Title: Farm Workers Weather Storms of Immigration and Indifference
ELCA NEWS SERVICE

December 27, 2001

Farm Workers Weather Storms of Immigration and Indifference
FE-01-01-MR

     Dade City, Fla. (ELCA) -- As daylight dawns on the horizon, farm
workers -- dressed in mudded blue jeans, frayed long-sleeved shirts and
bandannas wrapped around their heads underneath straw hats or baseball
caps -- gather at the edge of a huge strawberry field.  Bent forward at
the waist, women, men and sometimes children begin to pick the fruit with
both hands and place them in wooden crates or flats.
     The scene resembles a way of life from long ago, but this is today
in Dade City, Fla., where thousands of migrant and seasonal farm workers,
predominantly Mexican, harvest ripening crops.  Some migrant farm workers
travel hundreds of miles every fall to harvest crops on farms that hire
labor.  Seasonal farm workers cultivate and harvest crops in one area all
year.
     "I hated the dirt underneath and around my fingernails not because I
was too good to pick, but because I knew there was no other choice," said
Margarita Romo, a former farm worker.  "A farm worker's life is very
hard," she said.
     For some people, fruits and vegetables conjure images of healthy
eating and the consumption of fresh, juicy and natural snacks.  What
doesn't surface are the despairing work and life conditions of those who
harvest them.
     "Farm workers [make up] the largest population of homeless people.
We are among the poorest workers in the United States and no one cares,"
said Romo.  "Farm workers, especially women, are some of the most
invisible people in the country, yet they make up about 50 percent of the
farm labor work force."
     "Workers are routinely exposed to harmful pesticides and are paid
extremely low wages   some earn as little as $1.50 for a flat of early
strawberries," Romo said.
     The wage rate for picking a flat or bucket of [vegetables and fruit]
in some places is the same now as it was 12 years ago, she said.  For
example, a farm worker today is paid somewhere between $5.00 and $7.00 for
each tub of oranges turned in during a work day, which is the same as in
1979, Romo said.
     The reality today is that a migrant or seasonal farm worker often
does not know what the wage-rate will be for every flat turned in until he
or she arrives at the field that morning, Romo contends.  "The faster you
pick, the more you can earn.  And, there is no guarantee for work beyond
the day-to-day," she said.
     Romo lives in Dade City among farm workers.  Her parents were farm
workers, but Romo avoided a future of the difficult life when her father
became a gardener in Texas.   "That was hard work, too," Romo said.
     Years later, Romo married and moved away from the farm and gardening
community.  In 1971 she returned to the farming community by providing
language translation services for ministers, farm workers and social
service agencies.  That year she founded Farmworkers Self-Help in Dade
City, an organization supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America (ELCA).

Farmworkers Self-Help, Inc.
     "One day a woman came to me and said, 'I am tired of crew chiefs and
the way they scream at us to pick faster and work harder.  I want to fight
back.'  So, I told her to bring together as many people as she could find
that felt the same way.  She brought 45 people together, we started
English classes and formed a club.  That's really where Farmworkers Self-
Help began.  Soon after, we incorporated our group," Romo said.
     Today, Romo directs Farmworkers Self-Help, which is designed to
serve farm workers who come to the area to harvest strawberries, tomatoes,
squash, egg plant, oranges, a variety other citrus fruits and more.  The
organization now owns a group of small buildings along Lock Street in Dade
City.
     "We teach farm workers about the harmful effects of pesticides, how
to dress and to care for one's body after working fields full of
pesticides.  We also try to show people how to become better harvesters,
such as how not to damage plants and get more out of them.  We have health
care classes for women and a church for children," Romo said.
     Farmworkers Self-Help services include a free medical clinic, day
care, thrift store, a food pantry, job training, courses on immigration
and pesticide protection, and health care courses for women in a
"spiritual setting."  The 2000-2001 ELCA Domestic Hunger Grant Program
awarded $10,000 to support AWING (Agricultural Women Involved in New
Goals), a Farmworker Self-Help program designed to help women create
better lives for themselves through education and leadership development.

Women Farm Workers
     "Farm working women have been the most oppressed people," Romo said.
"They are the ones that have to care for the entire family in addition to
working the fields.  They work just as hard as the men and yet they really
don't have a voice," Romo said.
     "As a Mexican ex-farm worker, I work to strengthen families and show
men that women are more valuable when they're educated and know how to
care for their bodies.  Some men tend to be macho and domineering, and
women don't have a lot of power.  So we find ways to bring forth that
power in healing, pro-family ways, so that it doesn't divide and destroy,"
she said.
     "Who will do this kind of work for people?  It must be the church.
The church must continue to enter farm working camps and see what is
happening -- the conditions in which farm workers live," Romo said.

