Monthly Archives: October 2023

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I took a trip to the grocery store the other day and, admittedly, I had a hard time accepting the increased cost of food. Im sure were all struggling with the same question, how is everything increasing except our pay?

Did you know that the same grocery items cost more in Jamaica, than they do in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Why does food cost more in Jamaica than in any of these countries - twice as much as in the UK? Better yet, how do we continue to afford this?

For a Jamaican earning minimum wage, it costs 25 hours of work to cover the same food bill, compared to the three hours (or less) spent by their counterpart in the UK, USA or Canada. Why is labour worth more within the migration triangle? In Jamaica, is work worth less?

Jamaica has cheap labour. This is something the economists often say, but is this labour cheap or just underpriced? In June 2023, the Government of Jamaica increased the national minimum wage from J$9,000 to J$13,000. This is commendable, considering that the new rate represents a 44 per cent increase the largest in 20 years (JIS, 2023). On the face of it, this is a significant increase, but lets consider that the hourly wage is 10.42 in the United Kingdom, $16.55 in Canada, and as much as $15 in some US states.

Ive spent some time living outside of Jamaica. In that time, Ive observed that, even without all the degrees, years of experience and links, the average Canadian, for instance, can manage to afford food. The federal government enforces a living wage which ensures its people can afford clothes, rent/mortgage, safety, and even a likkle car. On the other hand, most Jamaicans have to move out to move up.

Why does Jamaica place so little value on the work that people do? More must be done to set us up for success.

I recall a campaign for us to Buy Jamaican, but are we now on sale for cheap? Over the years, we have seen a massive influx of BPOs. They create lower paying jobs but a significant number of our people with undergraduate degrees are employed there.

There are people among us who borrow money to cover the cost of getting to work. I wonder how they will make it to December. Yet, on the bright side, at least they have a job.

Are we jogging on the spot? Is this modern-day slavery? We get up and get dressed in unsavoury conditions. Economists explain, because I dont understand, how owners of means measure the worth of a man.

We have a lot of real work to do, as we are all stakeholders in this. Lets start by having the conversations that count. Each of us needs to better understand our worth and how our actions and attitudes can help or hurt our outcomes.

Our leaders can create more strategic linkages between the courses being pursued at the tertiary level and the jobs and industries that have demand. We must create more high-value jobs and careers to match the supply of high-skilled workers being produced.

Jamaica produces quality. We are reminded of this when a student migrates then quickly makes the honour roll, and again when a coworker migrates and swiftly lands a position with a well-established firm. This is how we guard against brain-drain, retain talent we produce, and help to build Jamaica.

Now, more than ever, we must endeavour to create a sustainable ecosystem.

JESSICA WILSON

Excerpt from:

Why are Jamaicans forced to live in poverty? - Jamaica Gleaner

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

BY THE TIME THE SUN CAME UP over the rolling green hills of Harrells, North Carolina, on June 23, 2021, a charred metal platform was all that remained of the old trailer. An investigation by the local fire department determined that the fire started at the electric stove in the kitchen. From there, it climbed the cabinets, spread to the living room, and tore through the two bedrooms. Within 30 minutes, the entire structure had been consumed by flames. A photo taken of the aftermath showed a pile of blackened debris, the charred coils of a mattress the only thing that suggested people lived there.

Parked beneath a thicket of tall trees and surrounded by miles of farmland, the trailer was where two cousins, Vicente Gomez Hernandez and Humberto Feliciano Gomez, were meant to spend the summer of 2021. They had traveled there from San Juan Mixtepec, a rural town in the Mexican state of Oaxaca where they were members of a Mixteco Indigenous community. Now theyd be returning in body bags.

Gomez and Feliciano were two of the hundreds of thousands of temporary agricultural workers who come to the U.S. each year through the H-2A visa program. Its the federal governments most important farm-labor pipeline and it gets bigger every year. Yet for many visa recipients, the promise of steady work and decent pay quickly devolves into a nightmare of labor trafficking, wage theft, and unsafe living conditions that can lead to injury or even death.

There are dozens of state and federal laws intended to protect H-2A workers.

KEY TAKEAWAY: The H-2A visa program is the federal governments most important pipeline for farm labor.

They are to be reimbursed by their employer for the cost of their travel, for instance, and be provided free and safe housing as well as a competitive hourly wage.

But too often these laws are poorly enforced at both the state and federal levels. That lack of oversight creates opportunities for workers to be exploited, cheated, and abused.

