Cost of immigrant farm workers

There are millions of illegal immigrants in this country. Most of the immigrants come to live the American dream, that chance to live a better life, be successful and ultimately to be happy. Throughout the years this concept has been a hope to everyone who wants to find better opportunities, but this is not as easy as it sounds. Most of illegal workers don’t have any type of health care or appropriate rights, in a way is a type of slavery and there’s a reason why immigrants continue to come to this country to look for more jobs.

Farm is one of the most dangerous labors in America, due to exposure of chemicals, such as pesticides and fertilizers that could cause from nausea or burns to cancer and other fatal diseases. These illnesses are originated because of the lack of proper sanitation in farms, making them very vulnerable to get any type of infection. Since they are illegal, they don’t have health care and don’t have enough money to buy medicines when they get sick and what is worst is that when this happens a lot of times the result is death from something that could have been prevented by spending a little more money and offer proper protection to the farmers.

Unfortunately this isn’t the only problem that farmers have to face everyday, farm workers are exploited, they work from 12 to 14 hours a day, carrying heavy crops in hot, sunny days for long distances and they still have the lowest of all wages in USA. Therefore if they can’t really afford enough amounts of food for themselves it is almost impossible for them to supply education, housing or health care to their families causing them to even suffer from starvation.

Now, you may wonder why the number of immigrants keep growing each year in the farming industry if the farmers are being abused. Well NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) has a lot to do with it. For generations, Mexicans have practiced subsistence agriculture that sustained agriculture in the countryside, but after NAFTA Mexican agriculture can’t compete with the large agricultural business of USA. Hence, a lot people lost their jobs and decided to migrate to this country. This is also the reason why farmers don’t complain about their abominable working conditions, since in their country they don’t have a lot of opportunities, they rather stay here because at least they have a job. I think that farms take advantage of the fact that they are illegal, they know that they don’t want to be fired or deported so they won’t complain to anyone.

This is the price they pay for us to have cheaper food in our tables and it’s ironic how the workers that provide us with food everyday don’t have the financial means to buy food for themselves. The only ones that can make a difference are the consumers, maybe not a lot of people are aware of what these people are going through, that’s why we don’t say anything about it. Sadly, in order to make a change we must take one step at a time, because even though the farms are violating human rights, most of their workers aren’t legal and would be deported if its known that they are working in this country illegally and that’s not what they want.