一种hurricane season on top of a pandemic showed how farmworkers in North Carolina are susceptible to dangerous conditions on the job.
This story was published in partnership withEnlace Latino NC, a Spanish-language digital media nonprofit that covers politics, government, immigration and community affairs in North Carolina.
Léalo en Español en Enlace Latino NC。
2018年9月15日的早晨，Riggs Brothers Farm的40名农业工人站起来进入水中。佛罗伦萨飓风在东北卡罗莱纳州的夜晚在北北卡罗来纳州的夜晚，他们在琼斯县的劳动营地等待风暴。他们争先恐后地抓住他们的物品，将门削减到腰部高水中before spending hours calling 911 and farmworker advocates。Their boss, farm owner Randy Riggs, never showed up.
To rescue them, attorneys and the U.S. Department of Labor had to intervene. "When someone finally opened the door, water rushed in even higher," said one worker, Romero, who asked to use an alias to protect his identity because he fears retaliation from his employers. "The refrigerator and appliances started floating."
Two years later and nearly 300 miles away in Alleghany County, Romero faced another emergency: In August, he and 111 other farmworkers at Bottomley Evergreens & Farms tested positive for COVID-19. The outbreak was the state’slargest known coronavirus outbreak in congregate farmworker housing。
Romero’s experiences are crucial reminders that before and during a public health emergency or natural disaster, farmworkers — those who are undocumented and those who are on federal H-2A work visas — are often left to fend for themselves.
Labor laws exclude most agricultural workers from historic worker protections, and policy reform to better protect workers remains stagnant. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed massive shortcomings in the nation’s labor and disaster aid systems, which have for decades failed to protect workers who come to the U.S. every year for seasonal work. That means Romero, and hundreds of thousands of other people, are not guaranteed safety in the event of an emergency.
"We invite them to come and work here," said Lariza Garzón, director of the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry. "We should be kind and respectful and responsible enough to provide them with the basic needs of survival."
There are about200,000 H-2A visa holders, or seasonal workers who legally enter the U.S. for specific agricultural job contracts. They make up just 10 percent of the 2.5 million total farmworkers. For decades, North Carolina processed the most H-2A visas in the country, and still remains in the top five states.
[For] communities of color, undocumented immigrants, people living in poverty due to systemic racism — climate change is hurting them now.
据这位据此，尽管大流行病，但今年的19,050人 - 2A的工人 - 8.5％的国家的总数。USDOL Office of Foreign Labor Certification— arrived in North Carolina to plant and hand-pick tobacco, sweet potatoes, blueberries and strawberries. Many of them, like Romero, later move west onto pumpkins and Christmas trees in the North Carolina mountains.
FieldWork是无情的，但Romero，41，在完成完成时发现了快乐。他在墨西哥的田地里长大，学习如何植物和收获玉米和豆类。他先在18岁的H-2A签证上来到美国，每年曾在北卡罗来纳州工作，自6月份抵达并在12月离开。他赚了很多钱 - 足以在墨西哥提供两个女儿的大学教育。两者都在学习成为老师。
What frustrates him about his job is the lack of information, protections and equal rights, which haven’t changed in the more than two decades since he’s been working in the U.S.
When he contracted COVID-19, Romero said he was quarantined for eight days with other symptomatic workers who tested positive. He lost his sense of smell and forced himself to eat what he couldn’t taste to stay healthy. As men around him laid in bed with fatigue and coughing, he witnessed a friend get rushed to the hospital.
"I felt really scared," said Romero.
For years, workers and advocates have been demanding better protections for a workforce harvesting the nation’s food and cash crops. On paper, the H-2A visas should offer stronger labor protections than those afforded to undocumented workers. But in the 1930s, agriculture was excluded from most federal labor laws in a process now known as“农业卓越。”
In 2020, the Trump administration pushed formore H-2A visas during the pandemic, echoing the agricultural industry’s refrain that it was a necessary move to ensure ample food supply. But the administration also proposeda decrease in farmworker wages。
拉丁人民 - 特别是必要的工人 - 不成比例地受到影响by the coronavirus. According to the most recentNational Agriculture Workers survey，美国农业工人的83％是西班牙裔。一个普渡大学正在进行的研究estimates that more than 240,000 agricultural workers have tested positive for COVID-19 nationwide as of Nov. 29. But the National Center for Farmworker Health has stated that this figure likely underestimates the number greatly because it excludes contracted and temporary labor. Cases have been meticulously documented by media outlets, includinga mapping tool by the Food and Environment Reporting Network(FERN).