Once workers arrive at their destination in the U.S., theyre at the mercy of enforcement that varies depending on the resources available in that state. For instance, previous reporting from Investigate Midwest found that in Missouri, a lack of funding led to a lax inspection process that was easily abused and caused H-2A workers to live in deplorable conditions.

Should workers find themselves at the hands of an abusive employer they have few options. They are not allowed to seek employment elsewhere because their visa is tied to their original employer. If they leave that position, they forfeit their visa and risk deportation. If they report abuse, they can face retaliation and be blackballed by both H-2A recruiters and employers, making it difficult to ever return to work legally in the U.S.

H-2A workers, by the very nature of the program, dont have any control over their work environment, said Joan Flocks, an emeritus law professor at the University of Florida who specializes in agricultural labor.

For these reasons, experts say, most abuse in the H-2A program goes unreported, as too often workers are forced to choose between fair treatment and financial opportunity.

In September, the Department of Labor announced a set of proposed rules designed to strengthen protections for H-2A workers. These include making the recruitment process more transparent and giving workers options to advocate for better conditions, like working with unions. The rules are open to public comment until November and while workers rights advocates, including United Farm Workers, support them, it remains to be seen how effective they will be.

KEY TAKEAWAY: In September, the Department of Labor announced a set of proposed rules designed to strengthen protections for H-2A workers.

The H-2A visa is supposed to be a safe alternative to crossing the border illegally a win for both farmworkers and farmers. With the visa, Gomez and Feliciano expected to earn $13.15 an hour picking sweet potatoes and blueberries a fruit

theyd never tasted before coming to the United States.

Instead, the men were exploited from the start. When they finally began working, they were in debt, living in a squalid trailer, and were never paid the full wages theyd come all that way for. In the end they died in a fire, the exact cause of which remains unclear.

ACCORDING TO THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, the number of H-2A workers has grown steadily over the past decade. In 2022, some 300,000 came to the U.S., up 15% from the year before and more than triple the number of workers in 2012.

H-2A workers spend several months clearing fields, planting crops, and harvesting fruits and vegetables, often in exchange for wages that would be inconceivable in their home country. More than 90% come from Mexico, and without them much of the United States home-grown produce would not make it to the grocery store.

Yet problems like those that Gomez and Feliciano encountered have plagued the H-2A program since its creation, in 1986.

Cases of abuse and exploitation are well documented across the country. Examples from just this year include a 28-year-old man in Florida who died of heat exposure after employers failed to provide him with adequate water and rest. In Utah, the president of the local Farm Bureau was caught physically assaulting one of his H-2A workers and is now under investigation for human trafficking. And in California, workers had their visas recalled after speaking out about unsafe conditions. While these stories rarely make headlines, in 2021 a federal investigation, Operation Blooming Onion, brought the issue to the nations attention. The multiyear probe uncovered a transnational human trafficking operation, headquartered in Georgia, that forced more than 100 H-2A workers to endure deplorable living conditions and what investigators called modern day slavery.

KEY TAKEAWAY: A federal investigation, Operation Blooming Onion, brought unsafe farmworker conditions to the nations attention.

From 2018 to 2020, a hotline run by the Polaris Project, a nonprofit that fights human trafficking, identified 2,841 H-2A workers who had been subjected to labor trafficking.

Over half of these workers reported being threatened with deportation after demanding decent living conditions or the wages they were owed. Others alleged that their employers withheld or destroyed their immigration documents as a means of control.

In addition, nearly a quarter of the workers said the debt they incurred in order to get their H-2A visa, including invalid recruitment fees, was used to coerce them into working against their will.

Yet experts say that these cases dont capture the full scope of the problems with H-2A, in part because workers are reluctant to report abuse but also because the agencies responsible for preventing abuse are underfunded and understaffed.

According to research by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank, the Department of Labors Wage and Hour Division, which is supposed to investigate reports of abuse in H-2A, has seen little increase in funding since 2006. In that time the number of H-2A workers has increased more than 500%.

As a result, the odds that an H-2A farm will be inspected are less than 1%, which can lead to a low level of compliance with labor laws, said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute and author of the report. Farms can pretty much do whatever they want and theres a very low likelihood theyll ever be investigated, he said in an interview.

In a written response, a spokesperson from the Department of Labor said the agency makes strategic use of the funds appropriated by Congress, and that it regularly carr[ies] out thorough investigations of employers and farm labor contractors.

When it comes to housing, the H-2A program also has strict regulations in place, but the reality is that those rules are often poorly enforced by the state agencies that oversee them.

