Thread: U of Vermont symposium on local dairy farm labor situation

http://vtdigger.org/2010/04/26/vermonte ... iry-farms/

Vermonters say immigration policy is failing migrant workers, dairy farms

By Tena Starr on April 26, 2010


Writer Julia Alvarez reads from her latest book, "Return to Sender," at the Vermont Sate Conference on Migrant Farmworkers. Alvarez, who lives in Vermont, is from the Dominican Republic. The seed for the novel came from her work as a translator for the children of Mexican migrant workers who attend local schools.

MIDDLEBURY – Battling emotion and shyness, a young Mexican woman briefly told her story Saturday to participants at the Vermont State Conference on Migrant Farmworkers. She’s working in this country in order to send money home, she said. But she misses her family, and her life here is lonely.

“I am not a criminal,â€

The Mexicans are being paid the amount that the farmers want to pay Americans not enough to attract Americans. The people who realize this are being intimidated by the advocates there for the undocumented and are discouraged from showing up to speak.

I remember my grandfather brought migrant workers in to pick his crops.
Several of the farmers in Upstate NY would pay and arrange for their transportation, they all pitched in.
The migrant workers would go from one farm to the next of these farmers and pick crops.
At the end of the season they would return home to Mexico.
Usually the same ones came year after year...
It all worked out fine!
Now the farmers need them but don't want to be responsible for their return back to their county.

I don't know about the pay>>> 8.50 -10.00 an hour isn't to bad a pay.
I wouldn't mind a job that payed that right now!
When I was a kid that is what I did during my summer vacations.
Picked blueberries, strawberries, apples in the fall.
Paid for my new school clothes, new bike and my first car in highschool.