Biden’s support of California farmworker bill makes it ‘complicated’ for Newsom

2022/09/07

Joe Aguilar of Sacramento waves a United Farm Workers flag in front of the state Capitol in Sacramento after the union finished a 24- day march on Aug. 26, 2022, to call on Gov. - Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee/TNS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As Gov. Gavin Newsom weighs whether to veto another California farmworker union bill, he has a new and unexpected voice in his ear: President Joe Biden, who has decided to inject national politics into a state labor battle.

Over Labor Day weekend, Biden issued a statement backing a bill that would allow farmworkers to vote by mail in union elections. Supporters say the measure would make it easier and less intimidating for them to organize.

“Farmworkers worked tirelessly and at great personal risk to keep food on America’s tables during the pandemic,” Biden said. “In the state with the largest population of farmworkers, the least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union. I am grateful to California’s elected officials and union leaders for leading the way.”

Presidents seldom intervene in state legislative fights. But underlying Biden’s involvement is the tension between an unpopular incumbent and a rising national Democratic star. Newsom has criticized party leadership for failing to aggressively push back against Republican policies on abortion, climate change and other issues. Biden’s support for the bill is a little pushback of his own, some political professionals say.

“There’s some back-room positioning between the two of the biggest Democratic politicians in the country,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican Latino political consultant. “The president has taken on a much more aggressive posture with all of his critics, whether they’re Republicans or whether they’re Democrats and this is another sign of that. There’s no other reason for the president to weigh in on this other than to put Gov. Newsom in his place.”

Assembly Bill 2183, sponsored by the United Farm Workers and authored by Assemblyman Mark Stone, D-Monterey Bay, passed in the final days of the legislative session. Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it.

He vetoed a similar measure in 2021, citing technical issues. This year, the governor has been facing pressure to sign from labor advocates backing UFW, which led a 335-mile march across California to demonstrate in support of the bill.

Biden’s involvement in the farmworker debate adds another layer to Newsom’s already complex decision, political consultants and communications experts say.

“Joe Biden just made Gavin Newsom’s life a whole lot more complicated,” said Dan Schnur, a political communications professor at the University of California, Berkeley and USC and former spokesman for Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. “It’s not unheard of for a president to weigh in on state legislation. But it’s relatively rare to put the squeeze on a governor of your own party like this.”

Newsom’s office did not respond to requests Monday for comment.

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, project director for the UCLA Labor Center, could not recall the last time a sitting president weighed in so strongly on a state labor issue.

It’s yet another “message” sent in Newsom’s direction, said Rivera-Salgado. Lorena Gonzalez, new head of the California Labor Federation, did a similar move when she invited UFW back into the fold of the state’s labor movement.

“I would read it as trying to put some political pressure on Gavin Newsom to come through,” he said.

Rivera-Salgado added that Biden has put Newsom in an “interesting” position and further open to criticism that the governor has a “soft spot” for growers. The winery Newsom co-founded just bought a Napa vineyard for $14.5 million.

Some labor leaders were not surprised by Biden’s support. He is widely seen as the most outspokenly pro-union president in decades and made headlines in early 2021 for the 22-inch-tall bronze bust of farm labor leader Cesar Chavez behind his desk.

The UFW also endorsed Biden for president in 2020, banking on hopes he would implement farmworker safety protections and immigration reforms. And in March 2021, first lady Jill Biden visited Forty Acres in Delano, the storied birthplace of UFW.

“This shows his commitment to farmworkers.… And it shows that the farmworkers have done a really good job using their voices to share their struggles directly with individuals,” Gonzalez said.

Vice President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro have also urged Newsom to sign the bill.

UFW President Teresa Romero said the union had been in communication with the “different people” in the administration, sharing farmworker challenges to organizing. Biden’s White House director of Intergovernmental Affairs is Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Chavez’s granddaughter.

“It’s very meaningful to us and to the workers, to know that we have the support of the president,” Romero said.

Romero remains “50/50” on whether the governor will support the bill. She notes there has been no communication with Newsom’s office since the bill was approved by the Senate last Tuesday.

AB 2163 continues to face staunch opposition from the agricultural industry and grower associations. They argue UFW no longer prioritizes organizing and is ineffective in advocating for better working conditions. In its 1970s heyday, the union had 80,000 members in California and other states. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, it now numbers a little over 6,000.

Rob Roy, president and general counsel for Ventura County Agricultural Association, called the union “virtually nonexistent.” He pointed to the last five years during which UFW has not successfully filed for an election to represent California farmworkers.

“I think the president ought to keep his nose out of state laws dealing with unionization,” Roy said. “But given his background, being pro-union, I guess he just can’t help himself.”

Roy said he expected Biden to have no effect on Newsom’s decision.

During the last few days of the legislative session, Newsom signaled he may veto AB 2183 and has not taken a public stance on the measure since lawmakers approved it.

“Gov. Newsom is eager to sign legislation that expands opportunity for agricultural workers to come together and be represented, and he supports changes to state law to make it easier for these workers to organize,” Erin Mellon, Newsom’s communications director, told The Fresno Bee in August.

“However, we cannot support an untested mail-in election process that lacks critical provisions to protect the integrity of the election and is predicated on an assumption that government cannot effectively enforce laws.”

The main sticking point is whether growers would be notified about an impending union election. UFW staffers say doing so would allow employers to union bust and take action against workers for organizing, including deporting those who are undocumented.

Newsom’s office says not notifying growers about upcoming union elections goes against national labor organizing standards.

Stone, the bill’s author, said his office worked closely with both Newsom and UFW on the bill, which he thinks the governor largely supports, except for “a piece of it he does not like.” He said that’s why the bill includes a five-year sunset provision that would allow lawmakers to reconsider it.

“It was really an attempt to try and say, ‘We know we’re not completely there, but we’re willing to continue to work,’” Stone said.

William Gould IV, former head of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board and the National Labor Relations Board, said he had respect for Biden, but that the president was given “bad information” on the bill.

“President Biden does not understand farm labor law situation in California. … This is complete make believe. I’m sorry the President has fallen for this lie,” Gould said.

He echoed Roy’s sentiments and shared that, as chairman of the NLRB, UFW only filed one election petition in three years. He said farmworkers deserve protection and was in favor of more organizing. However, Gould said this bill would not help improve unionization rates.

“No one is trying to organize the farmworkers,” Gould said. “They should be organized and hopefully, at some point there will be a union that will try to organize them.”

Newsom has shown support for organized labor in certain situations. On Monday, he signed a bill that will create a fast-food council to help low-wage employees improve their working conditions. This could help to soften some of the criticism from labor if he vetoes the farmworker union bill, Schnur said.

“Newsom (doesn’t) need to sign the farmworkers’ bill in order to shore up his labor credentials this year,” he said. “He took care of that with the fast-food legislation.”

Biden’s support for the farmworker union bill could give Newsom political cover to sign it, or it could make the optics worse if he vetoes it.

Madrid said it’s dangerous for Biden or other politicians to view policies like AB 2183 as a way to appeal to the Latino community. It’s unfair to stereotype Latinos as farmworkers or undocumented residents who care only about border issues, he said.