In May, North Carolina led the nation in COVID-19 outbreaks at meatpacking plants. Yet despite pressure from organizers, the state hasn’t mandated any additional worker protections. In June, 16 North Carolina environmental groups, including the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry, signed ontoa letterto Gov. Roy Cooper demanding transparency about outbreaks, including the names of plants, and better worker protections. According to FERN’s latest data, there have been 4,903 COVID-19 cases among North Carolina’s food sector workers; 535 were farmworkers.
The state’s labor and health and human services departments do not require farm owners to provide alternative isolation housing for workers sick with COVID-19.一种s first reported in Enlace Latino NC, Cooper rescinded his promise to issue an executive order to better protect farmworkers (one he made in a virtual town hall with Latinx community leaders) after pushback from the state’s agriculture and labor departments.
Federal COVID-19 guidelines为农业工人和肉类加工工人提供指导，但没有联邦政府保护，陈述“雇主可能会考虑允许暴露和无症状的关键基础设施工人在需要保留关键基础设施工作场所的功能时继续在选择的情况下工作。”倡导者说，这不够靠近;新闻调查和所有夏天的上升案例编号表明他们可能没有被认真考虑。
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed massive shortcomings in the nation’s labor and disaster aid systems, which have for decades failed to protect workers who come to the U.S. every year for seasonal work.
"There has been no investment nor recognition at any level — not local, not state, not federal," said Melissa Bailey Castillo, a North Carolina farmworker advocate for more than 20 years in the nonprofit and healthcare sectors. "It’s as if this is just some mysterious ghost workforce that no one sees or cares about."
Most H-2A workers such as Romero live in shared barracks-style rooms, known as congregate housing, provided by their employer per the federal H-2A temporary agricultural visa program. But at many North Carolina farms, that housing has not met the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’sminimum criteria for health and safetyfor decades, leaving dwellings prone to flooding, increased mold and wind damage.
一种2015年研究on federal migrant farmworker housing described the "structural standards encompassed in the shelter provisions of the OSHA regulations are rudimentary at best," detailing that "water intrusion from leaky foundations and roofs is associated with respiratory disease from molds, viruses, and other sources." Out of 183 farmworker camps in eastern North Carolina, 74 percent of buildings had structural damage.
Nothing in the H-2A visa requirements for employers details mandatory disaster planning in the event of a hurricane. And as Enlace Latino NC reported, rural county emergency managementfails to reach many farmworkersto warn them of disasters. Emergency mandatory evacuation orders are not delivered in Spanish, and internet access in rural areas is scarce.
During the pandemic, budgets and resources are strained even more. Mike Yoder, coordinator of disaster programs at N.C. Cooperative Extension, said county emergency managers are "totally overwhelmed."
"They work as hard as anybody can possibly work to try to make sure that everyone is taken care of in a response phase in a disaster," he said, although they "struggle to marshal resources."
Yoder said his team is working with the extension’s farmworker education program to better address disaster preparedness for workers — but it’s mostly reactive, not proactive. "We have the right resources in place for our farmworker and Latino communities, but I’m not sure if anyone pursues that during the non-disaster times," he said. "That’s really important, because that’s when you can make things happen."
In 2018, the Farmworker Advocacy Network released a 56-page备灾工具包详细说明在飓风期间解决农业工商挑战的建议，包括与地方政府机构和执法更强大的合作，以了解农业工人住房位于低洼，洪水易受领域的地方。它还松散地指的是需要防灾更新的联邦法规。
The Migrant Housing Act requires migrant housing operators to request an annual inspection 45 days before the anticipated date of occupancy. North Carolina’s Agricultural Safety and Health (ASH) Bureau responds to complaints and referrals. NCDOL spokesperson Natalie Bouchard said the bureau received one housing complaint after Hurricane Florence, "but it was not related to storm damage" and that ASH "does not blanket an area after a storm to assess damage. Generally, after a major storm, there are no crops left to harvest and the communities shift to survival and clean-up mode."
