Don't Bite the Hands That Feed You
According to the state Department of Food and Agriculture, over a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts are grown in California. The Trump administration’s proposed deportation of undocumented immigrants directly threatens the lives of these people.
The contributions of the migrant farm worker, regardless of legal status, are too substantial for a mass deportation of this sort to be carried out. The hands of undocumented immigrants are often the ones that feed us. They pick the crops, and they box the crops that are transported to our local grocery stores and farmers markets, yet they are still marginalized and invisible to a majority of Americans. Deporting these critical contributors to our economy and our food supply is cruel.
Maybe some of you are okay with your produce rotting and not arriving at the grocery store for you to pick up. Maybe the problem feels too distant for you, but in fact, even some of your Las Lomas peers worry about this daily.
One of them now lives in fear because she was born in El Salvador. “My family, throughout the years, have come either by plane with papers or they have literally crossed the border and paid a ‘coyote’ to come here,” she said. “It’s not right for Trump to destroy a family who has escaped either natural disasters or are being attacked by gangs or attacked by the government itself.”
Members of her family were granted Temporary Protected Status, which means the estimated 11.2 million undocumented immigrants in the United States should not be marginalized or deported for not being legal residents of the U.S. These people do not currently have an easy path to gaining citizenship. Currently, there are two major programs that permit Hispanic immigrants’ residence in the United States: TPS, Temporary Protected Status, and DACA, Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals.
Both programs provide only temporary protection, increasingly so with the hostility and antagonism toward illegal immigrants, Mexicans, and Hispanics rising in today’s administration. As the new president tries to enforce tighter immigration regulations and crackdowns in sanctuary cities, immigrants’ opportunities to become legal will most likely become harder.
“Trump labeling Hispanics, Latinos as rapists, murderers, people who are lazy—to me, it’s the worst thing that you could possibly say to me because I am proud to be Hispanic,” she said. “I can tell you for a fact that Hispanics are the most hardworking people that I have ever met in my life because we have gone through so much and all we want to do is have a country that accepts us. Give us time, we will prove you wrong that we are not who people in the world have labeled us.”
Both TPS and DACA are currently at risk for termination. DACA protects immigrants from Mexico and other Latin Ameri- can countries who have been under the age of 31 since June 15th, 2012 and came to U.S. before their 16th birthday. TPS protects immigrants whose countries are involved in an ongoing armed conflict, an environmental disaster or epidemic, or other troubling conditions according to the humanitarian section of the USCIS.gov website.
“In many cases, families are deported, and I think that just destroys the main principle of a Hispanic household, which is, Hispanics are very big on family and how we’re supposed to be very close and very united. And that’s something I always hold very dear to my heart. I don’t think Trump administration realizes how deporting these families can cause a huge uproar or break in the Hispanic traditions.
Comprehensive immigration reform would include allowing undocumented immigrants to become citizens. I think we could do initiate something similar to the Braceros Program, 1942-1964, which was a series of agreements between the United States and Mexico, from 1942 to 1964 that brought five million farm workers to 24 states. It was the largest foreign worker program in the U.S.
That program led to exploitation of Mexican workers and an unfair economic gain by the U.S. government, but a revamped program could ease access to work and decrease worry for the undocumented laborers currently in the U.S. and those still looking to come to the U.S. for greater opportunities.
A new program must require transportation of undocumented immigrants to be realized by relief or religious organizations and a local or state government commission to regulate the fair payment and treatment of undocumented immigrants in the workplace.
