Student and Farmworker at the Same Time

        The radio program Latino USA presented a beautiful story about The Migrant Student Club during their transmission the past August 18^th of the current year 2020. I listened to this program on September 1st 2020, and from this audio I learned that there are thousands of students from immigrant families, whose responsibility is not just going to school, but also helping with their house mortgage, bills, clothes, and grocery at home, because their parents’ salary isn’t enough to pay basic needs. To do so, this program focuses in a group of teenagers who travel to states in the north of the country and spend their summer as farmworkers. This theme relates to the class because basically all of them traveled from Latin American countries when they were very young, and their parents came here looking for opportunities in a developed country. There are differences among cultures in those southern countries, however, they all share the same tough childhood working in the fields from very early ages. Here's a six minutes video explaining the struggle of the Moreno family in the fields. It's a good introduction to the topic, and a great example. 

Video: For Many Child Farmworkers, Getting an Education Is Almost Impossible, Jan 4 2017.

        I loved the compromise that each of those children and teenagers have with everything they do. It is hard to successfully do both activities, and the fact that they’re studying and working at the same time is admirable. I didn’t like that there are companies that still hire young people for those kind of jobs. I know that sometimes there isn’t other options for families to fulfill their needs, but I think that there must be more government programs for those particular cases. That way, children from those families can focus only on their classes, and thus, get higher degrees and better jobs. As a suggestion, I think the radio program should cover testimonies from people in those kinds of jobs where the big majority if not all of them are immigrants. There is blackmail and abuse of power by the owners in agricultural fields, who, taking advantage of the fact that they don’t have papers, pay them wages much lower than the minimum wage and threaten to report to immigration if they complain in any way. Those behaviors are terrible.

 

Photo: Gianna Nino, July 4 2020, Twitter/@giannanino

        The stories of these teenagers from Texas aren’t rare cases, it is something that happens along the country and also in many others. Virginia Isaad wrote an article called Latina Stanford Student Exposes Reality of Farmworker Wages, which talks about how farmworkers must work a lot, for many hours, and without any possibility of going to the doctor if needed, just to earn a small amount of money. She tweeted an image of two buckets, equivalent to two gallons of blueberries, and asks how much people pay for it in the supermarkets, since they only get paid seven dollars for two gallons. I selected this article because it reflects how little they get paid, but at the same time, it isn’t a barrier for them to become a physician.

       

Photo: Change to Federal Rule Could Expose More
Farmworkers to Pesticides, April 22 2020

        This isn’t a new thing. A JSTOR’s article written by Marilyn Kalman titled Child Labor, talks about kids going to the fields and getting paid less than adults, since they weren’t receiving hourly wages, but by quantity collected. They struggled and ended up with less than ten dollars per day. The story of Tencha Reyes, working as a child, when the grower didn’t want to lose time and even used pesticides when they were working in the fields. There weren’t any strict regulations years ago, and to this day, the condition for farmworkers are mediocre.

        In conclusion, young farmworkers who have to study at the same time are a very common occurrence in the U.S. Families struggle with tough jobs and exhausting shifts. There must be more investigation in those areas for future changes and possible higher wages, which would avoid the need for children to also provide money for the bills. Definitely, the environment in which farmworkers are is key for making the job easier and safer for them, since higher temperatures caused by the greenhouse effect are really dangerous for those long days under the sun. Even more dangerous because they have no time or money to go to a hospital due to their long shifts.

Work Cited

FUSION. "For Many Child Farmworkers, Getting an Education Is Almost Impossible."

                Youtube, 4 Jan. 2017,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpi1kukUeaM. Accessed

                2 Sept. 2020

@giannanino. "Started my medical school journey yesterday in the blueberry fields with an

                over the phone pre-matriculation health equity journey club." Twitter, 4 July 2020,

                8:01 p.m.,  https://twitter.com/giannanino/status/1279611326889787393?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1279611326889787393%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fhiplatina.com%2Ffarmworker-wages-tweet-gianna-nino%2F

Kalman, Marilyn. "Child labor." Off our Backs, vol. 8, no. 8, Aug. 1978, pp. 13.

                JSTOR, https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.losrios.edu/stable/25772842?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents. Accessed 2 Aug. 2020.

"Latina Stanford Student Exposes Reality of Farmworker Wages." Hiplatina, 5 Aug.

                2020,  https://hiplatina.com/farmworker-wages-tweet-gianna-nino/. Accessed 2 Sept.

                2020.

"The Migrant Student Club." npr capradio, 18 Aug. 2020,                    

                https://www.npr.org/2020/08/18/903442026/the-migrant-student-club. Accessed 1

                Sep. 2020