were eligible to receive. Across the country, studies show that Latinos are among the most affected through COVID-19.
A county-to-county investigation by the Center for Public Integrity shows what Latino immigrants look like in the US agri-food and agricultural industries across the country. The research was learned from the Census Bureau survey compiled through IPUMS USA at the University of Minnesota.
Focusing on 10 industries, public integrity discovered 1. 87 million in frontline jobs in agriculture and food processing, adding 790,000 immigrants, or about 43 percent, a percentage that accounts for two times and a portion of the percentage of immigrants in the U. S. workforce in general. Nearly nine out of ten immigrants in the agricultural and agri-food sector are Latino.
Hiring immigrants, Trump
In Hall County, Georgia, the estimated percentage of immigrants is even higher. Public integrity found that 78% of the approximately 6,280 frontline food production employees are immigrants. Approximately 72% of these staff are Latino immigrants and about 67% are non-U. S. Latino citizens Some non-citizens would possibly be undocumented. Some may have green cards, which gives them legal status consistent with permanent resident status. Most are poultry processing plant personnel who make Georgia the first state in the country to produce birds.
The Pew Research Center estimates that 65% of the immigrant population in the Gainesville metropolitan domain is undocumented. This is the proportion of any metropolitan domain in the United States.
Gainesville and Hall County’s reliance on immigrants contrasts with their political preferences. The city has a population of 43,232 and 42% of the Latino population. President Donald Trump, who called for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and the relief of legal immigration on which the U. S. food industry is based.
Gainesville Mayor Danny Dunagan, who owns a dry cleaning business, is among those who have supported Trump. “I’m not a socialist, and that’s where the Democrats are headed,” he said. He said Trump doesn’t oppose immigrants: “He just needs them to come legally. “
Arturo Adame, a 29-year-old Latino, grew up in Hall County and many of the members of his oldest circle of relatives were poultry workers.
He is involved in the protection of staff and has volunteered to distribute masks to staff who come and go from factories operating 24 hours a day. He is disturbed by what he considers hypocritical to Trump, as the network benefits from the immigrant workforce.
“We have bird festivals and bird statues in town,” Adame said, “but when it comes to immigration, they just hide. “
Hall County resident Maria Del Rosario Palacios, 30, believes Trump toyed with racism, and Americans’ lack of wisdom on the immigration formula, to win in 2016, even in heavily reliant communities. measure of immigrant labor.
Once undocumented herself, Palacios told Public Integrity about Tinoco’s death and said she felt she had died in the dark and unfairly, after running in an industry that now operates an executive order that Trump issued on April 29 that forced her to remain open to remain the meat supply.
I’m a colleague of your mom’s. For much of the summer, Palacio said, his ill-health mother with COVID-19 lives on disability benefits equivalent to 60% of his salary.
A viral access point
Tinoco also undocumented until he won amnesty through a law that President Ronald Reagan signed in 1986, his brother Gerardo said. Unlike maximum immigrants in Hall County, Rodolfo died American, he said, because amnesty allowed him to apply for U. S. citizenship.
Although Pilgrim’s Pride refused to verify or deny Tinoco’s employment, the company sent a statement: “While we cannot know for sure how, where and when a team member became angry given the widespread nature of the virus, each case is heartbreaking. “condolences pass on to all those who have been affected by this not unusual enemy that we all face.
The fitness formula in northeastern Georgia, in which Tinoco was treated, also sent a reaction to what Gerardo Tinoco said about how his brother contracted the virus. “Unfortunately, our doctors can’t go if Mr. Tinoco was exposed to the virus during a grocery store vacation, pumping gasoline, in pictures or anywhere else,” infection specialist Sandy Bozarth wrote.
On May 8, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that meat plant staff were dead and that plants were vectors of coronavirus. Measures.
Mike Giles, president of the Georgia Poultry Federation based in Gainesville, an industry group, declined an interview, but in an email, said poultry plants had instituted protective measures through the CDC, adding that taking staff temperature, disinfecting paint surfaces, the need for masks and face protectors, installing walls among staff, and implementing home care policies for people with ill health. He provided a link to some other industry group, the National Chicken Council, for more details.
