As we enter this holiday season of feasting, we need to be honest about how our food is produced. America has always relied on cheap labor to make agriculture work.

The source of much of that labor used to be slave ships making the Middle Passage. Today it’s no longer slaves but immigrant workers, primarily undocumented people from Mexico and Latin America, whose cheap labor makes possible both low prices at the grocery store and high profits for agribusinesses.

Farmworkers don’t often make the news. Even though 85% of fruits and vegetables are still harvested by hand, farmworkers and their families remain largely invisible to our society. We don’t like to think too much about who is doing the dirty work.

But recently farmers and farmworkers in Georgia and Alabama have made national headlines as labor shortages have forced us to pay attention. Crops are rotting on the vine and growers are staring at huge losses, unsure of how to move forward without a reliable pool of cheap labor.

Why Georgia and Alabama? Both states recently passed harsh new immigration laws designed to crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Proponents said the new laws would open up thousands of jobs for legal residents, especially on farms.

But with average annual salaries of $11,000, 14-hour days in the heat of summer, and shockingly unsafe working conditions, do you think U.S. citizens are rushing to fill these jobs? The new hit NBC show Rock Center recently highlighted the labor shortage on Alabama’s farms:

We met Jess Montez Durr, who was picking tomatoes on the Jenkins tomato farm on Chandler Mountain in northern Alabama. Durr said he’d stick with this as long as he could, but he preferred his previous job as a dishwasher at Applebee’s. “The work was a whole lot more easier than this,” he said. Since our visit, he and the other American workers have quit.

Consumers, growers, politicians, we’re all caught up in this bind. We want cheap labor and cheap food, but it turns out we don’t really want the people who make it all possible – and all the “inconveniences” of educating children or protecting workers. On our farms we’ve always relied on marginalized and vulnerable workers to do backbreaking manual labor, and now we’re pretending that they are the problem. With these new state laws we’re criminalizing them, telling them that their help is no longer wanted. So they’re leaving.

In Georgia, Gov. Deal suggested that ex-cons should do the work. But it turns out even this population can turn down jobs that are “unsuitable,” and most have. It seems that the few who tried often didn’t last a day in the fields.

So how do we move forward? The solution is not to find yet another vulnerable population to exploit in the fields. Instead, we need to end our addiction to cheap labor.

To start, farmworkers should have the same protections and safety standards as other industries. Despite the passage of the 1935 Fair Labor Standards Act, farmworkers – many of whom were African-American sharecroppers at the time – were excluded from many of its provisions. Decades later, farmworkers are still fighting for the most basic protections that other workers have, like overtime and child labor laws.

Farmworkers should have legal status, too. We all benefit when workers are on a level playing field. Honest employers who obey the laws would no longer be at a competitive disadvantage against unscrupulous employers who take advantage of undocumented workers. At the same time, workers would be able to leave bad jobs and complain about unsafe conditions without fear of being deported.

Finally, farmworkers should earn more than poverty wages. A study of migrant workers in Eastern NC found that nearly half don’t have enough food to feed their families year-round. But if farm wages were to rise by 40 percent, each seasonal farmworker would be lifted above the federal poverty line. The total cost to consumers? About $15 more per household per year. (Check out “Room for Debate” at the NY Times for more on this.)

In a down economy with high unemployment, it’s no surprise when politicians heap blame on the most vulnerable populations, like undocumented farmworkers. But the hard truth these politicians won’t admit is that farmworkers didn’t steal our jobs. We invited them. We needed their cheap, reliable labor and we were content when times were good and workers didn’t complain.

Now that we’re criminalizing undocumented workers in unprecedented ways, we’re merely reaping what we sowed. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

Chris Liu-Beers, Program Associate, NC Council of Churches

Click here to read this editorial at the Raleigh News & Observer.

Across North Carolina, congregations are participating in this year’s groundbreaking national event called the DREAM Sabbath 2011. Sponsored by the Interfaith Immigration Coalition, the DREAM Sabbath is a month-long opportunity to integrate stories of DREAM students into prayers, readings, reflections, or study sessions as a way to help educate and spread awareness of DREAM students and their hopes to attain full recognition of their contributions to our communities. Over 300 congregations nationwide are participating.

Last week the Associated Press noted that ten NC congregations were hosting events, saying that “A campaign to change U.S. immigration laws to help young immigrants earn an education is taking to the pulpit in North Carolina churches.”