“When you poll Latino voters ... these are not issues of huge concern,” Madrid said. “They are of symbolic concern. But when you’re the governor that has to actually deal with these issues, you have to deal with substance as much or more than symbolism.”

———

© The Sacramento Be

ARYAN FARMERS

Migrant farmworkers left out of Alberta's vaccination rollout, says activist group

Chelsea Nash
May 11, 2021

Vanesa Ortiz, her husband, and her 13-year-old daughter have been working as a family on behalf of Alberta's Mexican migrant agricultural workers since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

Ortiz, her family and the organization they represent -- the Association of Mexicans in Calgary (AMexCal) -- started out as an anti-racism organization for the Latino community in Alberta. When COVID-19 hit the province, they directed all of their energies to supporting migrant farmworkers.

"The agricultural workforce in Alberta is migrant farm workers and it's completely invisible," Ortiz said in an interview.

A Mexican immigrant herself, Ortiz has built her connections with migrant agricultural workers and some of the farmers who employ them from the ground up.

"There has really not been advocacy in many years [specifically] around migrant farmworkers," she said.

Ortiz, her family, and AMexCal have been organizing in coordination with Migrante Alberta, who have long advocated for temporary foreign workers, undocumented workers and caregivers. They have also been mentored by the Ontario-based advocacy organization Justicia for Migrant Workers.

Ortiz said she's driven all over Alberta building relationships with workers, laughing at how quickly she has become an expert in navigating even the smallest of communities.

Throughout the pandemic, she has been delivering supplies such as hand sanitizer, Lysol wipes, toilet paper, and masks, as well as food to workers who are often restricted from leaving the farms -- even to grocery shop -- due to the pandemic.

Sometimes, when the employer of migrant farmworkers does not allow her to make deliveries or enter the farm, she drops supplies off by the side of the road after dark, where workers will collect them.

Ortiz said the migrant worker population is lower than previous years, likely because fewer workers are coming to Canada due to pandemic fears. Last year, after two migrant farmworkers died in Essex County, Ontario, from COVID-19, Mexico stopped sending temporary foreign workers to Canada, limiting the workforce here.

However, living conditions are still crowded, Ortiz said, with three or four workers often living in one shared bedroom.

Now, she says, the most pressing matter for migrant agricultural workers in the province is getting vaccinated.

On May 3, Ortiz and Luis Vazquez -- president of AMexCal -- sent a letter to Premier Jason Kenney, Alberta Minister of Health Tyler Shandro, and several other provincial and federal ministers responsible for labour, immigration, agriculture and food.

The letter laid out the situation for the province's migrant agricultural workers, describing the essential jobs they undertake to sustain communities' food chains, despite being excluded from provincial services and labour protections.

Because of the congregate work and living conditions, Ortiz says migrant agricultural workers must be prioritized in Alberta's vaccine rollout.

Not only that, but this population of vulnerable workers requires support in acquiring their vaccines, in the form of vaccination information in their own languages, and physical access to vaccination clinics.

Ortiz notes this could take the form of providing transportation to and from vaccine clinics for workers living in remote communities. She also suggests that vaccine clinics be brought to the workers so that entire farms can be offered vaccines at once. But, she points out, the process must be non-coercive.

A spokesperson from Alberta Health Services said in an emailed statement that "anyone in Alberta, including a migrant farm worker, who is 12 or older can get the vaccine…Work is underway to increase outreach to marginalized or vulnerable groups across the province."

The spokesperson also said if an individual does not have identification with their age on it, they can book a vaccination appointment by calling Alberta Health Services at 811. He did not answer questions about the issue of a lack of transportation that migrant farmworkers face.

The letter from AMexCal also featured quotes from migrant workers themselves, though their names were changed to protect their privacy.

The quotes from workers described fears that they will be required to have been vaccinated in order to return to their home countries when the season ends. They also expressed a fear of taking COVID-19 home with them to their families.

"If we get sick, operations at the farm might stop. We want to work but we also want to be protected from COVID and go back with health to our families," a worker named as Luis G. said.

Canada relies heavily on the temporary foreign worker program for its food production. In all of Canada, temporary foreign workers make up 20 per cent of total employment in the agriculture sector. In 2018 in Alberta, there were 1,900 migrant farmworkers employed on farms, or roughly six per cent of the total workforce.

Ortiz said the issues facing migrant agricultural workers in Alberta get little attention when compared to workers in Ontario or British Columbia. She also said the agricultural sector has a firm grip on public opinion in the province, and criticism of farmers is not readily accepted.

Chelsea Nash is rabble's labour beat reporter for 2020-2021. To contact her with story leads, email chelsea[at]rabble.ca.

Image credit: Faith Unlimited/Flickr

 

Antibiotic-resistant strains of staph bacteria may be spreading between pigs raised in factory farms

Findings from DNA-sequencing study raise public health concerns

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Research News

 

DNA sequencing of bacteria found in pigs and humans in rural eastern North Carolina, an area with concentrated industrial-scale pig-farming, suggests that multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains are spreading between pigs, farmworkers, their families and community residents, and represents an emerging public health threat, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

S. aureus is commonly found in soil and water, as well as on the skin and in the upper respiratory tract in pigs, other animals, and people. It can cause medical problems from minor skin infections to serious surgical wound infections, pneumonia, and the often-lethal blood-infection condition known as sepsis. The findings provide evidence that multidrug-resistant S. aureus strains are capable of spreading and possibly causing illness in and around factory farm communities in the U.S.--a scenario the authors say researchers should continue to investigate.

The study was published online February 22 in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The researchers in recent years have been collecting samples of S. aureus from pigs, farmworkers, farmworkers' family members, and community residents--including children--in the top pig-producing counties in North Carolina. For the study, they sequenced the DNA from some of these samples to determine the relation of the strains found in pigs and people. They found that the strains were very closely related, providing evidence for transmission between pigs and people. Most of the strains carried genes conferring resistance to multiple antibiotics.

"We found that these livestock-associated S. aureus strains had many genes that confer resistance to antimicrobial drugs commonly used in the U.S. industrialized pig production system," says study first author Pranay Randad, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Bloomberg School's Department of Environmental Health and Engineering.

"These findings warrant future investigations into the transmission dynamics in nearby communities and disease burden associated with these strains in the United States," says study senior author Christopher Heaney, PhD, associate professor in the same department. Epidemiologists have long suspected that S. aureus and other bacteria are transmitted from humans to pigs on factory farms, and thereafter evolve antibiotic resistance within the pigs. The animals are routinely given antibiotics to prevent outbreaks in their dense concentrations on factory farms. The drug-resistant bacterial strains may then be transmitted back to humans, becoming a potentially serious source of disease.

In recent years, Heaney and colleagues have been gathering S. aureus isolates from pigs and farmworkers at factory-scale pig farms in North Carolina, one of the leading pig-farming states. Their research has shown that livestock-associated strains of S. aureus, many of them antibiotic-resistant strains, can be found not only in pigs but also in farmworkers, their family members, and residents living nearby.

For the new study they performed whole-genome sequencing on 49 of these S. aureus isolates to characterize these strains at the DNA level and get a more precise picture of their interrelatedness.