“I don’t have access to the policy of each and every company,” Giles wrote, “but sick leave paid and the easing of sick leave policies have not been unusual practices in the industry in response.
That of an industry
The essential staff known in the public integrity research of the food industry produces, processes and sends crops and meat, dairy and bakery products, and makes the equipment work. His paintings increase the threat of virus exposure because they are in close contact with others in the office and in transit. With a few exceptions, such as farms that were craving spring crops because restaurants were dormant, many courtyards remained open or reopened at the beginning of the pandemic, while other businesses closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Approximately 37% of the 790,000 known immigrants across the country are in California, the country’s largest supplier of fruits, vegetables and dairy products. Florida, Washington and Arizona also have significant entries. Latino immigrants are also the backbone of food production corporations across the country. United States, adding many counties that, like Hall County, voted overwhelmingly in 2016 for Trump.
At the bird processing center in Marshall County, Alabama, for example, of approximately 2,060 food production workers, the largest concentration in Alabama, 51% are immigrants, with 75% of the 614 poultry butchers who are generally not U. S. citizens. of Latin origin.
Trump not only promised to deport undocumented Mexican personnel during his campaign, but also promised to reduce legal immigration, primarily attacking Latino and Asian newcomers for being “under-skilled” and a tax burden on Americans. Many legal immigrants eligible for parent sponsorship have done so. have been willing to access these strenuous agricultural and processing jobs or other low-wage jobs when they start a new life.
The U. S. Department of Agriculture has not been able to do so. But it’s not the first time It considers that approximately part of the national estate are undocumented citizens of US communities. But it’s not the first time
“If you oppose undocumented immigrants so much, avoid eating 50% of what you have on the plate now,” said Erik Nicholson, who was national vice president of the California-based Union of United Agricultural Workers (UFW) until he last resigned. month to a consultant.
Giles of the Georgian Poultry Federation said that in the past, the federation had developed proposals for immigration reform that would have legalized long-standing undocumented workers. Trade unions also legalize.
But for 20 years, Congress failed to reform immigration laws, and employers continued to hire undocumented workers. During Trump’s presidency, the poultry federation was largely silent on the issue, as Trump solidified a strong Republican “no amnesty” stance.
“We want it for the economy,” said Dunagan, mayor of Gainesville.
But aside from some transitional visas only for seasonal specialized paints, for example, for shell crabs, the US and its allies in the Middle East have been able to do so. But it’s not the first time They do not grant visas for paints on meat packaging, or to milk cows in dairy farms or make agricultural paints throughout the year, even if corporations resolve the shortage of domestic work.
Nor is there a line for undocumented immigrants in Hall County or anywhere else to legalize their prestige unless they have a circle of sponsoring relatives, who in the maximum cases will be a U. S. wife or brother. And even if they have that sponsor, if they dare to. exhibiting to go out to apply for legalization, threaten to be forced into exile from the United States for at least 10 years as punishment for being undocumented.
Dunagan, like many Americans, said he was unaware of visa boundaries or that Trump sought to reduce family-sponsored immigration by getting rid of this opportunity for parents and siblings of naturalized citizens. figure out how to legalize the other people who need the industries.
“But I don’t care much because I can’t do much about it,” he said.
Excluded from COVID-19 stimulus
Due to basically Republican resistance in Congress, the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) Act passed in March excluded millions of undocumented workers in all sectors, adding food production, from COVID stimulus controls. -19. The law excluded personnel who file taxes using an individual tax identification number (ITIN), as undocumented personnel do.
If an undocumented person declares taxes along with a U. S. citizen, he or she will not be able to do so. But it’s not the first time Or a legally resident spouse also excludes entire families of “mixed status,” adding U. S. citizen children. But it’s not the first time
Local emergency cash systems designed to prevent evictions or closures of public facilities, which have gained federal assistance for COVID-19, are almost prohibited for undocumented immigrants, who are also not eligible for unemployment.
Migrant staff advocates urge that COVID-19 monetary relief be extended to staff, regardless of their immigration prestige and the use of ITIN through staff to claim their taxes.