Over the weekend the Winston-Salem Journal featured two stories about local congregations who are getting involved. Moises Serrano is one undocumented young person who spoke with a congregation on Sunday:

Standing in front of the congregation at Gallaway Memorial Episcopal Church, Serrano said his parents had no food for him when he was an infant in Mexico, and that’s why they made a treacherous journey on foot, walking across a desert for three weeks to make the crossing when Serrano was about 18 months old, he said…

“My best friend was going to go off to college to be somebody, and I was going to stay here and be nobody,” he said.

“We are not criminals,” Serrano continued. “All we want to do is get an education and give back. … I want to own a house. I want to settle down.”

The NC Council of Churches supports this effort and we encourage more local congregations to participate in this year’s DREAM Sabbath. Click here for more information and to download a full packet of resources.

About the DREAM Act

The DREAM Act is a bill that is designed to give undocumented students the opportunity to earn legal status if they came to the United States as children, are long-term residents, have good moral character, and complete two years of college or military service in good standing. The bill was first introduced to legislation on Aug.1, 2001 and was reintroduced to the Senate on May 1, 2011. So far it has not managed to gain enough traction to become law.

Last fall, as the bill prepared to come to a vote in Congress, bishops and other judicatory heads from NC enthusiastically called on our elected officials to pass it into law. You can read their statement here.

Watch the film online | Order a DVD from the Farmworker Advocacy Network

About the Film

“Most people don’t realize that young kids are picking blueberries for our pies, sweet potatoes for our casseroles and tomatoes for our salads,” said Emily Drakage of the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs.  Drakage works with farm worker children and their families. “People should be able to feel confident when they buy North Carolina produce that they’re not enjoying it at the expense of a child’s health and safety.”

The Farmworker Advocacy Network and One Economy are proud to announce Harvest of Dignity, a new original documentary that provides an in-depth portrait of the people who harvest our food. Harvest of Dignity is exclusively featured online on One Economy’s Public Internet Channel, PIC.tv.

“One Economy’s Public Internet Channel provides online programs that engage, inspire and facilitate action,” said Daniel Fellini, executive producer, One Economy Corporation, “Harvest of Dignity is a film that addresses a relevant issue facing communities and we hope it will be a catalyst for thought, discussion and engagement.”

The Harvest of Dignity film comes on the 50-year anniversary of the acclaimed 1960 film Harvest of Shame, the last televised documentary by North Carolina-born journalist Edward R. Murrow that led to permanent changes in the laws protecting workers’ rights. The new film, Harvest of Dignity, combines interviews with North Carolina farmworkers, advocates, faith leaders and educators, documentary photos and interviews collected by Student Action with Farmworkers, and clips from the original Harvest of Shame documentary. Highlighting the struggles of farmworker families traveling the eastern migrant stream, the film compares conditions from 50 years ago and today and asks how much has changed.

“The good thing is that I haven’t gotten sick, right, because supposedly in this work many people get sick, from the tobacco and from the pesticides… They don’t tell us, but you can see that they are applying pesticides, or it smells like pesticides afterward. You can smell it when you enter the field, it smells of poison and you realize what is going on. And since the boss speaks English and you speak Spanish, you don’t understand much.”
–NC farmworker, 2010

This film was produced by Minnow Media in collaboration with the Farmworker Advocacy Network and Student Action with Farmworkers. The film is in Spanish and English with subtitles. FAN uses the documentary in its campaign to reform conditions for N.C. field and poultry workers. For more information about the Harvest of Dignity campaign, visit ncfan.org.

I grew up in the 90’s, before financial meltdowns and global crises. I attended conservative Baptist churches around Houston, Texas. They were all filled with politically independent folk (though in college I learned that a Texas Independent is a conservative who doesn’t want to be involved). In many ways my upbringing wasn’t too different than that of my peers. However, there is one exception that I value: I met, worked with, and made friends with immigrants who happened to be undocumented.

My first job was as a machine shop shipping clerk. I was probably a little young, but during the summer I was able to earn a few bucks and develop a taste for new and shiny bicycle parts. However, it wasn’t the money or what the money bought me that has lasted. When I think about that time, my friends and the people I worked with were a highlight.