In North Carolina, for instance, there were just eight compliance officers in 2022 responsible for the pre-occupancy inspections of 2,061 farmworker housing sites, according to the North Carolina Department of Labor (NCDOL). Each officer was responsible for 257 sites. Thats in addition to their other duties, such as enforcing a host of federal farming regulations and running training sessions across the state.

In an email, NCDOL acknowledged the rapid expansion of the H-2A program in the state and said it had received funding this year for two additional inspectors: As more agricultural employers rely on the H-2A program to meet their workforce needs, NCDOL ASH [Agriculture Safety and Health Bureau] expects the number of registered migrant housing sites to increase as well. We are grateful for the additional two positions given to us by the N.C. General Assembly in the last budget and of course, we would always welcome more inspectors to help the department meet its obligations.

At the trailer where Gomez and Feliciano lived, the NCDOL inspector found no deficiencies in a pre-occupancy inspection. Investigate Midwest reviewed a copy of the report, which was completed on Feb. 24, 2021, just months before the fire. It included no details about the condition of the trailer; a single box was checked stating that it met all federal standards. (According to its annual report that year, 51.9% of housing inspected by the NCDOL were found to have no violations.)

But a worker interviewed by Investigate Midwest, who spent the previous summer in the trailer where Gomez and Feliciano died, described it as barely livable.

The worker, whose identity we are protecting because he fears reprisal, said the floor was full of holes and the water and electricity would often go out. Washing clothes and dishes took place out behind the trailer, he said, with a plastic bucket and water spigot. According to the worker, there was no air conditioning or fans and the windows were covered with plywood. He said the trailer was infested with cockroaches and at night, as the workers lay on bare mattresses on the floor, the scurry of mice was loud enough to keep them awake.

Once workers are living in H-2A housing, a state inspector may return to make sure the housing is being properly maintained. However, follow-up inspections during the growing season are rare.

According to NCDOLs 2022 annual report, only 16 of the states 2,052 permitted sites just 0.7% were randomly inspected once workers were living there.

Thomas Arcury is a public health scientist at Wake Forest University who has spent close to 30 years researching issues pertaining to farmworkers in the state. As part of his research, Arcury inspected many housing sites while workers were living there in the 2010s. He found that 41% of housing inspected post-occupancy did not meet state safety standards for everything from rodent infestations and broken appliances to having more occupants than the permit allows.

Even if it passes inspection, he said in an interview, you wouldnt want to live there. If you want my impression, farmworker housing is dangerous.

IT WAS ONLY IN THE LAST 15 YEARS that word of the visa program arrived in San Juan Mixtepec. Before that, a chance to work in the U.S. meant paying thousands of dollars to a smuggler and then risking your life to cross the border illegally. It was a path that many, mostly young men, chose as a means to escape the extreme poverty that plagues Oaxaca.

In 2019, Gomez learned about the visa through another cousin, Valentino Lopez Gomez, who worked as an H-2A recruiter and labor contractor. While U.S. farms will often hire H-2A workers directly through recruiters, increasingly they work through labor contractors, like Lopez, who function as the official employer. Worker advocates say this provides farm owners plausible deniability if things go wrong. Lopez, who was certified by the U.S. Department of Labor, hired men and women from San Juan Mixtepec and brought them to North Carolina where he contracted them out to local farms.

Gomez was 39, with a wife and two kids, and he needed to earn more money. Surviving in San Juan Mixtepec was becoming even harder. Drought was killing the crops that had supported the community for millennia. He told Feliciano, who was in his early 30s and eager to start a family, about the opportunity. Initially, Feliciano didnt want to go. He was scared to travel so far away. But Gomez reasoned that the visa was safe and that Lopez was family. Surely they could trust him to look out for them in America.

In 2020, the two men joined 38 other workers from their village who had been recruited by Lopez to harvest blueberries on Ronnie Carter Farms and Hannah Forest Blueberry farms in North Carolina. Gomez and Feliciano lived that summer in the same trailer where tragedy struck the following year, along with the worker who described the trailers decrepit conditions to Investigate Midwest.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Many of the illegal recruiting fees were paid with high-interest loans, meaning the workers started the harvest season in debt.

Not much is known about the cousins experience on that first trip.

But family members said that they earned barely enough to cover the debts they incurred to get there.

In October 2022, 13 of the workers Lopez recruited in 2020 filed a civil complaint in federal district court for the Eastern District of North Carolina alleging that Lopez charged workers recruitment fees that were between $1,200 to $5,245. Again, under Labor Department rules, these fees are prohibited. Many of the fees were paid with high-interest loans, meaning the workers started the harvest season in debt.