One finding was that all these isolates, whether taken from humans or pigs, belonged to a grouping of S. aureus strains known as clonal complex 9 (CC9).

"This CC9 is a novel and emerging subpopulation of S. aureus that not many people have been studying, apart from a few reports in Asia," Randad says.

The researchers also determined from their analysis that the CC9 isolates from North Carolina were closely related, in many cases implying recent transmission between pigs and people. Moreover, virtually all of the isolates that appeared to be involved in transmission between pigs and humans were multidrug resistant, suggesting that diseases these isolates cause could be hard to treat.

The scope of the study didn't include evaluating S. aureus-related disease among people in the affected communities, but one of the pig farmworkers who carried a CC9 isolate in their nose reported a recent skin infection.

"In other countries, such as in Europe, we see a high level of coordinated research on this topic from a public health perspective, with open access to collect bacterial isolates from pigs raised on factory farms, but so far in the U.S. not as much is being done," Randad says.

###

"Transmission of Antimicrobial-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Clonal Complex 9 between Pigs and Humans, United States" was co-authored by Pranay Randad, Jesper Larsen, Hülya Kaya, Nora Pisanic, Carly Ordak, Lance Price, Maliha Aziz, Maya Nadimpalli, Sarah Rhodes, Jill Stewart, Dave Love, David Mohr, Meghan Davis, Lloyd Miller, Devon Hall, Karen Carroll, Trish Perl, and Christopher Heaney.

Support for the study was provided by the Sherrilyn and Ken Fisher Center for Environmental Infectious Diseases Discovery Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; the GRACE Communications Foundation; the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, among other funding sources.

California agricultural employers, workers approach smoke concerns differently

by Amy Quinton, UC Davis

Spinach harvest in Hollister, California. Credit: Hector Amezcua/UC Davis

In 2018, California wildfires burned more than 1.8 million acres and caused smoke to drift hundreds of miles. As the frequency and intensity of wildfires increases with climate change, California agricultural workers are at greater risk of smoke exposure as they often have no option but to work outdoors.

A new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis, finds that while wildfires and smoke exposure are recognized by farmworkers and employers as a growing threat and safety concern, the means to address these concerns differs between the two groups.

"What stood out in this study is the substantial disparities between agricultural employers and farmworkers," said Heather Riden with the Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety at UC Davis.

Riden, who led the research in partnership with the California Institute for Rural Studies, said that while growers and employers expressed concern about poor air quality at the time of the study in 2018, many had no clear plans or protocols for measuring air quality or managing workers in such conditions. While the public is advised to stay indoors due to poor air quality during a wildfire, agricultural work often continues.

The study also found that when farmworkers were offered protective masks, many found them difficult to use while working due to heat-related discomfort and chafing. Others believed wearing two bandanas over the mouth and nose would provide just as much protection.

Farmworkers' experience is compounded by economic need.

"Many farmworkers will continue working, even in unsafe conditions, to support their families. They don't have many other options," said Riden.

New regulations

Last year, the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health, better known as Cal/OSHA, enacted an emergency regulation requiring employers to take measures to protect workers from wildfire smoke when the Air Quality Index reaches 151 or greater, which is considered unhealthy. Riden said as CAL/OSHA begins to craft permanent regulations, she hopes it takes the study's findings into consideration.

"This highlights the need for better awareness for both agricultural employers and farmworkers about the health risks associated with wildfire smoke," said Riden. "Employers also need training materials and concrete steps they can take to protect workers."

To assist agricultural employers with meeting the requirements outlined in the newly adopted regulation, the Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety developed training materials and an employer checklist.Air quality during and after wildfires

---

More information: Heather E. Riden et al, Wildfire Smoke Exposure: Awareness and Safety Responses in the Agricultural Workplace, Journal of Agromedicine (2020). DOI: 10.1080/1059924X.2020.1725699

CALIFORNIA
Esmeralda Soria, the daughter of farmworkers, to chair Assembly Agriculture Committee


Andrew Kuhn/akuhn@mercedsun-star.com

Juan Esparza Loera
Mon, July 3, 2023

Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, D-Merced, has been appointed chair of the Assembly Agriculture Committee, which helps oversee California’s $50 billion farming industry.

The appointment, announced Monday, means that the state Senate and Assembly agriculture committees are now chaired by daughters of farmworkers from the Central Valley.

State Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Bakersfield, grew up in Sanger, about 55 miles from Soria’s hometown of Lindsay.

New Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, is the grandson of farmworkers.

“I hold a deep connection with California agriculture,” said Soria, a former Fresno City Councilmember who won her Assembly race last November. “I pledge to continually engage with and bring the voices of farmers and farmworkers to the state Capitol.”

Her 27th Assembly District stretches from just south of Turlock to Merced, Los Baños, Mendota, Coalinga and a swath of Fresno. The region is largely agricultural.

Soria will lead an 11-member committee on issues including commodities, commissions, food access, fairs, food labeling, pest management, livestock/poultry, and the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

“As the daughter of first-generation immigrants and farmworkers, I worked alongside my parents in the Central Valley agricultural fields, and understand the importance of supporting both our agricultural industry and workers,” said Soria in a news statement.

“I’m grateful to Speaker Rivas for entrusting me with the important work of this committee,” she said.

Soria vowed to “continually engage with and bring the voices of farmers and farmworkers to the state Capitol.

“I hold a deep connection with California agriculture.” she said.

Juan Esparza Loera is the editor of Vida en el Valle.

In Rural California, Farmworkers Fend for Themselves for Health Care

DAVID BACON

Mother Jones

DECEMBER 31, 2022

Agricultural laborers spray against insects and weeds inside the orchards of a fruit farm in Mesa, California.

Bret Stirton/ Getty

This piece was published originally by Capital & Main. You can read their full series on the struggle for farmworker health care in California, Ill Harvest, here.

Carmen Hernandez lives in a small home on Chateau Fresno Avenue, one of the three streets that make up Lanare, a tiny unincorporated settlement in the San Joaquin Valley. The street’s name sounds more appropriate to an upscale housing development. In reality it is a potholed tarmac lane leading into the countryside from the highway.

In Lanare live the descendants of its original African American founders, excluded by racial covenants from renting or buying homes in surrounding cities. Here they rub shoulders with their Mexican neighbors — the farmworkers who make up the valley’s agricultural workforce.

Hernandez’s house sits behind a white-painted fence of bricks and wrought iron, and a neat lawn dotted with a few small trees. On the other side of the road are the pistachio trees that make her home almost uninhabitable four times each year.

Just before the nuts are harvested in September, a tractor drags a tank with long arms down the rows, spraying a thick fog of pesticide into the trees. Quickly the chemical travels across the dozen yards between the orchard and Hernandez’s house. During other times of the year, the spray rig lays down weed killer, or a chemical that causes leaves to drop from the branches after harvest. Fertilizer is another evil-smelling chemical the neighbors have to contend with. The families on Chateau Fresno don’t let their kids play outside much anyway, but when the spray is in the air, they make sure to keep them inside.