I don’t remember everyone, though a few names still linger. When I first came to work, I was inexperienced and intimidated. Being the youngest didn’t help, but when my coworkers would speak Spanish, I had to strain, waiting for an occasional word of English to give me some clue as to the subject of conversation. They also spoke English, but their accents ranged from barely noticeable to very strong. Slowly I began to understand some words and eventually felt accepted by this small group of hard-working men.

I first learned that some of them were undocumented on the day that one of them took a vacation. An older man named Tino brought it to my attention that our friend was going back to Mexico to renew marriage vows with his wife. The words “He might get caught and not come back,” shocked me. I didn’t respond, because I didn’t know how or what to say. It was a complicated situation. Wedding vows are important, and getting caught keeps him from earning a living. But my friend came back a couple weeks later, and everything went on as usual. I returned every summer until I went off to college, something these young men my age didn’t have the opportunity to do.

Fast forward ten years, and I look around and see Latino immigrants being demonized to no end as the U.S. economy proves difficult to fix. Jobs, taxes, upholding laws and security are all being cited as reasons to treat Latinos and their families in ways that citizens would not want to be treated themselves. I’ve seen firsthand how Latino workers hold jobs that I qualified for as an inexperienced teenager their whole lives – jobs that rewarded me so little that I left to get easier, better-paying employment at the first chance. These people – my friends – deserve more than to be thrown to the curb at the first sign of trouble. Difficult economic times do not give us the license to scapegoat or demonize our new neighbors.  We are all in this together.

Major League baseball player and All-Star Adrian Gonzalez, said last year that the anti-immigration law in Arizona was cause for boycotting the 2011 All-Star Game in Phoenix.  A year later, however, the first baseman from Tijuana decided “It’s not something I am going to get into.”

Baseball has a long, but often forgotten, relationship with activism since the critique of systemic racism by the successful career of Jackie Robinson. Jesse Jackson has called for a renaissance of this kind of activism, asking the players of the All-Star game and Home Run Derby to talk about the Arizona law during all the festivities. Jackson, along with other groups that support immigrants, was met with a stiff silence. It seems that none of the players has brought attention to the plight of immigrants in Arizona or other states that have recently passed punitive anti-immigration like Alabama and Georgia.

Perhaps Gonzalez gives us the answer for why professional athletes, some of whom had promised to be in the fight against inhumane laws that split families and punish those who put food on citizen’s tables. Gonzalez told USA Today, “What I said was misinterpreted, especially the way the question was asked. At the time, I didn’t know much about the law. I still don’t.” Not knowing what the law dictates, seems to prevent any action on behalf of the immigrants being attacked as a threat. After the excitement wanes and the media coverage dies down, people need to rely on their own knowledge and will to push against injustice.

In the long run, American society cannot afford to put its head in the sand. Eventually the statistics and the numbers will no longer matter, because sooner or later each individual will be impacted.  The question we all face, from the All-Stars on the field to everyday fans in the seats, is how bad do we let it get before we care enough to stick up for our neighbors. Jackie Robinson said “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives,” and I wonder what he would think of Baseball’s lack of impact over last weekend.

The Raleigh News & Observer recently featured a front-page story about how students are organizing in support of the Dream Act:

Inspired by the Civil Rights movement, the Dream Team is part of a national push by young people to the front of immigration reform.

They’ve confronted legislators, launched hunger strikes, and even announced their illegal status to draw attention to their demands.

They are calling for passage of “the Dream Act,” a legal change that would make it easier for young people to become U.S. citizens if they attend college or join the military…

“We’ve had enough,” said N.C. Dream Team co-founder Viridiana Martinez of Sanford. “We know we’re taking risks, facing arrest every time we come out. But we have to speak out for ourselves. Because if we don’t do it someone else is going to do it. And that has gotten us nowhere.”

The group formed last summer during a 13-day hunger strike in Raleigh to draw attention to the Dream Act. The name stands for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors.

Click here to read more.

The NC Council of Churches is excited to see this generation of young people come out of the shadows and stand against unjust immigration policies that separate families and undermine access to education.  At the same time, we know these students are taking huge risks in revealing their status.

