On January 17, 2019, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Zoe Lodgren introduced a new farmworker bill that would provide a path to citizenship for farmworkers meeting the bill’s requirements… Senator Feinstein noted that California struggles to find farmworkers and acknowledged that backbreaking farm labor is performed largely by undocumented immigrants.
North Carolina maintains an average estimate farmworker population of between 100,000 to 300,000, and is the 5th in the nation with the leading amount of farmworkers, both migrant and seasonal… Many farmworkers currently work for a salary at or below the federal poverty line without receiving overtime pay for working over 40 hours per week.
At Vecinos, we provide extensive health education about pesticides to farmworkers because the farmworkers exposed to these chemicals have a higher risk for pesticide-related illnesses, ranging from respiratory problems to cancers.
Since October, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE as the agency is commonly known, has increased the number of worksite investigations and arrests to an amount previously unseen.
A 2006 survey study conducted by Wake Forest University School of Medicine and several community-based organizations revealed food insecurity among Latino immigrant families in North Carolina to be between 35.6 and 41.8%, nearly double the U.S. average (Quandt et al., 2006).
Migrant workers, particularly farmworkers, are at a disproportionately higher risk of injury and work-related health issues because they tend to fill low-paying jobs in dangerous working conditions.
Pesticides used in agriculture contain chemicals that are harmful to people of every age, but kids are particularly vulnerable to the dangerous effects of pesticides for several reasons