One might ask, why did Hernandez build a house across the street from such dangers? She didn’t. When Self-Help Enterprises helped Lanare’s low-income families to build homes they’d never otherwise have been able to afford, the field across the street grew cotton or wheat. Those crops also use a lot of chemicals in California’s industrial agriculture system, but when pistachio trees were planted eight years ago, the contamination grew by an order of magnitude.

“Why did the state or county let them do this?” Hernandez asks. “They don’t even put up notices to warn us.” She’s asked the tractor driver what the chemicals are, but he doesn’t know. “He doesn’t even know the name of the owner of the orchard. He’s just hired by a labor contractor.”

For farmworkers, Hernandez’s predicament is familiar. PolicyLink’s 2013 study “California Unincorporated: Mapping Disadvantaged Communities in the San Joaquin Valley” found that over 300,000 people live in small, unincorporated communities spread across rural valleys where California’s agricultural wealth is produced. For them, living in a town like Lanare is a double threat to their health. Farm laborers work and live in a chemical soup, a source of interrelated health problems. And because their homes are in remote rural areas, getting adequate health care creates additional obstacles.

Advertise with Mother Jones


These unincorporated towns, however, are also often organized communities. Grassroots groups deal with the social determinants of health, from air pollution to water scarcity and contamination. Their experience gave them a head start when the pandemic hit. They were often better able to respond to the needs of farmworkers than the government or large health care institutions.

Living in the Chemical Soup

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air quality in the United States. One study in BioMed Research International found “Seasonal agricultural workers are exposed to the worst conditions of working groups” and called asthma “an important health problem among seasonal agricultural workers.”

Children living in this environment suffer asthma as well. In the Imperial Valley, one of the poorest counties in California, 12,000 children have asthma, and go to the emergency room for it at twice the rate of the other kids in the state. Residents of that valley’s unincorporated communities, like Seeley and Heber, live in the same proximity to the fields as Carmen Hernandez does in Lanare.

The relationship between illness and chemical contamination is often hard to pin down. Nevertheless, the connection to living in small towns where pesticides, fertilizers and dust are in the air and water seems obvious to many residents.

Rosario Reyes and Wilfredo Navares lived their married lives in Poplar, another small community in the southern San Joaquin Valley surrounded by orchards and grape vineyards. She remembers that when her husband’s doctor told him that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, the first question she asked was whether he worked in the fields.

“He believed it came from the chemicals he was exposed to during his 31 years as a farmworker,” Reyes says. “He worked with weed killers like Roundup, and there wasn’t much known about it then. He knew the dangers in general, but he had to earn a living. Before he got ALS he never really got any health care.”

As his incurable disease progressed, Navares gradually lost the ability to control the muscles responsible for walking, talking and eating. For two years Reyes couldn’t work. “I had to bathe and dress him like a baby,” she says. At the end, before Navares died, Medi-Cal covered his medical visits. “But with or without it, he would have died just the same.”

Reyes has asthma and diabetes, and got COVID-19 last year. She’s 59, the age when people begin to think of retiring. But Reyes had to go back to work, even though it will likely prejudice her health. “I don’t have papers,” she explains. “Even though we were married, they won’t give me his Social Security.”

How Many, and How Unequal?

Farmworkers looking for environmental solutions and better health care first confront a major problem. The state doesn’t really know how many people make their living from agricultural labor in California.

According to researcher Ed Kissam, “population estimates in the American Community Survey that determine the allocation of federal and state funding for more than 300 programs are very low.” The ACS, he added, is a long survey that only one-third of the households in farmworker communities answer. While Kissam said it shows about 350,000 agricultural workers in California, Zachariah Rutledge of Michigan State University reported an annual average of 882,000 California farmworkers between 2018 and 2021. About 550,000 are field workers or processing and packing-shed workers, according to Kissam’s estimate. “This is the low-income, predominantly immigrant, often undocumented Latino population facing barriers to accessing health care,” says Kissam.

Kissam points out that the rural agricultural workforce is very diverse in terms of income and immigration status. “About 300,000 work in the San Joaquin Valley alone,” he says, “and live with another 350,000 family members. Most are long-term settled immigrants, in low-income households that include undocumented immigrants. Their eligibility is compromised for a broad range of social programs because they’re conditioned on immigration status. Almost a quarter of legally authorized farmworkers interviewed in the National Agricultural Workers Survey in California lacked health insurance and almost two-thirds of undocumented farmworkers lacked it.”

A study by Kissam in September 2020 showed that COVID-19 cases in 25 farmworker communities overall were about 2.5 times higher than the state average.

Farmworker communities were particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 when the pandemic started, at a much greater rate than people living in urban areas. By August 2020 Tulare County’s COVID-19 infection rate (1.96% of the population infected) was much greater, per capita, than that of large cities like San Francisco or Sacramento.

The per capita income of a county resident was $22,092 in 2020, compared to a U.S. average of $35,384. In unincorporated towns like Poplar and Lanare, poverty forces people to live closer together to share rent and living costs, making social distancing difficult. “The strategy of ‘doubling up’ to afford a place to live is ubiquitous in farmworker communities throughout the San Joaquin Valley,” Kissam says. Traveling to and from the fields in crowded cars or buses also places workers in close proximity.

People go to work because they can’t afford not to go. A day without pay can be difficult; a week could be ruinous. “Undocumented farmworkers with mild cases of COVID-19 are also reluctant to self-isolate,” Kissam adds, “because they’re ineligible for both unemployment insurance and CARES Act–funded pandemic assistance. In addition, people worry about the government using personal information for immigrant enforcement.” As a result, Dr. Alicia Riley reported that deaths of people employed in agriculture were about 1.6 times the average in 2020.


The Pandemic Comes to Lanare

In Lanare, the pandemic arrived after years of a crisis affecting the community’s water. The water under Lanare contains arsenic, which occurs naturally in the San Joaquin Valley’s arid, alkaline soil. When residents dug wells, Sam White remembers, county authorities minimized the danger. “We’d complain and they’d tell us to boil the water. They say arsenic cuts your life span by two years,” he says. Indeed, arsenic exposures can cause rashes and even in small doses have been linked to Alzheimer’s. “My mother had all that.”

Connie and Charlie Hammond live in a small house next to the highway. “My mom had a lot of illnesses that I think were connected to arsenic. We’d have to take her to Fresno [28 miles away], although at the end she went to a clinic in Riverdale [4 miles away] before she died.”

Eventually a water treatment plant was built to remove the arsenic, but it only ran for a few months before the local water company went broke. Nearly 40% of Lanare’s residents live below the poverty line and could not pay the bills. They organized Community United in Lanare and finally got the state to step in and dig new wells. After a year, the water was declared free of arsenic, but it smells and leaves a residue on sinks and toilets. Residents say no one will drink it.

Meanwhile the water table keeps dropping. The Hammonds, who moved across the highway a few years ago, had their well go dry. “Our neighbor ran out first, and we helped them. Then ours ran out a month ago,” Connie Hammond says. “Having water would certainly make our health better. We’re fortunate to have kids who bring us water, but not having it causes a lot of stress, especially for seniors like us.”