Bouchard的移民住房没有更新的移民住房的房屋规则，确认。她补充说，“没有职业安全和模具健康标准。”
During the pandemic, these housing situations are even more precarious. Justin Flores, director of Farm Labor Organizing Committee, a farmworker union, said "growers were cramming workers together" in housing to leave one house or trailer available for quarantining.
一个普渡大学正在进行的研究estimates that more than 240,000 agricultural workers have tested positive for COVID-19 nationwide as of Nov. 29.
政府没有提供农场主人funding to provide additional housing during the pandemic, and they’re not required by law to provide any hurricane evacuation shelter. "Usually they’ll have some excuse," Flores said. "In 2018, when we talked to folks to identify shelter on the day the storm was supposed to hit, some employers would say things like, 'I’m not taking them all the way out there; it will be unsafe for me; it’s too late now; they should have told me earlier.’"
工人往往不知道他们有权撤离，因为他们的H-2A合同国家不能放弃他们的工作。法律援助律师本威廉姆斯表示，如果有疏散令，他们往往不知道“雇主不能持有他们的人质。”
"In the H-2A context, it is not unheard of for employers to tell employees that if they evacuate the employer will report them to the Department of Labor as having abandoned the contract," he said. That would mean being sent back to their home country immediately, and the potential to be blacklisted from a future visa. He said lawyers advise workers "to employer in writing that they are not abandoning the work contract and intend to return" once it is safe.
"It creates an environment of codependence," Bailey Castillo said. "It’s all designed to ensure they have to rely on the grower or rely on the contractor to get basic necessities, food, housing, and healthcare."
During storms or other emergencies, farmworkers often don’t know where to turn. After Hurricane Florence, Garzón and her staff of four at the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry, plus several volunteers, scoured 10 flooded counties looking for workers who called for help. However, many in North Carolina for the first time didn’t know their address or even the county they were in. Immigrant farmworker families who live in North Carolina year-round were calling the ministry as well, saying that they were stranded with infants and children and running out of food.
"Instead of calling 911 [during Hurricane Florence], people were calling us," Garzón said. "That was shocking, to be honest. I think people are scared to ask for help."
She said her team relied on Latinx-owned tiendas and restaurants along the way, hoping they were open and had clues as to where to find the workers.
Legal experts say leaving a labor camp in the event of a hurricane on their own volition is not easy. Many visa holders and undocumented workers lack a drivers license, another factor that makes it difficult to access resources. In focus groups with Enlace Latino NC conducted in 2019, undocumented farmworkers said not having a license was a hindrance to finding help, even if that simply meant going out to buy food. Several people expressed fear of getting stopped by the police while driving without a license.
State law requires a Social Security number to obtain a drivers license. Through the early 2000s, drivers licenses were still given to undocumented immigrants. But in 2005, Gov. Mike Easley, a Democrat, adopted the REAL ID law, which took away the right for thousands of immigrant residents in North Carolina. In the 15 years since, no drivers license bills have been passed by the state legislature.一种state House bill2019年起草了向“带有有限或没有地位的移民”的司机许可证已经停滞不前。
In Enlace Latino NC’s focus groups, several Latinx immigrants expressed concern over police presence on the roads and outside of shelters after Hurricanes Matthew and Florence — especially those without drivers licenses. In a separate interview, one man said he thought if he asked for help after a hurricane, he would end up "trapped" by police.
Since 9/11, FEMA has been under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. DHS oversees several organizations, including U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In Spanish-speaking communities, both of these groups are commonly referred to asla migra。FEMA还部署了边境巡逻，以协助紧急响应。
“即使DHS或政府的其他部分正在讨论[灾难]反应 - 不执法 - 那些[移民]社区非常谨慎，”奥巴马政府前的Fema主任克雷格·菲格特说。
Rumors that ICE was in Lenoir County circulated Whatsapp chats after Hurricane Florencewhen someone shared a photo of a Border Patrol truck in the Walmart parking lot in Kinston, N.C. The chaos and fear it created in the Latinx community led to many families not evacuating; they remained stuck in their homes without electricity and food for days.