Once the workers arrived in North Carolina, according to the complaint, Lopez confiscated their passports. This is how he allegedly coerced the workers; if they didnt do as he said, hed call immigration enforcement. The workers claim he refused to reimburse them for the cost of travel from Mexico, as is required by DOL rules. He also allegedly forced them to work while pocketing some or all of their wages. In one instance, the complaint claims, Lopez tried to extort a female worker for sexual favors.

The case is pending, but if Lopez is found liable the workers may eventually be eligible to receive special visas that would allow them to remain in the U.S. permanently.

Neither Lopez nor his lawyer responded to multiple requests, via email and phone, for comment.

Caitlin Ryland, who represents the workers in the case, has spent the last 15 years at Legal Aid of North Carolina, a nonprofit that offers pro bono legal services. In that time shes seen H-2A workers increasingly become targets of criminal behavior, including debt bondage, fraud, and human trafficking.

Year after year we hear the same gruesome set of facts from farmworkers that are recruited to work on North Carolina farms and our docket of federal trafficking cases reflects that, Ryland wrote in an email to Investigate Midwest.

Gomez and Feliciano were not plaintiffs in the civil complaint, but according to Ryland they were among the workers from 2020 who the federal Department of Labor had identified as being owed either wages or travel costs that Lopez never paid or reimbursed.

KEY TAKEAWAY: An attorney said U.S. authorities are reluctant to go after illegal recruiting because it takes place in a foreign country.

Nevertheless, the two men decided to return the following year. According to interviews with their families, going to North Carolina was still the best option they had.

This time, the families said, the cousins each needed around $2,000 up front for Lopezs recruitment fee and for travel costs. In a town where most people earn around $12 a day, this was a small fortune. The cousins borrowed money from several community members at 5% interest. It was a gamble, but if everything went as planned they could pay off the debt and still bring home around $3,000 each.

The cousins experience is fairly common in the H-2A system. In 2019, Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM), an international workers rights organization, interviewed 100 H-2A workers about their experience in the program. More than a quarter said they had paid a recruitment fee. Abigail Kerfoot, an attorney with CDM, said the real number is likely much higher and that this abuse is so pervasive in part because U.S. authorities are reluctant to go after this activity because it takes place in a foreign country.

Obviously, theres a country-to-country relationship with Mexico that the United States has to take into account, she said.

In a written response, a Department of Labor spokesperson said that while the agency can fine and debar labor recruiters caught charging illegal fees, the division has no enforcement authority over entities located outside of the U.S. and its territories.

ON A TUESDAY AFTERNOON IN LATE JUNE 2021, Gomez and Feliciano got back to their trailer after a long day spent digging sweet potatoes. A third worker, Luis Rojas, was staying with the cousins at the trailer. Rojas slept in the living room, while the cousins each had a bedroom. According to a statement Rojas gave to the county fire marshal, the men marked the end of the day with three beers each. Then, as they often did, they called their families over WhatsApp.

Around 8 p.m., the men made a dinner of fried fish and, according to Rojas, they each had two more beers before going to bed.

At about 1:30 a.m, according to his statement, Rojas awoke feeling an intense heat on his face. The trailer was filling with smoke and he saw that the kitchen was on fire. He ran to the back door of the trailer, but it wouldnt open. As Rojas struggled with the handle, he said he heard Feliciano shouting and saw him go to the bedroom where Gomez slept. Then the door swung open and Rojas stumbled into the night air. He ran across the street to a house where other workers lived to get help.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Mobile homes, especially older ones, are made of lightweight synthetic materials and burn quickly.

What happened that night has been pieced together from the Sampson County Fire Marshals Fire Origin and Cause Report, Rojas account, and several statements from other workers who witnessed the fire.

It isnt clear whether Feliciano went to bed or stayed up, but at some point he apparently decided to make something else to eat. He turned on the electric stove, which had only two working burners. According to the report, the fire most likely originated in the front right burner. The investigator said two possible causes of the fire that he could not rule out were failure of a component of the stove and occupant negligence. So its possible that Feliciano accidentally started a grease fire that quickly spread out of control. Or it could have been the stove that was faulty and sparked the first flame.