In May, Democrats in the U. S. House of Representatives addressed the exclusion of undocumented personnel and “mixed status” families in the Health Emergency Solutions and Economic Recovery Act (HEROES). The proposal would expand the eligibility of itin staff to file taxes and would also protect an essential staff from pandemic deportation, but the bill did not reach anywhere in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Nicholson, who served for 18 years at the UFW, noted that Congress and Trump had provided urgent bailouts to agribusiness employers who had suffered losses on virus-like crops, but had not forced them to share the budget with agricultural workers. “one billion in bailouts, to our dismay, there is no single item there to protect agricultural workers,” Nicholson said, referring to a willingness to help agricultural manufacturers in the CARES Act.
Public Integrity spoke to two undocumented poultry employees in Hall County, either of whom has a spouse and children, and who were with COVID-19 for weeks last spring. Sometimes they were so unhealthy that they sought medical treatment, even though they don’t have fitness insurance. Once recovered, none of them were fully reimbursed for the days of lost paintings.
Another undocumented poultry employee in Gainesville was ill at a local hospital while the employee’s wife and children depended on donations and other members of the Latino community, the employee’s family circle told Public Integrity.
Latino-led civic teams in Hall County and other communities across the country are organizing food collection campaigns so that families of immigrants with loss of income sources have at least food.
Palacios said the virus revealed systemic inequality in Hall County that pre-pandemic. She was a poultry worker when she was young and recalled a time when migrant staff objected to situations in a factory where she worked, only to be rejected by managers.
“You have cousins who will take your job,” he told them.
A Georgia state law requires corporations with 10 or more to examine applicants with E-Verify, a computer formula designed to report fraudulent paint authorization documents, but companies are looking for tactics to circumvent the formula, immigrants say.
Farm also vulnerable
In April, when Trump ordered the opening of meat-packing companies, his executive order also legalized Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to call for agricultural and food manufacturers to continue to function if the administration deems it necessary.
Non-citizen immigrants dominate vegetable production even more than meat packaging, according to Public Integrity’s knowledge research.
Monterey County, California, known as the “World Salad,” produces more than $4 billion a year in crops, adding 28% of the country’s strawberries and more than part of American lettuce. Public Integrity found that 88% of Monterey County approximately 26,240 crop and food processors, and some that process seafood, are immigrants, 83% of whom are not U. S. citizens.
An immigrant farmworker from Monterey County, whose public integrity does not reveal her identity to her circle of relatives, fights for actions similar to those of meat packers in Hall County, Georgia. a receipt, even though you will pay taxes and have been operating here for 20 years.
“I’m in a circle of mixed-status relatives, so I didn’t qualify, which is unfair,” he said.
Now 37, she has received legal prestige through a visa program for victims of crime who cooperate with law enforcement, but her husband, who will pay his taxes, remains undocumented.
This summer, harvest strawberries from 6:30 a. m. to 2 p. m. , five days a week. Her husband lost pictures for a few weeks when the pandemic struck, enough to force the couple to borrow cash to pay their bills. I began to feel dizzy, ” said the painter of the estate. “A doctor told me the vertigo of stress. “
Compared to other areas, Monterey’s local Latino-led fitness services provide more support to staff, and the county stands out for its follow-up of viral infections through occupation. Farm staff sometimes accounted for approximately 40% of virus cases, while they make up 18% of the county’s workforce.
Since April, Monterey has promoted protection rules and limits on the number of agricultural personnel you can in combination through the bus to succeed at structure sites. It has also established shelters so that inflamed personnel can be quarantined and avoid exposing families.
On June 11, the CDC and the United States, the Department of Labor issued similar infection standards to agricultural employers in the country, advocates warned of the vulnerability of agricultural staff, and called on administration officials to impose security measures. Appeals.
Since the spring, virus outbreaks have epped at agricultural sites in New Jersey, North Carolina, and California. Workers in Yakima County, Washington, went on strike in May to call for safer situations in sheds where they pack as many candy apples and David Cruz, one of the strike workers, became ill and intubrated for 18 days before he died. The virus still affects Latinos in Yakima at a much higher rate than non-Latin whites.