Last fall, as the Dream Act worked its way through Congress, many of the Council's member judicatory heads joined together to support this bipartisan legislation through a powerful public statement.  Here’s an excerpt:

While we look forward to the eventual passage of comprehensive immigration reform, we believe that the status quo cannot be tolerated.  We urge beginning immigration reform by strongly endorsing the DREAM Act, which will unlock the door to the American dream for thousands of young people each year. We were moved by the three students engaged in a lengthy hunger strike outside Senator Kay Hagan’s office seeking her support for the DREAM Act.

Read the entire statement and see a list of signers here.

Visit the NC Dream Team online: http://ncdreamteam.org

– Chris Liu-Beers, NC Council of Churches

Farm labor in George could shift from undocumented farm workers to citizens on probation. It hasn’t happened yet, but Georgia Governor Nathan Deal wants it to. The farmers themselves are less enthusiastic. One farmer, according to TIME Magazine, wanted the Governor to show his own confidence in this measure by hiring people on probation to work in the Governor’s mansion, and adding, “I want my family to be as safe as the Governor’s.”

Governor Deal believes ex-convicts on Georgia farms can fill 11,000 jobs opened by the state’s new harsh immigration law. The law authorizes all law enforcement to detain immigrants and that has scared away the undocumented workers who attended the fields beforehand. With unemployment hitting a critical high among citizens on probation, it seems the Governor sees the solution as a simple switch. But how many ex-convicts have gone out to the farms looking for work? If the potential workers who are on probation are not presently looking for those jobs, will this group migrate to the farms, because the Governor says so?

According to Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, so far only two-dozen probationers are participating in the push to get the farm jobs filled. The pilot program was launched in a cucumber field in Leslie, GA. Probationers were given buckets and guides for learning how to pick the vegetables. For every bucket of cucumbers, the workers would receive a blue ticket worth 50 cents. If the worker could get 15 buckets in an hour, they would be paid at a higher rate than the minimum wage.

Ultimately we shouldn’t side step the real issue. For Big Agriculture to sustain itself, it has to find labor in vulnerable populations that will accept the low pay and high risk of the job. Attending a field takes almost super-human physical and mental determination.  Yet everyday people perform this labor for an average of $11,000 a year, and a 10 percent chance of getting benefits. The undocumented workers do it because they have to so they can provide for their families. Governor Deal is trying to create jobs by scaring or deporting these people and replacing them with a documented yet still vulnerable population. It is a curious shuffle that ignores the problem that farm workers still have little to no rights in the United States. If it is any indication, out of 24 volunteers only six probationers remained to work in the field.

There are groups in North Carolina who are fighting for all farmworkers to receive the respect and payment that they deserve. Check them out and lets remember these people when we enjoy our next meal.

• Farmworker Advocacy Network
• Farmworker Ministry Committee

-Keith Gustine, NC Council of Churches Intern

Recently, the GOP held the first debate between Republican Presidential candidates. The stalwart libertarian from Texas, Ron Paul attended and according to the LA Times, won the debate. He may have alienated a few of the more conservative voters however, when he criticized the penalization of the “Catholic Church” for providing care for immigrants.

As a fellow Texan I can admire the common sense rhetoric and rapport that Congressman Paul can develop between himself and the audience, but I can only imagine the amount of eyebrow lifts that came when he approved of Churches taking care of immigrants. Traditionally Paul’s answer to any question tends to sound something like ‘The government shouldn’t be involved at all.’ Some Americans who like a statesman cutting government spending, also support bills such as SB 1070 in Arizona, now in Alabama and Georgia, that have the potential to criminalize basic Church aid for immigrants.

The anger towards churches on the issue of immigration can be found in many places. Judson Phillips blogged that he wanted to see the United Methodist Church “go out of business” for supporting access to education for children of undocumented immigrants through the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act would allow children who were brought to the United States by their parents to attend college and eventually become citizens. These young people had nothing to do with their immigration, and punishment via deportation to a strange land that they know nothing about seems unjustified, especially if they follow our laws and make good grades in school. If the UMC Church was led by faith, hope and love to voice their support for these young people, why does Phillips accuse them of crossing the Church/State line?

Ron Paul’s support for what he calls the Church’s “role” is nice to hear. He shows a willingness to recognize that humane treatment of a neighbor should not be criminalized and that the Catholic Church and others share the Christian call to love neighbors as themselves. Yet he also supports state enforcement of immigration law and a Constitutional amendment taking away automatic citizenship of children born on U.S. soil. The Church aiding undocumented workers and their families seems to be permissible, as long as those people are not represented or have rights under federal or state law. So it appears that the Church can help people, while the State effectively cuts them off from making a living. Even to the point of creating a stateless population of children born in this country.