We know that Feliciano caught fire, and investigators suggested he might have run to the bathtub to try to extinguish his burning clothes. There is nothing in the report about whether the trailer had running water that night. All the while, Gomez apparently remained asleep in his room. The pre-occupancy inspection, carried out just months before, doesnt note whether the smoke detectors were tested, but Rojas said he doesnt remember hearing them. When Investigate Midwest asked to speak with the inspector for clarification, the request was denied.

Both the deputy and chief fire marshals also declined Investigate Midwests request to interview them about the case.

At 1:35 a.m. a worker living in a house next to the trailer ran to alert Lucas Carter, who lived nearby. Carter, who owned the trailer and was listed as the farms president in its annual report, called the fire department. Carter did not respond to three phone calls seeking comment.

Other workers attempted to rescue Feliciano and Gomez, but were repelled by the heat and flames. Mobile homes, especially older ones, are made of lightweight synthetic materials and burn quickly. Their narrow layout can trap people inside. The workers pulled off a section of the trailers siding, creating an opening into Gomezs bedroom. He was unconscious, so the men dragged him out on his mattress.

KEY TAKEAWAY: In the North Carolina case, investigators were unable to rule out the possibility that the broken stove was to blame.

Thirty minutes after the fire began, paramedics and firefighters arrived but were unable to resuscitate Gomez.

Feliciano was found dead in the bathroom.

In their report, investigators speculate that Feliciano likely started the fire as a result of being intoxicated. The county medical examiner determined that Feliciano had a blood-alcohol level of 0.3%, or nearly three times the legal limit in North Carolina, suggesting he was acutely intoxicated. Gomezs blood-alcohol level was around half that.

The scenario outlined by investigators is certainly plausible, but there are reasons to think that the trailers condition could have played a role in what happened that night not least of which are the well-documented problems with H-2A housing around the country. In this case, investigators were unable to rule out the possibility that the broken stove started the fire. And the condition of the trailer, as described by the worker who lived there with Gomez and Feliciano the previous summer, differs significantly from what is suggested by the pre-occupancy inspection report approved by NCDOL which found no violations. Rojas, too, in his witness statement, described the trailer as disgusting, said they had gone a week without hot water, and that he had never been told how to use the fire extinguisher or given any instruction on what to do in case of a fire or other emergency. Finally, while the NCDOL inspection report cited no problem with the trailers smoke detectors, Rojas said he did not hear them and according to the fire marshals report Lucas Carter, the owner of the trailer, could not confirm that it had working smoke detectors on the night of the fire.

ACCORDING TO THE WORKERS FAMILIES IN OAXACA, no one, not Lopez or Lucas Carter, called them after the fire. It was another worker, also from San Juan Mixtepec, who called a member of Gomezs family to tell him the news. The disaster was so far away and so abstract that for weeks many family members didnt believe it had actually happened. They would anxiously check their phones, hoping for a WhatsApp message from one of the men to clear up what must have been a misunderstanding. But a month later, when their bodies arrived home, everyone was forced to accept the new reality.

In San Juan Mixtepec its customary to pray over the body of the deceased for eight days while the family receives mourners. Each day, some 200 people came to pay their respects to Feliciano, and the family poured sodas and served menudo soup and sweet breads. Similarly, Gomezs family mourned his passing by hosting loved ones and praying over his remains.

At the end of eight days, Feliciano was buried and the family could finally find some closure. But now, in addition to the cost of funeral services, they had to contend with Felicianos debt, which was around $11,000.

Felicianos family borrowed money, interest-free, from relatives in the U.S. to pay back what he had borrowed from neighbors. Now Felicianos father is working on other farms to pay back the family, leaving his own crops and animals unattended.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Recruiters are local to San Juan Mixtepec and they charge their neighbors anywhere from $1,000 to over $5,000 for visa applications that are supposed to be free.

Each year, as many as 250 people are recruited from San Juan Mixtepec for H-2A visas.

Like Lopez, the recruiters are locals and they charge their neighbors anywhere from $1,000 to over $5,000 for visa applications that are supposed to be free.

The towns leaders agree that the H-2A program provides much needed economic opportunity, but theyve grown concerned about abuse.

According to Rey Martinez Lopez, who spoke as a representative of the San Juan Mixtepec community, many workers will return from a season in the U.S. without having earned enough money to repay the recruitment fee. When this happens, the recruiters extort them, and in the worst scenarios they are blackmailed and threatened, even though the companies in the U.S. already pay the recruiters for each person they bring in, he said.

Martinez says that none of the families of workers who die while working on H-2A visas are compensated by the U.S. government or by the farms that hired them. He believes the workers should receive life insurance so that their families will be taken care of financially. More importantly, Martinez said, he wants the U.S. government to investigate and punish corrupt recruiters.