While fighting for water, Lanare faced the onset of the pandemic and hunger among residents isolated in their homes. Community United in Lanare was already distributing food several times a month when the lockdown began. “We were handing out food to 150 families,” Lanare food bank volunteer Isabel Solorio recalls, “and the number doubled and kept growing. The stores were empty. In Raisin City and Laton [other unincorporated communities], they were afraid and stopped their distributions. We didn’t.”

Due to a shortage in protective equipment, Solorio and other women sewed their own masks. “A hundred people got the virus here and three died,” she says. Community United in Lanare asked the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability in Fresno for help because the county was unable to provide adequate testing or vaccinations, says Solorio. They used their relationships with health authorities and elected officials, she adds, to get the state to set up a mobile testing and vaccination station.

“We asked for priority — farmworkers first,” she recalls. “Four or five hundred came the first day. You could tell by their boots they were coming from the fields. We were the first people to give vaccinations, before the local clinics, and we were distributing food at the same time. Since then we must have tested and vaccinated thousands of people.”

Poplar’s Organizing Project

In the summer Poplar is the center of the valley’s oppressive heat, where the temperature soars to over 110 degrees. Almost none of its homes have air conditioning, and swamp coolers, used to chill off, also produce mold. The resulting respiratory problems are complicated by the almond harvest. “There’s dust over everything and in everyone’s lungs,” says Arturo Rodriguez, co-director of the Larry Itliong Resource Center. “It’s hard just to breathe.”

Rodriguez and co-director Mari Perez-Ruiz opened the center on June 15, 2020, and by June 19 they started food distributions. When they had problems getting food from the local food bank, they convinced a county supervisor to give them two pallets of groceries every week from the food he had available.

When the pandemic started, several residents died. “Often three generations live in small houses or trailers where there’s no space to quarantine,” Rodriguez says. “Our harvest season used to last nine months, and now, with growers bringing in more H-2A workers, people living here get only four months of work. Local farmworkers feared not having enough work to feed their families, so they went to work even when they were sick. Often several family members work in the same crew, and they were afraid to report anything to the boss, because then everyone in the family would have to stay home.”

The center got some computers donated and built booths where people could go online to get telehealth advice. “When the pandemic began, the service providers closed. We stayed open,” Perez-Ruiz says. “We were one of the first to provide free testing. We coordinated with Tulare County to do free events, and gave out PPE [personal protective equipment] and clothing with food. We had to push, so we were a little loud. But our first event had 600 families.”

In January 2021 the vaccines came. The center became a site, and has vaccinated over 5,000 people in total, providing test kits and shots at the same time. “We’re an organizing project, and our campaigns are led by the community,” Perez-Ruiz says. “The county spent a hundred thousand dollars, and we only spent a few hundred, but we vaccinated more people.”

Poor But Organized

Unincorporated communities may be poor, but they’re often organized. Those organizations fighting for basic social services like water before the pandemic became vehicles for fighting the virus. The residents and activists involved see a lesson for improving community access to health care generally.

“In Poplar, just to make a doctor’s visit to a clinic in Porterville [12 miles away] you have to give up your whole day,” Rodriguez says. “That’s why Picho [his uncle Wilfredo Navarez] never went. And if the husband has to use the car to get to work, [the wife] and kids can’t go.”

The Larry Itliong Resource Center partnered with Dr. Omar Guzman, a physician who grew up in Woodville, a nearby community, where he returned to practice after medical school. Every month he comes to the center, bringing medical students, in a mobile clinic called Street Medicine. He organizes screenings, brings in mental health professionals and visits encampments of unhoused people on the Tule River. His young colleagues even drive into Visalia, 30 miles away, to pick up baby formula. At the end of clinic day, they gather in the center to talk about the needs of rural communities.

“People I grew up with haven’t seen a doctor in a very long time,” Rodriguez says. “Health care in our communities isn’t proactive. People don’t get regular checkups — [they] just go when there’s an emergency. The infrastructure of healthcare has failed them. So this is a way to change.”

Ed Kissam believes that the model for health care serving small farmworker communities has to be community based. “Community centers are established, widely trusted resources for farmworker families,” he explains. “County/clinic partnerships are very useful in reducing language and access barriers that keep some people, including farmworkers, from being tested and treated.”

He argues for a critical assessment of the pandemic’s lessons. “The system was slower in expanding to outlying farmworker communities than in setting up testing sites in urban areas,” he cautions. “Structural factors and social determinants of health have been the primary factors in the virus’ spread. If we look at the real-world dynamics of life in farmworker communities, and respond thoughtfully and innovatively, we can overcome many barriers.”

In Lanare, Isabel Solorio would like to see mobile testing and vaccination clinics become a way to give farmworker families much broader access to care. “We need a clinic bus with all the equipment for everything from mammograms to dentists and optometrists. Our kids are ashamed to say they can’t see in school because they know their parents don’t have money for glasses, so everything is blurry and they fall behind. Why can’t they get free ones here in Lanare and stay in school? And if people can control their asthma with a mobile clinic here, isn’t that a lower cost for the government than ambulances and visits to the emergency room? So the clinic should come to the people instead of people coming to the clinic.”

But service by itself is not enough, she believes. “Why was Lanare prepared when the county wasn’t? When the water stopped, who came to help us? We helped ourselves by learning to organize. That showed us we can change other things too. We pay taxes, and we have a right to survive.”

 

New book spotlights influence of Pentecostalism on California’s Mexican farmworkers

'Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California' recounts how 'divine healing' was seen as a pragmatic way to care for impoverished workers who lacked regular access to medical care.

Salinas Apostólicos harvesting. Members of a Salinas, California, church gather for a quasi-staged photograph in the mid-1940s. Standing on the far right is Manuel Vizcarra, the eventual presiding bishop of La Asamblea Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús (AAFCJ). Photograph courtesy of Milca Montañez-Vizcarra.

January 20, 2023

By 

Alejandra Molina

(RNS) — The farm labor history of California has often been told through the plight of agricultural laborers during the Depression era and the efforts, beginning in the early 1960s, of the United Farm Workers to improve working conditions of Mexicans in the fields.

But to Lloyd Barba, a professor of religion at Amherst College, this history isn’t complete without factoring in religion, particularly the stories of California’s Mexican farmworkers who embraced Pentecostalism, a Christian movement generally seen at the time as a “distasteful new sect” with “cultish and fanatical tendencies.”

“I think about how often Latino history is told as labor history, and that makes sense … but where are the laborers going?” Barba said. “If we’re going to get a more balanced and accurate Latino history, we have to look at Latino religious life.”

In his recently released book, “Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California,” Barba writes about the Mexican and Mexican American Pentecostal agricultural workers who built houses of worship in the state’s agricultural towns, who turned to “divine healing” for injuries they sustained working in the fields and whose worship style inspired civil rights leader Cesar Chavez to incorporate music and singing in his union organizing.

Lloyd Barba. Photo courtesy of Amherst

Barba also writes about the role of women in these church spaces “who were the foundation of the church,” despite not given ministerial credentials to become preachers. They raised money for the building of churches by selling food and made the worship spaces look holy through their handmade goods, such as doilies and fabric embroidered with biblical phrases, Barba said.

“To do a material history of this Mexican Pentecostal movement is to do women’s history,” Barba told Religion News Service.

