Home » News » “They called us illegal and now we are essential”: rural immigrants fed the US relentlessly due to the pandemic | Univision Money News

“They called us illegal and now we are essential”: rural immigrants fed the US relentlessly due to the pandemic | Univision Money News

HOMESTEAD, Florida.- It is 6:00 in the morning and small lights move like fireflies through the furrows of an okra field. Inside the narrow labyrinths, dozens of workers search the leaves of the small bushes for crops that are at their exact point of harvest: oras about 3 centimeters long that, if another day passes, will be rejected at the point of sale .

Covered from head to toe and with a bucket in tow they crouch down ‘picking’ or harvesting with precision. They have done so every day of the coronavirus pandemic, overcoming the fear of taking the disease home or having no way to pay for their medical expenses if they become infected. About 13,000 immigrants work in these fields in the farming town of Homestead, South Florida, most of whom are undocumented, so taking time off from work is not an option.

Placing a plate of vegetables on America’s tables means putting one on their tables as well.

“Despite the fear and the pandemic, we are here, we have not failed a day,” says Blanca Rivas as she supervises the work in the fields of Sifuentes Farms and distributes the wooden boxes that are filled with the tender and green okra. “We are here raising vegetables, harvesting crops so that anyone has a plate of food at home … without knowing what will happen tomorrow,” says Blanca, a Guatemalan woman who has spent almost four decades in the United States. Always in Homestead crops.

The hit of the covid-19 pandemic began to feel more strongly in the country in mid-March. Contagions picked up and fear grew that the health system would collapse and there would be people who simply could not be seen in hospitals. For many of the workers in the Homestead fields, that has been their reality since they set foot on American soil, not being able to go to a doctor if they get sick because they lack health insurance.

So their nervousness was more in those days for the possibility of running out of money to support their families, even more when they were excluded from federal aid due to the crisis, counted at least a dozen workers in a tour made by Univision Noticias in those fields.

Neither hurricanes nor storms, like never before a threat that was little known lurked his jobs in this farming town that helps Florida become the third-largest provider of vegetables and fruits in the United States. Such diverse crops are planted there – from okra and eggplant to pumpkin and lychee– that producers usually require labor almost all year round.

“I am afraid, but I have to work. Because if I am going to be in the house, nobody will support us. We need money to pay the rent … for everything, “says Teresa, a Mexican woman with 17 years in the United States, more than a decade in which she has not been able to regularize her status in the country, as is the case with many of the farmers from Homestead.

Teresita, as they call her affection in the field, divides with her husband the furrows in which they harvest ocra. In normal times, working as a couple helps them to collect the vegetable quickly and to have about 20 or 30 boxes a day. The more boxes stacked on top of each other, the more money they receive for their work. But in an unprecedented situation as in this pandemic, not being able to harvest means that their already low income is completely drying up.

The field suffers the blow: “There was no way to sell the harvest”

And that was what happened in many fields of Homestead when the spread of the coronavirus increased. They were covered in crops that no one could buy.

“We had a very strong impact the first two weeks, New York was closed and we could not export the products, get them to their destination, and we had to eliminate many fields that we had not yet harvested,” explains Pedro Sifuentes, owner along with his brother. of the company that bears your last name.

There were no truckers to drive their vehicles with their ocra to New York, the main destination for their crops and the state that has been by far the most affected by the pandemic. The wholesale companies and restaurants closed and, with the passing of the days, what was harvested began to clutter the refrigerators of Sifuentes Farms. Then, all this was lost. The immediate decision was to reduce its production by 60%, which had a ripple effect on its income.

“What we did was pass the grinder and eliminate the fields 100%. The work fell a little for all workers and it was like starting again, graduating production, “adds Pedro, who arrived in the country in 1999 from Mexico and after years of ‘piscar’ managed to cultivate some 1,400 acres of his own that he now observes with satisfaction .

It was at that moment that the field and its workers began to suffer the blow. Less okra to collect, fewer boxes to collect and less money for your pockets. Although they were lucky not to be completely out of work, as happened to others who were simply told by their ‘ranchers’ that there was nothing more to do in the fields.

The crisis will see Florida farmers lose about $ 522 million this year, the state government estimates. But, for Pedro, it all comes down to bearing the scourge.

