Latest news with #Tlaxcala
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Trump has no plan for who will grow US food: ‘There is just flat out nobody to work'
Last spring, Carmelo Mendez was pruning peach trees in Colorado on a temporary visa, missing his children and wife back home, but excited about how his $17.70 hourly wage would improve their lives. This spring, he's back in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala frantically searching Facebook for a job on one of the thousands of farms across the US that primarily employ guest workers like him. Mendez is one of the more than 300,000 foreign agricultural workers who comes to the US every year on an H-2A visa, which allows him to temporarily work plowing fields, pruning trees and harvesting crops in states from Washington to Georgia, Florida to New York, Texas to California. But as federal immigration policies change rapidly, farmers and workers alike are uncertain about their future. 'Without [this guest worker program], I believe agriculture in the US would decline a lot because people there don't want to do the work,' Mendez said. As the fate of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm workers remains in limbo amid Donald Trump's mass deportation threats, and the administration's H-2A policies are undecided, the future of these guest workers remains unclear. Their numbers grow each year – and they are increasingly central to an industry historically dominated by undocumented workers. The industry isn't creating new jobs either. Farmers agree with farm workers like Mendez. They say they cannot attract other workers to their rural fields. The debate over guest workers is dividing Republican support. Jonathan Berry, who was nominated to be the solicitor at the Department of Labor, wrote the labor chapter for Project 2025, the rightwing proposal to overhaul the government from the Heritage Foundation thinktank. That section advocates for replacing H-2A workers with local workers and automation. While technology could replace some specific farm tasks, many crops still depend primarily on human labor, and small farmers say they can't afford to invest in equipment that could take more than a decade to pay off. Other co-authors of the chapter, such as economist Oren Cass, do not think the jobs should be eliminated, but that farmers should improve working conditions to attract citizens to them instead. On the other hand, Trump's power depends on a coalition that includes agricultural communities, who voted for him at almost 80% in 2024, according to Investigate Midwest, a journalism non-profit. Agribusiness also donated more than $24m to his re-election. Farm groups insist US citizens are unwilling to do the arduous labor and that eliminating H-2A workers could collapse the food system. They generally advocate for loosening regulations for H-2A workers, like reducing wage and housing requirements. Trump heeded their calls before. In 2019, his Department of Labor unsuccessfully proposed removing some regulations on the H-2A. As seasonal harvests begin, farmers nationwide are bringing over workers. At Crist Bros Orchards in Walden, New York, H-2A workers diligently prune back apple tree branches covered with white flowers freshly burst from pink buds so that each future apple will get the same access to the sun. At the packing house, some load last season's apples out of refrigerators on to conveyor belts while others check for irregularities before packaging. The orchard has been in the Crist family since 1883, and Jenny Crist now runs it alongside her brother and parents. She said their first wave of workers came this past March and are preparing the orchards for harvest, when more workers come to pluck apples off the trees. By the end of the year, more than 150 H-2A workers will have passed through the compound to help produce the apples sold at supermarkets down the east coast. '[H-2A is] providing labor that allows us to have a farm 70 miles north of New York City, and provide food in the United States, and employ people year-round,' Crist said. 'Without it, we would certainly not be farming apples. My guess is that this would probably be houses.' The H-2A visa was created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, a huge measure that simultaneously cracked down on employers hiring immigrants without work authorization and provided 'amnesty' to close to 3 million immigrants without legal status. The law says that farmers must demonstrate an attempt to hire locally first and pay H-2A workers above the minimum wage. Unlike local workers, H-2A workers must also be provided transportation to and from their homes, housing for the season and daily transportation. Labor leaders argue farmers prefer H-2A workers, despite their costs, because they are easily exploitable. Since the visa is connected to their employment, workers cannot find a job elsewhere, making their ability to be in the country completely dependent on an employer who can revoke it at