The book traces the development of Pentecostalism among migrant laborers between 1916 and 1966, before the heyday of the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. Barba felt it important to “describe a moment where the exploitation of Mexican workers is at its worst.”

Barba, in his book, recounts how “divine healing” was seen as a pragmatic way to care for impoverished workers who lacked regular access to medical care. For laborers working in tough conditions, it was about “hard work and fervent worship … work by day and worship by night,” Barba said.

“People are getting hurt. People are contracting tuberculosis. People are seeking out healing when there’s not a health care system in place to provide those kinds of services,” Barba said. “Whether we’re talking physical healing, or what we now refer to as mental health and counseling, these are spaces that offered respite in an otherwise punishing world.”

Worship services “would call for people who were sick to come up and to be healed,” Barba said. There was a “spectacle” side to it, he added, “in that it was a very public kind of ritual.”

In the book, Barba cites a flier distributed by La Iglesia Apostólica Cristiania del Pentecostés that invited residents in the Imperial County city of Calexico to revival services held “under the direction of the Holy Spirit.” These services were outdoor and presided by a Mexican orator and pastor who lived in Los Angeles. “All are invited. Bring your sick and God will bless them,” the flier declared.

Women and the Tamales Delivery Truck. Apostólico congregations transformed the tamales fundraiser into local cottage industries, complete with a streamlined production and clientele bases. In this 1940s photograph from Salinas, tamaleras pose proudly next to an early 1940s Chevrolet Carryall, which they customized and later came to know affectionately as the “tamales truck.” Photograph courtesy of Milca Montañez-Vizcarra

Barba writes about the “sonic elements of services,” which included “collective singing, exuberant worshipping, guitar playing, percussive striking, hand clapping, and shouting ‘aleluya.’”

The “vibrancy” of this sacred music inspired Chavez to later incorporate it into his organizational tactics. Barba wrote of the working relationship between Chavez — who at the time served with the Community Service Organization — and the Rev. Mariano Marín — a Pentecostal preacher and pastor — who led his immigrant congregation in the midst of Operation Wetback, which resulted in a mass deportation of Mexican nationals.

Through this partnership, Chavez witnessed Marín leading worship services out of a house in the San Joaquin Valley town of Madera and noticed a contrast between “the sonic and material world of Pentecostal and Catholic music,” Barba wrote.

Chavez recalled in his 1975 autobiography visiting a little church in Madera of a dozen men and women, describing “more spirit there than when I went to mass where there were two hundred.

“Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California” by Lloyd Barba. Courtesy image

“These people were really committed in their beliefs and this made them sing and clap and participate. I liked that,” he wrote. “I think that’s where I got the idea of singing at the meetings. That was one of the first things we did when I started the Union. And it was hard for me because I couldn’t carry a tune.”

For Barba, who hails from Stockton in the Central Valley, it’s noteworthy that this religious movement grew in rural agricultural areas.

He sees the influence of those early immigrant houses of worship today in the Spanish-language church signs across California’s Central Valley. A church that used to be “First Baptist Church” in many cities in the Central Valley may now be “Iglesia Bautista,” Barba said, adding that he also knows of church services in Mixtec among Indigenous Mexicans arriving in the area.

“Because of a large — first Mexican but more so now Central American — influx into the agricultural fields in California, you can note a very visible transformation of the religious demography,” Barba said.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PENTECOSTAL 

Shooting uncovers 'plantation mentality' in a rich, liberal California enclave

Anita Chabria
Thu, February 9, 2023 

Crystal Avila, 11, sits in the room that she shares with two siblings and her parents, including her mother, Rocio, foreground, at a home in Half Moon Bay, Calif. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

The bloodstains that mark the violent deaths of Aixiang Zhang and her husband, Zhishen Liu, are still visible on the ground of the mushroom farm where they were shot last month — fading patches that will be gone with the next rain.

It's a sorrowful sight, that their lives could disappear so quickly and completely into the dirt and gravel of this lonely place.

But it is also hard, in a different way, to look at the inadequate housing just a few feet away where some of the workers here were living: thin-walled rooms on a concrete-block foundation that must be frigid in the thick fog that often wraps this coast; a bleak, shared kitchen with a table topped in stainless steel; a shared bathroom reached by crossing the cold concrete floor of a shed. There is nothing of comfort or warmth in it, nothing that feels like home here at Concord Farms.

Still, these accommodations seem luxurious compared with those at the mushroom grower a few miles away, California Terra Garden, where a disgruntled worker began the shooting rampage that killed seven — three at Concord and four at Terra — on Jan. 23, possibly motivated by a $100 debt the employer had levied against him.

There, a colony of RVs, shacks and even a shipping container served as homes, tarps covering some to keep out the recent torrent of rain. The bathrooms are four port-a-potties, blue siding a splotch of color in a landscape of beaten-down squalor at the base of a flourishing grove of eucalyptus trees.

For decades, the housing we consider fair and livable for agricultural workers — even if we don't admit it — has hinged on what Half Moon Bay Vice Mayor Joaquin Jimenez describes as the "plantation mentality" of California's farming industry.

Activist and vice mayor Joaquin Jimenez stands near an area on a farm where a worker was killed by a mass shooter in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

"Workers are only here to work, and that's it," is how he described it, as we drove through this town where poverty and prosperity are neighbors but rarely mingle.

The Ritz-Carlton lords over a prime section of the beachfront bluffs here, barrel waves crashing against the sheer cliffs below, guests sipping $24 glasses of Paso Robles Cabernet. The world-famous Mavericks surf spot is minutes away.

Both are draws for the tech millionaires from Palo Alto, just over the Santa Cruz Mountains, who have turned this once-sleepy pit stop of farms into a place of trophy mansions and Teslas, snapping up land and driving up rents — but rarely venturing up the unpaved trails that lead to places like Terra Garden.

After the shooting, Gov. Gavin Newsom weighed in, calling housing at Terra Garden "deplorable." But he didn't call it surprising.

Activist and vice mayor Joaquin Jimenez stands near an area on a farm where a worker was killed by a mass shooter in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Because dilapidated, overcrowded housing for farmworkers has long been the norm, not the exception.

"Those conditions are well established and known," Newsom said, adding the issue is "complicated."

Sure, some of it is complicated. But some of it is not.

The simple truth is our entire system of agricultural production is based on giving workers as little as possible, under circumstances that make it hard if not dangerous to complain — whether that means being undocumented or just so poor the loss of even a day's work is devastating. Even the good actors, the growers who pay better wages and have modernized housing, often offer conditions most non-immigrant workers would refuse.

Vulnerable workers keep quiet because they know life can always get worse. Jimenez remembers being 4 years old, hiding in the Brussels sprouts while federal immigration authorities hovered in helicopters overhead.

Where it gets thorny, to Newsom's point, is why nothing changes: Those with the power to crack down on miserable housing often don't because they know there is no place for farmworkers to go.

"I understand there are laws," said Jimenez, as we bumped through town in his electric blue ’92 Chevy pickup, bay leaves from a recent vigil drying on the dashboard. The son of farmworkers, he lived in a house with 21 people as a kid, earned a master's degree and came back to fight.