任何级别都没有投资也没有识别 - 而不是本地，而不是国家，而不是联邦。......就好像这只是一些神秘的幽灵劳动力，没有人看到或关心。
逃亡者也是佛罗里达州紧急管理的前任主任，并在飓风恢复期间首先在移民社区中的权威性存在的影响。
“在一些农场社区和移民营地, if we show up, everybody scatters. And all we do is show up in the FEMA truck," he said.
That means farmworker advocates do most of the work in getting aid to people. Garzón, of the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry, said many H-2A workers apply to her organization’s emergency fund. The ministry was founded in 1982, but its disaster program didn’t start until 2018. Garzón said she has mixed feelings about supporting workers who should be supported by the government — especially when undocumented workers have no protections in comparison.
"I want to help them, but at the same time it’s infuriating," she said. By doing so, it alleviates employers from doing their jobs in providing basic protections for their workers. "Are we subsidizing bad behavior?"
It took a pandemic to raise public awareness of farmworker issues, said Cintia Aguilar, director of Latino programs at North Carolina Cooperative Extension. Her program struggled to reach farmworkers in person this year, but managed to train more than 100 of them at camps on COVID precautions. Hurricane preparedness, however, fell to the wayside.
Aguilar表示，它是什么是出来的，是更多的组织在国家合作 - 包括健康诊所和应急管理机构 - 期待更好地教育和帮助农业工人在未来准备。“从某种意义上说，这很好，”她说。“但我们将如何保持我们建造的兴趣和能力？”
The Atlantic hurricane season — which ended Nov. 30 — produced a record 30 named storms. North Carolinawas largely spared, but the state can expect more extreme weather events in the future — as evident by the six tornadoes that quickly spurred afterHurricane Isaias made landfall in August和今年的飓风·萨莉，埃塔斯和奥塔州的灾难性降雨量和洪水。该州最近的气候评估names inland flooding as the greatest climate-related hazard to agriculture, and arecent NOAA report把北卡罗莱纳大学和圣列表的顶部ates that can anticipate losing billions of dollars in the next decade due to storms.
气候变化的人类维度真的是为什么我们在这里，了解气候变化首先击中前线社区。
气候变化也改变了迁移模式。几十年来，移民记者和研究人员已经注意到气候变化作为推动来自拉丁美洲北方的人们的动力，这是红十字估计，300万人受到飓风Iota和Eta的影响，11月份摧毁了中美洲。结合大流行和现有的贫困，缺乏经济机会和饥饿，CNN reported持久的,国标的破坏性影响rms "may eventually even reach distant countries, as Central Americans left desperate and vulnerable by the storms flee abroad."
一种2019 report by the Government Accountability Office审查了U.S.各机构如何应对气候变化作为全球移民的潜在司机，并批评特朗普政府不考虑气候变化作为一个因素，而不是执行更严格的移民政策。总统乔·贝登campaign promise to farmworkersstates he will "work with Congress to provide legal status based on prior agricultural work history, ensure they can earn paid sick time, and require that labor and safety rules, including overtime, humane living conditions, and protection from pesticide and heat exposure, are strictly enforced."
"The human dimensions of climate change is truly why we’re here, understanding that climate change hits the frontline community first,” said Kathie Dello, North Carolina’s state climatologist. "[For] communities of color, undocumented immigrants, people living in poverty due to systemic racism — climate change is hurting them now."
Policies that address these crises are needed at the state level, too — and local farmworker advocates say they haven’t been able to get answers from officials about specific plans. The working poor factor into the state’s proposed plans to mitigate and handle climate change — and to keep the environment healthy and livable for all residents. But North Carolina’s climate risk assessment and resilience plan released in 2020 only mentions farmworkers once, citing them as a population vulnerable to extreme heat.
"It’s important for us to recognize that people with money can and do adapt to climate change,” Dello said. "But it’s extreme heat affecting farmworkers living in primitive housing or it’s places that flood continuously and create mold growth in homes. These are real public health impacts in these communities. Climate change is a stressor on top of everything else."