any moment, and sometimes holds on to their passports, against DOL requirements. This reluctance to leave an abusive worksite can be compounded by the fact that many H-2A workers arrive with debt they have accrued from paying recruiters to get here. Employers are required to pay all recruitment costs, but recruiters' practices go largely unregulated since they operate internationally. The situation of agriculture workers in the US is really bad already, but what they're going to do is legalize this oppression. The DC-based Economic Policy Institute, a liberal thinktank, has said this amounts to a program that exploits and silences migrant workers, replacing year-round workers in the process. In some cases, US prosecutors have accused farmers and recruiters of using the H-2A program to engage in forced labor trafficking. 'The situation of agriculture workers in the US is really bad already, but what they're going to do is legalize this oppression,' said Carlos Marentes, executive director of the El Paso-based Centro de Los Trabajadores Agrícolas Fronterizos. 'In the H-2A program, the way they're proposing to get rid of the regulations and any guarantees that workers get is going to look like legalized slavery. The industry understands that they need a labor force, but they [want] a labor force that is going to be afraid, that is going to be grateful because the employer is providing you a job.' If mass deportations go forward as promised, growers and ranchers will be even more desperate for these workers. Undocumented workers compose about 40% of the agricultural workforce, according to the US Department of Agriculture. These longtime farm workers say that the system is designed to replace them with this more vulnerable group, limiting their work opportunities and decreasing their union's power by giving farmers an alternative labor pool. 'It's very clear to us that the deportation of undocumented workers is to clear the field for bringing in H-2A workers instead of having these farm worker families that are part of our community now for over 20 years and providing them [legal] status to continue being productive community members,' said Rosalinda Guillen, a farm union leader in Washington state who grew up in the fields and founded Community to Community, a local non-profit. 'Everybody in this country is an immigrant and has had the opportunity to build community and root themselves and all of a sudden the families that came here from Mexico don't?' In 2023, a bipartisan coalition in the House of Representatives introduced the Dignity Act, which aimed to address this by extending legal status to long-term farm workers while at the same time expanding the H-2A visa. The proposal eventually failed, though, after Republicans reversed course on it. In Minnesota's Red River valley, Scott Field runs Field Brothers Farm with his brother John, growing grains, beans and sugar beets on the same land his family has worked for five generations. His local community has shrunk as younger generations moved to cities, leaving the Field brothers dependent on H-2A workers. 'There is just flat out nobody out here available to work,' Scott Field said. With housing and transportation factored in, Field says they spend more than $30 an hour on H-2A workers. It would be easier if they could just employ them as US citizens, he said as he detailed why. 'These are people who are working, making money, spending money in our communities, and paying taxes. Talk about a revitalization of Rural America if they made it easier for them to come here and stay with their families,' Field said. Changes to the H-2A visa would also probably be felt in Mexico, where over 91% of the H-2A workers come from. Some have small subsistence farms, or are part of the 2 million people who became landless with the 1994 onset of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and depend on their seasonal incomes to provide their families with basic necessities. Flavio Vázquez has worked at Crist Bros Orchards for the last five years, earning more than double in an hour packing apples than what he could in a day in his home in the Mexican state of Morelos. According to 2020 estimates, more than half of Morelos's population lives in poverty despite unemployment being below 2%. The fact that the visa allows him to escape poverty doesn't mean that it is ideal for him, though. Vázquez must spend eight months a year living between a warehouse and a dorm 2,500 miles away from his loved ones, relieved to be earning a higher income, but at a cost. While he enjoys his job in New York's Hudson valley, he wishes he could bring his family and build a permanent life. 'In Morelos, the situation is difficult, so I come here to stabilize the community there economically and to have resources for my family,' Vázquez said, looking resigned as apple-scanning machinery roared in the background. 'In Mexico, you leave your children, your wife, your parents, who support you emotionally. I would feel a lot more comfortable with my family here.' This story was co-published with Puente News Collaborative in partnership with Palabra and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University at the City of New York (Cuny). Puente News Collaborative is a bilingual non-profit newsroom, convener and funder dedicated to high-quality, fact-based news and information from the US-Mexico border.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Deportation threats give people pause, but not for long, Mexican workers say