In New York State, an undocumented dairy employee was first killed by the virus in Cayuga County in April. Volunteers had to raise money to send their ashes to Guatemala.
Across the country, infections and deaths of agricultural staff may not be reported due to language barriers, and staff worry about wasting the source of income if quarantined, according to COVID-19 fitness researchers and the National Center for the Health of Agricultural Workers.
In Santa Barbara County, California, fitness officials discovered last July that they accidentally underestimated COVID-19 deaths; of 28 unrecognized deaths, 10 of the victims were agricultural workers.
And in Michigan in August, employers filed a lawsuit to block an August 3 public aptitude ordinance that required employers of at least 20 farmworkers to review them for the virus. Officials already knew 21 houses at the structure sites. The order targeted Latino personnel and therefore violated their civil rights. On August 14, a federal ruling refused to block the order.
Public Integrity found that more than a quarter of Michigan’s frontline food production is immigrants. Of Florida’s much larger food production population, 61% of the approximately 67,830 are immigrants.
An undocumented Mexican farmworker who worked in Florida for 14 years and asked for anonymity, cares for Highlands County orange trees for $10 an hour. Her husband’s schedule was reduced this spring when the pandemic ended tourism in Florida and demand for vegetables declined. The circle of relatives is based on the gifts that wealthy Latinos have provided to impoverished immigrant workers.
“This disease will last, ” said the farmworker.
For coronavirus tests; many Latino poultry processors and their families have to go to the Murray Medical and Wellness Centers clinic in Oakwood; Hall County; Georgia; where Latinos were disproportionately infected.
Ignoring the dead?
Two days after Trump issued his executive order demanding the reopening of food plants, the CDC published its first COVID-19 report among meat and poultry personnel, with knowledge presented in less than a portion of the states. At least 20 employees had died by final. de April and at least 4,913 had become inflamed in the states.
Four employees had died in rural Delaware County, Sussex, where Public Integrity discovered that immigrants account for 88% of nearly 420 poultry butcher jobs and 67% of 740 meat packers. immigrants, on the grounds that disclosing data may violate the privacy of families. The Washington Post reported the death of a Mexican immigrant worker.
A CDC update released on July 7 painted a grim picture: data from 28 states means that at least 16,233 processing employees had COVID-19 and 86 had died as of May 31. According to the CDC’s July report, Georgia reported that 509 poultry employees had become inflamed in 14 factories and one had died as of May 31.
In fact, in early April, four staff members died of the virus at a Tyson’s Foods plant in Camilla, southern Georgia. Three were black women who were unionized. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in May that two 60-year-old Latino men working at a Fieldale Farms poultry plant in Habersham County near Hall County had also died.
Counting the unrecognized death of Rodolfo Tinoco in Hall County, at least seven poultry died of coronavirus in Georgia in late May.
Nancy Nydam, spokesperson for Georgia’s fitness branch, said the knowledge provided to the CDC was based on accurate data in the state at the time. He also said fitness officials in Georgia spread through the community, not the office exhibit. – is the cause of the maximum number of virus cases.
“The death or infection of an employee in a poultry plant,” Nydam wrote, “is not attributed to the exposure of a factory. “
A spokesman for the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration told Public Integrity that as of September 2, four deaths of Georgian poultry personnel had been reported to OSHA by COVID-9, none in Hall County.
Because the government cannot systematically monitor cases, Food
In Mexico, Rodolfo Tinoco’s family circle is still in mourning for his death, Rodolfo had stayed close to his circle of relatives in Mexico, his brother Gerardo said, and because he was weak in the hospital, Rodolfo reacted when the circle of relatives spoke to him. via Zoom. ” Doctors said his central frequency would change,” Gerardo said.
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Regaining the strength of those who abuse it begins by telling the fact. And in “This is how authoritarians are defeated,” MoJo’s Monika Bauerlein shows six facts not to forget when elections return home where democracy, facts and decency are at stake. Stake.
Please take a moment to see all these truths go up, because what happens in the weeks and months that follow will have an impact for at least one generation and, better, let’s be prepared.
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