In December 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor debarred Lopez from working as an H-2A foreign labor contractor for three years after an investigation determined that he confiscated workers passports immediately after they arrived, failed to pay weeks of wages to more than a dozen workers, did not pay the inbound and outbound transportation expenses for workers, and charged workers fees between $150 and $8,000 to participate in the federal program during the 2020 and 2021 growing seasons. It also fined him $62,531 in civil penalties. The investigation also led to the recovery of $58,039 in wages owed to 72 workers. His debarment will last until 2025, at which point he could be allowed to resume his work as a labor contractor.

KEY TAKEAWAY: In December 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor debarred, or banned, a recruiter from working as an H-2A foreign labor contractor for three years after an investigation.

In San Juan Mixtepec, meanwhile, where most homes have dirt floors and no indoor plumbing, Lopezs house sits prominently on the side of a hill. The two-story structure, built of cement and white stucco, is surrounded by a tall cinder block wall with an imposing iron gate.

People in the community say its been years since Lopez has visited. In his absence, the house is a reminder for community members and neighbors of dreams that ended in misery.

This story was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent, nonprofit news organization.

Ripe for Reform, Centro de los Derechos del Migrante. Accessed Oct. 17, 2023.

Interview with Thomas Arcury, Aug. 4, 2023.

Interview with Kelle Barrick, Aug. 3, 2023.

Interview with Daniel Costa, Aug. 4, 2023.

Interview with Joan Flocks, Aug. 7, 2023.

Interview with Abigail Kerfoot, Aug. 8, 2023.

Interview with family members of Vicente Feliciano Gomez, March 30, 2023.

Interview with family members of Humberto Gomez Hernandez, March 30, 2023.

Emailed responses from Kaitlin Ryland, Aug. 10 and Oct. 2, 2023.

Written responses from Rey Martinez Lopez, Aug. 9, 2023.

Emailed responses from officials at the North Carolina Department of Labor. Sept. 9 and Sept. 12, 2023.

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The ultimate price - The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting

Only have a minute? Listen instead

MISSION Illegal immigration is a disaster of unprecedented proportions, and the blame lies squarely at the feet of President Joe Biden.

That was the message that a small delegation of Republican senators led by Texas own John Cornyn and Ted Cruz conveyed to a gaggle of media at Anzalduas Park during a brief stop of their border tour on Friday.

The Rio Grande Valley is one of my favorite places to come. This is a vibrant part of our state. Its unique, Cornyn said as the waters of the Rio Grande flowed placidly behind him.

Texas senior senator said hes fond of bringing colleagues to the Valley to show them its role in binational trade, but also to see what he characterized as the disastrous effects of illegal immigration.

We have something special here, but, unfortunately, its being spoiled by the Biden administrations reckless policies that do nothing to deter illegal immigration, Cornyn said.

Moments earlier, the senators had arrived at the county parks docks in five U.S. Border Patrol SAFE boats which had wended across a deep U-shaped bend in the river.

Their paths cut directly past a group of men who were recreating on the Mexican side. One pair of men stood languidly casting fishing lines while another pair explored what a wooden dock overgrown with carrizo cane and a lone, but tenacious palm tree.

By the time the senators had disembarked, however, the fishermen and swimmers were gone.

Cornyn arrived first aboard a boat with Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Border Patrol RGV Sector Chief Gloria Chavez, who did not join the senators ashore.

Meanwhile, Cruz arrived in another boat accompanied by Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts.

South Texas is an extraordinary place, Cruz said, echoing Cornyns earlier comments from a lectern bearing a sign that read SECURE THE BORDER.

And South Texas is paying the price for the disaster of the open borders under the Biden administration, he added.

Over the course of the next 20 minutes, the four conservative senators detailed the disasters they said are fueled by historic levels of illegal immigration, from concerns over women and children being sexually assaulted, to forced labor, to fears that Hamas and Hezbollah extremists could sneak into the country to wage terrorism here.

The senators bolstered those concerns by noting that migrant demographics are changing.

Historically, immigration was poor people coming from Mexico, Central America, that wanted to work in the United States, Cornyn said.

Today, people are traveling literally from around the world and showing up at the ports of entry and claiming asylum, he continued.

Statistics released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection bear that out.

Between January and September of this year, border agents have had nearly 2.05 million encounters with migrants, according to CBP data.