José Tlaxcala worked framing houses in Salem, Oregon, until he sustained a spinal injury and moved back to San Juan Texhuácan. People will continue crossing the border to work in the U.S., regardless of what politicians say, because of 'economic necessity' he says. | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner VERACRUZ, MEXICO — President Donald Trump's threats to deport millions of Mexicans who are working in the U.S. without authorization does not have a large number fleeing the U.S. in fear, nor will it stop Mexican citizens from crossing the border to find work, according to many residents who shared their stories with the Wisconsin Examiner. 'Yes, it has put the brakes on things a bit, I know people who were thinking of going and now they're waiting,' said Fatima Tepole, who worked on a dairy farm in Minnesota for four years, earning money to build her house and start a school supply store in San Juan Texhuácan. 'Of course it caused people to pause. It now costs $15,000 to cross the border. If they send you back? Of course you are going to stop and think about that.' But, she added. 'They are going to try again when things calm down. It's inevitable.' Tepole's friend Blanca Hernández, a teacher at a bilingual Spanish/Nahuatl school, agreed. She crossed the border to work in the U.S. three times, smuggling herself in the trunk of a car and nearly suffocating on her way to take a factory job in North Carolina and returning two more times to milk cows in Wisconsin and Minnesota. She saved enough money to build her house and buy a car before returning home. 'Yes, there are people who are afraid now,' she said. 'But Mexicans are stubborn. They are going to keep immigrating.' José Tlaxcala says no politician in either country has changed the underlying drivers of immigration. 'People in Mexico continue to think about going to the U.S. to work because of economic necessity,' he said. In his opinion, that's the Mexican government's fault. 'The Mexican government isn't doing enough. There's not enough good work for the people,' Tlaxcala said. In the area where he lives, around San Juan Texhuácan, most people work in agriculture, growing coffee and corn, partly for subsistence and partly to sell. But the prices for agricultural products are very low. 'It's not enough to support a family,' Tlaxcala explained A Stateline analysis of U.S. Census community survey data in 2018 found a sudden drop in the Mexican immigrant population in the U.S. between 2016 and 2017. More than 300,000 people went home that year, which experts attributed to deportation threats in the first Trump administration as well as improving job prospects in Mexico. Mexicans still represent the largest group of immigrants living in the U.S., but their numbers have been declining for more than a decade, from a peak of 11.7 million in 2010 to 10.91 million in 2023. It's too soon to tell if the second Trump administration, with its even more aggressive focus on rooting out immigrants, pushes down those numbers more. But anecdotally, at least among dairy workers in the Midwest, that doesn't seem to be the case — at least for now. 'The concern was significantly more in the last Trump administration,' says Wisconsin dairy farmer John Rosenow, who has 13 employees from Mexico. 'Especially people with families were afraid of being deported and separated from their children. Farmers were typically running three or four people short … I haven't seen that this time.' High-profile immigration raids in the second Trump administration have so far focused on major cities, including Chicago, New York, Denver and Los Angeles. Some people who worked in restaurants have been deported, and have been able to return to the villages Rosenow recently visited in rural Veracruz. 'I have a friend who was deported,' said Tepole. 'He went to get food one day and they grabbed him and sent him back, just like that, after eight years. Luckily, he had already built his house.' As Rosenow traveled among mountain villages, meeting family members of his dairy workers, he stopped to see a large cement house one of his current employees was building. Guadelupe Maxtle Salas was plastering a wall inside. He showed us the attached garage where Rosenow's employee intends to set up shop as an auto mechanic when he finally returns. Maxtle Salas worked in the U.S. from the age of 14 until he was 19, he said. He milked cows on a dairy farm not far from Rosenow's. He is thinking about going back to the U.S. after he finishes helping to build the house. He had applied for a work visa and then, when Trump took office, the app that allowed him to get the visa was abruptly cancelled. 