But if the city of Half Moon Bay, the county of San Mateo and even the state of California close down subpar housing, red-tag it or enforce those laws that make it illegal to stuff humans in shipping containers and shacks with no running water or insulation, what happens to the workers, and their children?

Vanessa Rodriguez of the nonprofit Ayudando Latinos A Soñar distributes checks to farmworkers at a farm where a mass shooting happened in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Jimenez and other advocates had visited Terra Garden many times before. Two advocates had delivered plastic sheeting to cover the roofs just hours before the shooting.

Eight families, 27 people, were allegedly living there. Workers were making about $3,000 a month and paying $300 of that in rent.

Where would they have gone if their housing, pitiful as it was, was taken away in a town where market-rate studio apartments rent for more than $2,000 a month? Where the median home price is $1.2 million? Where the $300 hovels seemed like a reasonable offer, or at least an affordable one?

"We would be responsible for people being homeless, or moving into a worse situation," Jimenez said of that conundrum. "But it makes you think, is my solution better than the problem?"

Rocio Avila sleeps in a room smaller than the average prison cell.

She shares it with her husband, Roberto Hernandez, and their three children, paying $500 a month.

Rocio Avila watches her children Angel, 5, and Perla, 8, in the bedroom in their home in Half Moon Bay. The family of five sleeps in this bedroom. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Perla, 8, and Angel, 5, wedge in with their parents on a queen-size bed. It's pushed into the corner, but it still takes up nearly the entire space, leaving only a narrow walkway wide enough to open the door.

Crystal Avila, 11, is Avila's eldest daughter. She's an artist with long pigtails and rosy cheeks who sleeps on the floor at the foot of the bed, a little nest between the frame and the closet, underneath a picture she drew of pink cherry blossoms.

"We have the privilege to have something other people don't," Avila told me when I visited her home this week. She is one of the lucky ones, she said. She has a home with running water and power, bathrooms inside and a stove that works.

Still, Avila is desperate for a bigger house, one where the kids can be free instead of trying to stay out of the way.

Crystal dreams of a big bedroom, with space for a desk — "living a good life," as she puts it.

That means knowing "where you're going to study. Where are you siblings going be, where your parents going to be? And, like, to be calm and know that you're in a safe place," she tells me.

Every fourth Friday, Crystal and her mom march in a vigil downtown for affordable housing. Avila isn't sure the town really cares.

"We are part of the community too," she said. "They know this, and they don't want Half Moon Bay to grow."

Every farmworker is in the same plight, in one way or another.

"Gloria" worked at one of the mushroom farms, but she doesn't want me to use her name. She rents a room for $1,200 a month in a two-bedroom house shared by 10 people, where she is not allowed to use the kitchen.

She buys all her food from the restaurant where she works nights.

She is trying to save money, $10,000, to bring her daughter from Mexico. They haven't seen each other in a year, a little death every day.

Angel Avila, 5, and is sister Perla, 8, play in a room they share with another sibling and their parents at home in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

But Gloria can never seem to get ahead, never save enough on her $15.50 minimum wage, in a place where it would take about $38 an hour to live an average life.

She's back working at the farm during the day, though the shock is still clear in her eyes. She needs the money.

Maurilio Lopez Chavez understands that frustration.

His kids are with him — Leonardo, 1, and Sochi, 6.

Sochi dreams of being a chef, or maybe a doctor. But Lopez Chavez works at a flower farm, and the rain destroyed the roots of the dahlia crop. Now there are no flowers to harvest, no work, no money coming in.

He lives in an apartment that is owned by his employer. He pays $1,500 a month, what the owner says is a discounted rate good only as long as he remains employed at the nursery. But Lopez Chavez owes that amount, destroyed crop or not.

He can't get unemployment benefits because he is undocumented. He's come to Ayudando Latinos A Soñar, known as ALAS, a local nonprofit, for food and help. In a recent survey by UC Merced, more than 60% of farmworkers said they've had trouble paying for food since the pandemic hit.

"I don't care for myself," Lopez Chavez said as he waited for donated Safeway gift cards.

But the kids, they're hungry.

::

The predicament of farmworkers across California has grown worse in recent years.

The pandemic brought death, the crowded living conditions letting COVID-19 sweep through homes and workplaces. Yet in the Merced study, nearly a quarter of workers didn't know they had a right to paid sick leave.

Climate change has brought more extremes, fire and floods that leave workers picking strawberries in downpours and grapes in thick smoke. More than a third of respondents in the Merced study said they have trouble keeping their house warm enough or cool enough as weather becomes more severe.

Fifteen percent said they feel uncontrollable worry; 14% feel depressed or hopeless.

All of which makes me wonder: Would the system really fall apart if we demand better for workers, or if we supported them when they demand better for themselves? If we scrutinized labor conditions of America's farmworkers with the same urgency we use to ensure our mushrooms are organic, our coffee fair-trade and our chickens roaming free?

Farmworker Yesnia Garcia stands in her living room of her modular home on a farm in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

A few miles from Terra Garden, Yesenia Garcia lives in a cute, wood-sided modular home on Cabrillo Farms.

Flowers and vegetables are planted around its borders, and inside, laminate wood floors flow into a kitchen where glass tiles decorate the backsplash.

There are four bedrooms, two baths, and a washer and dryer that make her busy life as a working mother easier. A big television hangs on the wall of the living room, where her two sons' toy trucks are lined up next to the couch.

Garcia is on the newly formed San Mateo County Farmworker Advisory Commission, and this is the kind of housing she is fighting for.

Jimenez, the vice mayor, said the owners of Terra Garden are considering building something similar.

But it shouldn't take seven deaths to make us demand they do.

Activist and vice mayor Joaquin Jimenez checks on farmworkers in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

And that's the pain — the trauma and suffering of decades, not moments — the farmworkers of Half Moon Bay want you to remember when the next mass shooting tries to tear our attention away from this community.

Honor the dead.

But don't forget: Something needs to change for the living.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

New poll finds broad support -- even among Trump voters -- for a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants
Laura Gómez, Arizona Mirror
September 23, 2021

A young boy holds U.S. flags as immigrants and community leaders rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court to mark the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama's executive orders on immigration in Washington, on Nov. 20, 2015. 

Photo by Kevin Lamarque for Reuters.

Arizona voters overwhelmingly support a pathway to citizenship for some immigrants who meet some conditions for eligibility, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The survey of 323 Arizona voters between Sept. 10 and 18 found broad support, even among Trump voters, for “earned citizenship" for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children (often called dreamers), farmworkers, essential workers and those with Temporary Protected Status. Earned citizenship is a term that broadly means naturalization that is granted after immigrants pay a fine, pass language tests or other meet requirements to comply with eligibility.

It comes as Democrats in Congress struggle to pass a pathway for citizenship for millions, but not all, undocumented immigrants through the budget reconciliation process.

The poll was commissioned by the American Business Immigration Coalition and FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy group, and released during a press call. The survey was conducted by Democratic polling firm BSP Research and Republican firm Shaw & Company Research. Arizona was one of 11 battleground states polled.

Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., spoke at the press event. He said Arizona is home to an estimated 170,000 undocumented residents who are dreamers, farmworkers and TPS holders.