Of that number, approximately half, or 1,026,419, hail from Mexico and the Golden Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Another 1,019,419 come from other countries, though the data does not break down which counties specifically.

With three months still left in the year, the number of migrant encounters is on pace to exceed 2022s nearly 2.21 million encounters.

But while the numbers have risen along the southwest border as a whole, things in the Valley have looked quite different.

Here, the numbers tend to fluctuate, said McAllen Assistant City Manager Jeff Johnston, who is in charge of operating the citys migrant respite center.

Over the last 18 months, the center has temporarily housed varying numbers of migrants in tents located just a few hundred yards from where the senators spoke Friday.

After a brief spike when Title 42 ended in May, the number of migrants passing through the respite center dropped throughout the summer before ticking upward to a peak of about 775 per day in September, Johnston said.

Right now, that number is probably somewhere between 175 and maybe 275 per day, so its dropped quite a bit just in the last couple of weeks, he said, adding that less than a hundred migrants are currently housed at the center.

CBP data shows that migrant encounters have remained higher in the El Paso and Del Rio sectors for several months.

Some of the senators other talking points contained similar levels of mixed accuracy.

For instance, both Cornyn and Cruz derided the Biden administration for allowing a policy of catch-and-release to proliferate.

Because of the sheer volume of people coming across, the Biden administration is simply releasing them into the interior of the United States without any real consequences, Cornyn said, further characterizing the practice as the president outsourcing immigration to drug cartels.

Cruz echoed those sentiments minutes later when speaking of how frustrated Border Patrol agents have become.

Theyre deeply frustrated because they risk their lives apprehending people only to turn around and see them let go over and over and over again, Cruz said.

But the practice isnt unique to the current president.

Instead, the phrase catch-and-release first originated during the presidency of George W. Bush by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff to describe an immigration policy practice that was then already decades old.

The senators also expressed their concerns for the tribulations migrants go through on their journey to the United States particularly women and children, some of whom suffer sexual abuse along the way, they said.

This is a modern-day form of slavery and it is allowed to go on by Joe Biden. Its that simple, Ricketts, the Nebraska senator, said.

This is a humanitarian crisis. South Texas sees the thousands of children abused, sees the thousands of women sexually abused, sees the dead bodies, Cruz said alluding to an earlier meeting the senators had had with Brooks County Sheriff Urbino Benny Martinez.

The sheriff had shown the congressional coterie photos of bleached bones, Cornyn said human remains left behind by migrants who have died trying to circumvent the Falfurrias Border Patrol checkpoint in the unforgiving Texas ranchlands.

Excerpt from:

Cornyn, Cruz lead another GOP delegation on border tour of RGV - Brownsville Herald

JCWI contributed to a collaborative report with The Landworkers' Alliance, Focus on Labour Exploitation, The New Economics Foundation, Sustain, and a farmworker solidarity network which highlights working conditions under the Seasonal Worker Visa in UK horticulture.

"It is migrant farmworkers who experience the agroindustrialsystems worst injustices."

Download the report from The Landworkers' Alliance

This report has identified drivers of exploitation at the level of the farm, the supply chain, and the migration system. To ameliorate these, our collaboration has developed a series of recommendations for the UK government, labour market enforcement (LME) bodies, supermarkets, and for trade unions and social movements who want to campaign for better conditions for farmworkers.

Restricted Visas

There is clear evidence that risks of exploitation are inherent in restrictive, temporary and sector-specific visas. To protect workers safety and rights, we call on the government to move away from this approach. All UK work visas should include option for renewal, theability to change jobs easily without losing the right to stay in the UK, pathways to permanent settlement and access to public funds. However, while the Seasonal Worker Visa remains in place, we recommend the following reforms to reduce the risks of poor andexploitative working conditions. It is crucial that existing risks in the Seasonal Worker Visa are addressed before any further expansions of the scheme are introduced.

All SWV holders should be able to switch to jobs on the shortage occupation list including outside of the agricultural sector.

Scheme operators should ensure workers can move to other farms, and ensure this process is straightforward and accessible.

Workers should not be made to leave the UK earlier than planned or to stop working if a scheme operator loses their licence or cannot provide them with a minimum of 32 hours per week. A mechanism should be established for workers to change their visa sponsors.

Debt and Broker Fees

Workers shoulder visa and travel costs associated with the SWV, and often enter into debt to pay these. In some instances, workers are being charged thousands of pounds to participate in the SWV, leaving them burdened with high amounts of debts and a loss of money overall. Debt increases the risk of labour exploitation as workers may be unable to leave exploitative conditions due to needing to pay off their debt. This is intensified when schemeoperators are operating in new countries and may lack the knowledge necessary to vet local recruiting practices.