'I lost my chance,' he said. Now he thinks he might go illegally. 'If I get there, I'll look for you,' he told Rosenow. Tlaxcala, 30, won't be going back because of an injury that prevents him from resuming the heavy labor he did when he was in the U.S. He came back home one year ago. He was working in construction in Salem, Oregon, framing houses, when a beam fell on his back, fracturing two disks in his spine. He had been working abroad for five years, sending home money to support his family in San Juan Texhuácan. After the accident, he decided it was time to come home. = He doesn't blame his employer for what happened. 'After I hurt my back I couldn't work. That's the risk I took,' he said. 'Unfortunately, I was working without insurance – illegally. My employer was not going to be responsible if I was hurt. I knew that.' His employer paid the hospital bill. But Tlaxcala wasn't eligible for unemployment benefits. Since returning home, he hasn't been able to afford medical attention to deal with continuing problems with his spine. Immigrant workers who don't have authorization in the U.S. are barred from receiving unemployment benefits even though they pay into the system through tax withholdings. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, workers without authorization paid $1.8 billion into unemployment insurance, a joint federal and state program, in 2024. During the COVID-19 pandemic, 12 states created programs to temporarily provide unemployment benefits to excluded workers. Only Colorado has made its program permanent. Asked if the risk he took to work without protection in the U.S. was worth it, Tlaxcala laughed. 'Maybe yes, maybe no,' he said. 'It depends on your situation. If you're lucky nothing happens to you.' It cost Tlaxcala $11,000 to cross the border, he said. 'Obviously it was a big risk. You have to deal with organized crime in the north of the country to go through the desert. The cartels are still in control. Every person who crosses the border puts his life in the hands of the organized crime syndicates. It seems necessary to us. I know a lot of people who have died trying to cross.' Like Tepole and Hernández, he doubts the deportation threats will have a big impact on Mexican workers. 'It's just politics,' he said. 'It's the same as in Mexico. Politicians say lots of things they don't follow through with. Mexicans understand that.' For example, he said, for generations, Mexican politicians have said they are going to end poverty. 'They don't,' Tlaxcala said. 'When I was growing up I felt that I didn't have things that I needed.' he added. 'I had to go to school in broken down shoes. Sometimes I didn't have shoes. I didn't have a backpack, and I wore old, worn out clothing – for lack of money. I was determined to do something about that.' Before he went to the U.S., Tlaxcala worked as a truck driver in Mexico. But the only way to get ahead, he said, is to start a business and it was all he could do to come up with the initial investment to get his store going. 'I had to use all of the money I earned to pay off the bank. By working in the United States, little by little I could get ahead.' After working abroad for five years, he was able to afford to pay off his debts, buy a house and finance his business, a small store. 'Bank loans, credit — you can't cover those things with a regular salary here,' he said. Another reason Tlaxcala doesn't believe millions of Mexicans will be deported, he said, is the sheer number of immigrants he saw when he was living in the U.S. 'In Salem 30-40% of the population is Latino. I'd go to Walmart and see people from my village,' he said. 'Plus, it's very heavy work — construction, roofing — and it doesn't pay well. They need people.' In the U.S., 1 in 4 construction workers is an immigrant, according to a National Association of Home Builders report that emphasizes the industry's reliance on immigrant labor as well as a significant labor shortage. 'The concentration of immigrants is particularly high in construction trades essential for home building,' the report found, including plasterers and stucco masons (64%) drywall/ceiling tile installers (52%), painters, (48%) and roofers (47%). By building houses in the U.S. so they can send home money to build houses in Mexico, Mexican workers are fueling the economies of both countries. 'I understand that there are people who do bad things and those people should be sent back,' said Tepole. 'But the manual labor force that is strengthening the country? Most of them are Mexicans.' This story is Part Three in a series. Read Part One: Amid Trump's threats to deport workers, Wisconsin dairy farmers travel to Mexico and Part Two: A deceased farmworker's son finally returns to Mexico to meet his father's family SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