“At this time we are no longer so worried about making a lot of profit, just that the business survives and that we have enough for the workers, with the faith that, starting October, November there will be a vaccine and everything can be normal as before” , says about a possibility that is still far away.

Until now, when the contagion curve in the country has begun to drop amid a black figure of more than 100,000 deaths due to covid-19, In the Homestead fields, no outbreaks have been reported among farmers. As of May 23, there were 990 confirmed cases of the disease in that city, according to official data. The fear, however, remains latent.

The anguish of the unemployed: “I owe the income, the light … everything”

Melda Velázquez did not have the fate of the workers in the fields of Pedro Sifuentes. As soon as the coronavirus was declared a pandemic it was stopped from the crops where guavas ‘piscaba’. What was already a precarious economic situation in the home of this undocumented Guatemalan woman with 10 children turned into tremendous anguish.

“I am a single mother, I am struggling to get my children ahead, but right now with everything that happened I was left without a job. I owe the rent, I owe the light, I owe everything …”, Melda relates with a concern that becomes in tears. Your electric bill already rises above $ 1,000, and what you owe for the lease is close to $ 2,000.

Her days are now spent in being practically locked up at home with her 10 children, three grandchildren and daughter-in-law. In the afternoons he prepares a hearty dish, such as eggs with sausages, that he cares for everyone and, as there are so many, he places them to eat standing in front of the table. The day Univision Noticias spoke with her, she had gone out to ask for help from the Florida Peasant Organization, which has been collecting and delivering help among workers who need it: food, clothing, masks …

The government “helped all the people who say they have documents here and us They did not want to help us because we are immigrants. But we are all equal, the fact that we do not have papers (it should not matter) (…) We have our children here, they are born here and they are entitled to help, “she laments with a tired face that makes her look older than his 35 years.

That aid of which he speaks is the massive package of $ 2.2 billion approved in Congress from which some 5 million children, mostly citizens, and undocumented immigrants who in 2015 declared about $ 13.7 billion in net taxes to the Internal Revenue Service were excluded. (IRS) using a Personal Taxpayer Identification Number (or ITIN), according to figures from the Center for American Progress.

Melda may have received, for example, a ‘check’ of $ 1,200 and another of $ 500 for each child. However, he was not eligible because he does not have a valid Social Security number as stipulated by the law that gave the green light to aid while millions of people lost their jobs in an unprecedented debacle in the country’s labor market.

A frustrating paradox that once again exposed the situation of undocumented migrants in the United States.

Foreign financial aid

At Blanca Marín’s house, the pandemic also destroyed household chores. She, a Guatemalan immigrant with three girls, shares the anger at not having received help despite having religiously declared her taxes since five years ago she crossed “bravely” to the United States.

She was fired from the nursery where she worked. Her husband was also unemployed. She started sewing masks and he improvised a car wash to cope until the pandemic subsides. So far the strategy has paid off and they have managed to cover part of their expenses.

With two little ones to look after at home because schools and kindergartens closed with the crisis, Blanca dusted off a sewing machine, looked for illustrations of how to sew masks, and set to work. You already skillfully sew them in minutes on where to stitch properly.

“We feel a little sad, disappointed, because we are the people who are in January taking the appointment to do the taxes. Since I came they told me you have to do the taxes, I came without knowing and asked why: “That is what will help you,” he says they answered.

Claudia, from the peasant organization, explains that money for the payment of basic services is the type of immediate aid that has been asked for most in Homestead by these workers classified by the federal and state governments as essential. This so that the food chain does not break completely during the contingency.

“We, the undocumented, are the ones who are crouched like this (harvesting),” says Sofía Santiago, a worker in the okra fields, a bush that begins to produce from when it is almost glued to the ground. “When you get home, you can’t even go to the bathroom because of back pain. And the next day, it’s the same thing again,” says Sofía, a Mexican migrant while she ‘piscaba’ with her recently graduated son from high school.

But fatigue does not intimidate Sofia.

“Of necessity one does whatever type of work there is. One is happy when there is because there one goes earning for the bill (bills), for food, for anything that is needed in the house as well, “she says gratefully as she promised to always stay at the foot of the canyon.

The tour of the fields, in photos:

???? “Without them, food would not reach the homes”: these migrants never stopped harvesting despite fearing they would get it

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