“No state stands to benefit more from immigration modernization than my home state of Arizona," Stanton said. “It's clear to me that Americans, regardless of political affiliation, are demanding immigration reform. It's up to us to deliver."

Stanton, who supported the House version of the reconciliation package that includes a pathway to citizenship for some immigrants, called on other Democrats in Congress and the White House to end the paralysis in the Senate.

GOP pollster Daron Shaw, of Shaw & Company Research, said conservatives have supported a pathway to citizenship for certain kinds of undocumented immigrants for a long time.

The poll also showed that, when considering the economic contributions of some immigrants with no permanent status in Arizona, the majority of voters support a path to citizenship for dreamers, farmworkers, and essential workers.

Majorities of Trump supporters and self-described conservatives backed a pathway to citizenship. Among Trump voters, 61% support a pathway to citizenship for dreamers, 58% for farmworkers and 50% for essential workers who are undocumented. Those polled who identified as conservatives support citizenship by 66% for dreamers, 59% for farmworkers and 56% for essential workers. Overall, nearly 4 out of 5 Arizona voters supported this pathway.

Democratic pollster Matt Barreto, a principal at BSP Research, said Arizona voters have changed significantly from the late 2000s, when anti-immigrant sentiment was at its height in the state. Barreto said the poll showed a majority of Arizona voters don't want to see the removal of undocumented immigrants and they understand that undocumented immigrants contribute to the economy.

“They can relate to the immigrants they work with in their communities," he said.

The poll also showed most Arizona voters polled support Democrats taking action now even without Republican votes of support, Barreto said.

“Simply put, Arizona voters are tired of inaction and are ready for reforms they believe will benefit small businesses and the economy as a whole," the pollsters concluded in their analysis of the results.

The poll found over 60% of Arizona voters say immigrant laws and regulations are not working.

“Voters don't believe the system is working well, (and) it's been a 20-30 year issue," Barreto said. “Now we have an opportunity here."

Alejandra Gomez, co-executive director of Living United for Change Arizona, said the poll also signals what community members who talk with voters have known for years: that “being anti-immigrant no longer provides a viable path to victory."

“(The poll) further validates the fact that immigration is no longer an issue among conservatives because most are in support of a pathway to citizenship," she said.

Gomez said the poll should send a message to U.S. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly that their constituents want them to pass a pathway to citizenship.

“This poll perfectly illustrates that, at the end of the day, Arizonans are not worried about Senate rules and procedures, they grow weary of the centrists in Congress conducting performative and self-defeating theatre," she said. “Positioning yourselves a few steps closer to the center no matter the cost despite the reality of public opinion to prove a point is not a winning strategy."

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com

 Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

Workers call for safety net benefits for undocumented Californians.

 ‘It’s a human right’

Laura S. Diaz
Fri, March 31, 2023 

Since last fall, Central Valley agricultural workers have had less work due to prolonged rain storms and the resulting flooding.

But undocumented immigrants are ineligible for unemployment insurance, disaster relief and many other safety net services. That’s left many farmworkers — like Mariano Carranza, an undocumented immigrant from Guerrero, Mexico who has lived in Fresno for more than 20 years — struggling to pay for groceries, rent and other bills.

“Sometimes we rely on our savings and use them all to get by,” Carranza said in Spanish during a meeting last Friday at Fresno City Hall.

Now, farmworkers and immigrants’ advocates are calling on state leaders to expand the social safety net so undocumented Californians can qualify for assistance.- ADVERTISEMENT -


They are rallying in support of a bill introduced by Sen. María Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, known as the Excluded Workers Program, which would allow undocumented workers to receive unemployment benefits for two years.

Gov. Newsom vetoed a similar proposal last year, citing the multi-million-dollar cost to update the Employment Development Department’s information technology systems.

Approximately 1.1 million workers in California are undocumented, and collectively they contribute $3.7 billion in state and local tax revenues, reported UC Merced’s Community and Labor Center.

“Our community is affected by not having access to unemployment benefits,” Armando Celestino, Triqui interpreter with the Centro Binacional para el Desarollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (CBDIO), or the Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities, said in Spanish. “We want this to change.”
La Abeja, a newsletter written for and by California Latinos

Sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter centered around Latino issues in California.
Bills aim to extend safety net to undocumented Californians

Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, introduced the Excluded Workers Pilot Program last year. Under the program, undocumented workers who had lost their job or had their work hours reduced could receive up to $300 a week for 20 weeks.

Proponents say such a program is even more critical this year. The COVID-19 pandemic, along with the years-long drought followed by severe rains and flooding, they say, has underscored the vulnerability of the men and women who harvest the country’s fruits and vegetables.

Under Durazo’s proposal, the Excluded Workers Program would run for two years — from 2025 to 2027 — and be administered by the Employment Development Department. It would provide undocumented workers with $300 weekly for up to 20 weeks of unemployment.

The bill is opposed by the California Taxpayers Association, which argued that the state’s unemployment system “does not have the financial ability to sustain any added benefits at this time,” according to an analysis by the Senate Committee on Labor, Public Employment and Retirement.

The Excluded Workers Program is among the Latino Legislative Caucus’ priorities for this year. The caucus is also prioritizing efforts to extend health and food benefits to undocumented Californians.

While these proposals wind through the legislature, Newsom’s office says it is taking other steps to support undocumented workers and communities.

The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) is “mobilizing existing funds,” from the Rapid Response Fund to provide disaster relief to immigrant Californias regardless of their documentation status, according to the governor’s office.

“These efforts also include ensuring mixed-status families are accessing federal and state resources that they may be eligible for,” the governor’s office said in a statement.

State Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, D-Fresno, addressed a crowd including farmworkers and undocumented workers at Fresno City Hall on March 24, 2023. The Centro Binacional Centro Binacional para el Desarollo Indígena Oaxaqueño, the Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities, organized the meeting between community members, organizations and government representatives to advocate for social safety net benefits for all people regardless of immigration status.

Lawmaker pledges support for unemployment proposal

State legislators, community advocates and farmworkers gathered at Fresno City Hall last Friday to advocate for the need for safety net benefits for all Californians.

Carranza said undocumented workers’ labor contributes to the state’s economy, so the state and local governments should do more to support workers in return.

“Even through the COVID-19 pandemic, extreme heat or cold, we farmworkers are always there on the frontline,” he said in Spanish. “We don’t back down, and we don’t give up.”

Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula, D-Fresno, attended the event and vowed to ensure the Excluded Workers Program becomes law.

“I look forward to the fight ahead where we are going to both pass SB 227 and also get it funded,” he said.

Representatives from Lideres Campesinas, Central California Environmental Justice Network and other organizations also pledged to support the Excluded Workers Program.

Oralia Maceda, CBDIO’s program director, said the continuing call to extend safety net benefits to undocumented workers isn’t “a favor” advocates are asking for.

“It’s a human right,” Maceda said in Spanish. “It’s a human right for all people to have a place to live and food on the table.”

CBDIO and organizations across the state that are part of the SafetyNet4All Coalition, which advocates for immigrant families’ rights, will gather at the State Capitol in Sacramento on April 13 to call for unemployment benefits and other safety net services for undocumented immigrants.