The UK government should research and develop new approaches to seasonal work migration in consultation with current and former SWV holders, including considering working with sourcing countries to establish government led institutions as the main point of recruitment.

Up front costs make debt an unavoidable necessity for participation in the scheme. Charges for visa applications should be abolished and holders should not face any up-front costs for their journey. The government should consider if travel costs should sitwith the state, employer or lead supply chain buyer.

Funds accrued to the UK government via the farm recruitment fee should be dedicated to a worker support fund for compensation for cases of illegal broker fees and hardship funds in cases of destitution.

Rights Enforcement and Worker Led Social Responsibility (WSR)

Existing labour market enforcement practices have been ineffective in responding to the volume of violations.

Funding for labour market enforcement should be increased to ensure regular inspections of SWV workplaces. Inspections should focus on compliance with standards and UK laws rather than only on breaches which constitute Modern Slavery.

It is essential this comes alongside the government implementing a clear separation of immigration enforcement from labour market enforcement, so that all workers can safely report abuse regardless of immigration status.

Labour market enforcement should be backed up by legally binding codes of practice drawn up in consultation with workers and a new supply chain enforcer. This was anticipated in the Agriculture Act 2020, but has yet to be implemented.

The UK government should work with LME agencies in sourcing countries to research and develop a coordinated strategy for monitoring recruitment processes and conditions on farms in the UK.

The UK government should ensure that terms and conditions of employment contracts (e.g. employers details, working hours, remuneration, accommodation costs and other deductions, etc.) are shared with SWV workers in their country of origin, translated into workers primary languages, and signed by employers and workers before travel. Contracts should detail compensation options for workers if work offered does not match work in the contract.

This report further recommends the adoption of a worker-led enforcement system to empower workers and workers organisations to enforce standards for working conditions. This system should be backed up by market sanctions against farms which violate standards.

Education sessions on workers rights and means of redress should be held at a neutral venue before workers start on the farm. These sessions should be independent from scheme operators, employers, and the state. These education sessions should be developed by workers with experience on the SWV route.

An independently run audit body and hotline shouldbe established which is closely embedded with farmworkers and informed by their perspectives

Standards should be enforced by a legally bindingagreement that supermarkets will not source from farmsthat violate rights until action is taken to rectify this.

Supermarket Dominance and Low Farmworker Pay

Supermarkets capture the lions share of the valueproduced by UK horticulture. Given their dominant position in the market for produce, supermarketsshould pay extra for produce to fund wage increases in order to reflect the true price of their products.

This can take the form of a penny per punnet premium, where supermarkets pay a small charge per item of produce sourced from a farm to fund wage increases.

As the largest beneficiaries of the efforts ofworkers, supermarkets should also pay into aworker support fund to compensate workersfor broker fees and in cases of destitution.

More effective competition policy should beimplemented to address concentration in the grocerymarkets. Stronger fair dealing regulations for thesupermarkets and others in the supply chain should be introduced to avoid abusive practices along thesupply chain. The Grocery Code Adjudicator shouldintroduce new legally binding codes and applyits fining capabilities more often to deter abuse.

There should be investment, support anddevelopment of new routes to market thatdeliver better, values-led and more diversefood retail and trading enterprise growth.

Establishing a Farmworkers Organisation

Farmworkers need their own organisation which isable to campaign and advocate for their rights:

Barriers in the immigration system which preventthe formation of farmworker organisations should be removed. This includes the requirement to haveworked for 3 months before receiving support from a trade union. Threatening the loss of visasponsorship for taking strike action or for complaining about conditions must be explicitly banned.

Establishing a farmworkers bulletin, through whichworkers can communicate with each other about the situation on their respective farms, can help toincrease worker unity and solidarity across the sector.

Trade unions should develop strategies in collaborationwith workers to provide support to disputes on farms.

Farmworkers campaigns should place pressureon leading supermarkets to improve pay and conditions in their supplier farms.

Review the impact of the absence of an AgriculturalWages Board in England and the redistribution of resources and responsibility over worker welfareacross all actors in the food supply chain.

Debt, Migration, and Exploitation: The Seasonal Worker Visa and the Degradation of Working, Catherine McAndrew, Oliver Fisher, Clark McAllister, & Christian Jaccarini (2023)

Read the original here:

Landworkers' Alliance Report: Debt, Migration, and Exploitation - Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants