Immigrant Issues and Rights

Backbone of our Nation

CALIFORNIA. Our nation’s richest agricultural state, produces fruits and vegetables that feed the whole country. And yet, many Americans undermine and take for granted those who cultivate the nutritional fruits and vegetables that we serve on our plates every day.

The hands that pick our fruits and cultivate our crops are usually the hands of migrant and seasonal farm workers. The task that they have before them each day is one that millions of American will never have the experience of knowing. The long hours of hard manual labor with little pay, the exposure to dangerous pesticides, the overwhelmingly high rate of those uninsured, the lack of sanitary washing facilities in the fields, along with another unaddressed extreme problem which is the lack of focus to female farm workers and their limited access to reproductive health care. These are only some of the issues that our farm working women and men experience.

Article 25 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services…” There rights are not being let known to the people because those who hold the backbone of our economy live in extreme poverty and lack of health care. Nearly half of them earn less than $7,500 each year and are considered to be one of the most underprivileged groups in the U.S. We, as Americans have the obligation to stand as one nation and be heard as one voice. We must help stop the unfair treatment our migrant and seasonal workers are experiencing. Turning our backs on those who come to this country in search for hope and opportunity will only work against what our forefathers had in mind for the greatest country in the world.

Ana Suarez