Does the church have a duty to fight for this fragile population’s civil rights? Though this question was not asked during the GOP debate, when asked about the relationship between church and state, Congressman Paul said, “The most important thing is the first amendment… which means Congress should never prohibit the expression of your Christian faith in a public place.” This begs the question what happens when that expression of faith is supporting an immigrant with no home to return to?

Paul’s use of the term “expression” probably corresponds to praying, picketing, evangelizing, and communicating with words the untouchable realization that Christ is Lord. However the physical consequences of that untouchable truth have always driven how Christians treat the stranger among us. Precisely because the truth is untouchable, a Christian can put his or her body between Christian Ramirez and a threat to his education, between the infant Carlos Herrera-Candelario and a corporation’s pesticides that took away his arms and legs, between Congress and the farmworkers with no protection. Such acts are expressions of our Christian faith, and they cannot be separated from giving food and shelter to those in need.

–Keith Gustine, NC Council of Churches Intern

Photograph shows half-length portrait of two girls wearing banners with slogan ABOLISH CHILD SLAVERY!! in English and Yiddish (ני)דער מיט (קינד)ער שקלאפער(ײ), Nider mit Kinder Schklawerii), one carrying American flag; spectators stand nearby. Probably taken during May 1, 1909 labor parade in New York City. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abolish_child_slavery.jpg

As a society, we decided 75 years ago that child labor needed very strict guidelines to make sure that education comes first and to prevent abusive conditions.  The only problem?  Children in agriculture were exempted from these protections, in part because most farms were small family operations that needed everyone’s help.  Today, mass-scale agribusiness has replaced family farms.  But the exemption allowing child labor on farms has remained, meaning that there’s a good chance that pint of blueberries you’re enjoying was hand-picked by 12- and 13-year olds – legally.  These same children are too young to work in any other industry.

If you listen closely, you’ll hear two main arguments in favor of the status quo – in favor of child labor.

The most common one goes like this: “I worked on a farm when I was young, and it was hard work but I learned a lot.  There’s nothing wrong with hard work.”  Working on family farms is indeed our agricultural heritage, and so theproposed legislation to reduce child labor in North Carolina has a very clear exemption for the children of the farm owners.  However:

1. Today’s farms are dangerous places for children. Large-scale agribusinesses use a lot of heavy machinery and pesticides – things that don’t mix well with kids.  Today, 20% of all farm deaths are children, even though children make up only about 8% of the agricultural work force.  From 1992-2000, 42% of work-related deaths of minors occurred in agriculture.  Half of the victims were 14 years old and under.
2. No one says that children shouldn’t be able to work at all. But it doesn’t make any sense to exempt children working in one of America’s most dangerous industries, when those same children would be turned away from working at movie theaters or shopping malls.  Children in the fields should be protected in the same way as children in any other industry.

Another common argument in favor of child labor goes something like this: “Farmworker families are so poor that their children have to work to support them.  It’s really an opportunity for them to save money and build their resumes.”

Most farmworker families are very poor – average annual incomes for farmworkers are around $11,000 – but the solution is not to allow child labor.  The solution is to support living wages and other safe, proven mechanisms that raise workers out of poverty.  Ending exploitative child labor is only one piece of a much larger puzzle, but it is a crucial piece.  Too often, we see that allowing child labor doesn’t break the cycle of poverty, it reinforces it.  Children who work in the fields often experience health problems and difficulty performing well in school because of the severe toll farm labor exacts on young bodies and developing minds.

From the garment factories of New York to the coal mines of West Virginia, America decided a long time ago that child labor was not going to be the solution to bringing people out of poverty.  It’s been 75 years, and we’ve never looked back.  It’s long past time to close the loopholes and level the playing field for children working in our fields.

Growing up working on the family farm is an important tradition that should be preserved, but employing young children in hazardous work should not be a tradition any longer.  Child labor laws should be the same for every industry.  All children in North Carolina deserve a safe, healthy and bright future.  It’s as simple as that.

Chris Liu-Beers, Program Associate
NC Council of Churches

• Watch a video on child labor in NC
• Support legislation to end child labor
• Endorse the Harvest of Dignity Campaign