The Traces We Leave
We will be known forever by the traces we leave.
Kickapoo Elder
When I met Mariela Montez, age ten, she was working with her father picking onions for a penny a pound outside Eagle Pass, Texas.
She had the flu and could barely speak. She’d risen at 4am and would work 12 hours in the shade-less heat, without water or a portable toilet, for $2 an hour.
Children working in the onion fields in Texas
Christina Lima, 9 years old, just wanted to go to school. Jesus Perez dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. Benito Calderone hoped to be a writer. Their dreams had been put on hold to work to help their families survive.
Today, little has changed in the fields for America’s 3 million seasonal and migrant workers. They earn minimum wage, families less than $10,000 a year. A half million children as young as ten work unpaid with their families. These children miss up to four months of school migrating to pick crops in virtually every state. 60% won’t finish high school and will remain as low paid workers like their parents unable to break the generational cycle of poverty.
Migrant farm work is particularly dangerous for children who absorb pesticides at 3.5 times the rate of adults. They suffer exhaustion, heat stress, respiratory problems and injuries from handling sharp tools.
The Wall of Honor jumps out at you when entering the classroom at MET, (Motivation, Education and Training) in downtown Eagle Pass.
The certificates attest to the students achieving the near impossible: they have graduated high school and gotten their GED.
Taught by former migrants who understand the challenges they face, the students are paid a minimum wage to study and go to school instead of working in the fields. Most share that small stipend with their families.
The Wall of Honor
MET today continues to offer vocational training and support services to farmworkers nationwide. But the opportunities offered underserved poor children are limited to vocational training. For those who dream of what they can become by going to college there is little help. But a dream for a better life is a genie that can’t be put back into the bottle.
On the campus of Saint Mary’s University in San Antonio, I visited the UPWARD BOUND program, designed to help migrant students catch up academically. In an intense summer on a beautiful campus, the students whose expenses covered by scholarships work and take their next steps towards a college degree. UPWARD BOUND continues today. In fact, a few migrant children from Eagle Pass have made it to St. Mary’s, a historic first for their school, families and community.
With the Biden Presidency, it’s time us to improve the lives of migrant families who work under the most extreme conditions; threatened with deportation, working without health care or protections from COVID, exposed to hundreds of pesticides that have been steadily deregulated by the Trump Environmental Protection Agency.
Pending legislation to protect farmworker children has languished for decades in the Congress. Ensuring protections and opportunities for these children should be priority number one. Increased funding for education, youth programs and health care are urgently needed.
The 1939 Fair Labor Standards Act exempted Depression-era farmworker children from the same protections we apply to all other children working in the America. This is long overdue to be revised. Legislation has waited decades for Congress to Act. The United States Senate in particular has prevented adoption of a simple bill to keep children in school instead of picking crops. A bill has been introduced in the House, The CARE ACT FOR RESPONSIBLE EMPLOYMENT. It deserves debate and a full vote at long last.
As taxpayers and voters, our role is to support migrant children and see them as individuals. A child’s future is our best investment and a gift to this country.