ELCA Message on Immigration and Farm Work
     "Lutherans have provided a strong tradition of pastoral care and
ministry for migrant farm workers," according to Ralston H. Deffenbaugh
Jr., president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service -- a ministry
of the ELCA, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the  Latvian
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
     According to an ELCA message on immigration, the ELCA and LIRS
minister among "the most vulnerable of the newcomers through
congregations."  The ministry "offers pastoral and legal counsel to
individuals who have entered the United States without legal status, aids
people with the citizenship process, and helps newcomers learn to live in
a new country."  The message was approved by the ELCA Church Council in
1998.
     Work on a farm is contingent on agreements developed between
landowners or "growers" and crew chiefs, who are independent, self-
employed individuals working on behalf of migrant farmers, Romo said.
     "A typical crew chief might say to a grower, 'We'll pick the entire
[field] for a certain amount of dollars.'  So, the grower gets the work
needed to be done, and the crew chief will pay the farm worker what the
chief wants them to have, which is often not fair," she said.
     "There is no pension or retirement plan for farm workers," Romo
said.  Most live in work camps, which are grim places to live, "because
they don't have a choice.  Some have large families and can't afford to
live on streets that you would live on," she said.
     Tucked away from the central part of Dade City, farm workers live in
tiny concrete camps, most of which are grouped together and surrounded by
a wire fence.  Most are simple concrete structures.  Unlike the main part
of Dade City, roads around the camps are unpaved, made up of dark orange
gravel and dirt.
     "Farm workers are sort of isolated and put in a box, and that's
where they have to stay," Romo said.  "But farm workers are beginning to
wake up like a flower that starts to unfold," she said.
     "Farm workers have a right to know what pesticides are being used on
the crops they harvest," she said.  "We also have a right to receive
adequate pay, education and health care.  We have a right to be taken to a
hospital and receive treatment," Romo said.
     "Before Farmworkers Self-Help, many undocumented farm workers in
Dade City were denied health care because they were not legal residents.
Farmworkers Self-Help helped to change that in Dade City," Romo said.

"Undocumented" Farm Workers
     Most of the farm workers in Dade City are illegal or "undocumented"
immigrants from Mexico, Romo said.  She prefers to use the term
"undocumented" rather than illegal because "illegal means that you broke
the law, which you did.  But, I don't think anyone really has the right to
say that, since this country was built on people coming here for asylum of
different sorts.  And, it is no different now," she contends.
     "To be undocumented means to be looking over your shoulder all the
time, never feeling safe, always wondering who's going to knock on your
door.  Will it be the U.S. border patrol?" Romo said.
     "People might say that Florida is not a border state.  The U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service [categorizes] Florida as a border
state because of the sea and people entering the state from different
directions to work in agriculture.  They know that many farm workers [from
Mexico] come to Dade City," she said.
     "Farmworkers Self-Help exists because we need to speak for our
people until our people can speak for themselves.  Without education we
can't open doors, and without organizing ourselves we can't form a strong
group and improve things," Romo said.
     "We have processed thousands of undocumented, migrant farm workers
at Farmworkers Self-Help.  A primary function of our office is to educate
undocumented farm workers about immigration laws and rights.  Farm workers
have rights, too.  They have the right to defend themselves, but no one
has told them of that right," Romo said.
     "America's southern perimeter has become one of the deadliest
borders in the world," according to Deffenbaugh.  "Last year, 369 people
died at the U.S.-Mexico border.  The number of people who died at the
Berlin Wall in its entire history was 171," he said.
     "Mexican and other economic migrants come [to the United States] to
work, to support their families back home and to build a future for them.
Our economy needs them, too," he said.
     "For more than 150 years, workers freely circulated between their
homes in Mexico and jobs in the United States.  Since the United States
began restrictive immigration policies, they have been deemed 'illegal
immigrants.'  They work underground, subject to abuse, and they pay taxes
for benefits they can never claim.  Many would actually prefer to return
to their families from time to time, but are compelled to remain in the
United States illegally for fear of multiple border crossings,"
Deffenbaugh said.
     "There are new people coming [to Dade City] every year to work on
the fields.  They come not because they want to leave their country," said
Romo.  "They love their country but they are starving.  They come here
because they think they might be able to feed their children," she said.
     According to Romo, it is impossible to gauge the size of the migrant
work force with any precision, among other reasons, because so much of it
is composed of undocumented immigrants.  She believes that there are more
than 500,000 migrant and seasonal farm workers now employed in Florida.
     "We know that we've got worse jobs and hardships than most people
can imagine.  But we're strong, and we've got spirit," Romo said.
     "No one is truly poor.  God gave us our hands, feet, heart and a
brain.  So, God didn't send us here without equipment.  We just have to
learn how to use it.  Farmworkers Self-Help began without money.  But the
organization is an example that, when people want to do something, they
can," she said.

[Photographs from the Dade County, Fla., visit can be found at
http://www.elca.org/co/news/image.index.html on the Web.]

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