A good sign for migrants

Hammonton festival helps immigrants obtain health care

By ZACH PATBERG Staff Writer

HAMMONTON — Wilder Rodriguez's realization that migrant workers were all but alone in the world came when a family of them pulled up at his Hammonton office seeking help for a 16-year-old girl who had given birth in their van hours before.

The family of Mexican immigrants was heading to Vineland from Florida to pick blueberries for the summer when the girl, dangerously weak from the labor, forced an emergency stop.

“We called the police and took the baby to the hospital,” Rodriguez said. “Both came out all right, but it hit me then that these people really don't have anyone looking out for them.”

That was about 15 years ago, when Rodriguez, a Puerto Rico native, was just starting out at Rural Opportunities Inc., or ROI. Since then, as the field service coordinator for the migrant worker advocacy organization's Hammonton office, he has spent every day traveling to different farm camps in the area and monitoring the treatment of the nearly 10,000 Mexican, Latino and Haitian farmworkers who migrate here from Florida each summer.

What he's seen ranges from no cold water or toilets in the field to workers passing out mid-step from exhaustion after laboring for 14 hours without overtime.

“The mistreatment, it's all around,” he said.

It is the goal of ROI and other immigrant aid groups to spread the word to farmworkers that they are not alone — that health, legal and housing services are available.

And in order to facilitate circulating that message, the groups come together once a year at Hammonton Middle School for the Farmworker Festival.

The festival, put on Sunday for its seventh year by Southern Jersey Family Medical Centers Inc., is intended to show migrant workers the extent of the support system offered by the groups. It's also designed to show them a good time.

Mixed in with the tables of immigrant-rights brochures, child services pamphlets and a mobile medic van was an inflatable giraffe, massage tables and soccer fields on which an all-day tournament was held.

Volunteers from the Hammonton Methodist Church grilled infinite amounts of hamburgers and hot dogs while those from the Presbyterian church gave away piles of clothing and home appliances. Tents offered fake tattoos, face painting and crafts.

“This is a social event because they don't really have any social outlet,” said Cherie Arias, SJFMC's migrant outreach coordinator.

According to Arias, some of the largest hurdles the center faces in reaching out to the workers involve a lack of awareness and a lack of transportation. The center has taken steps to counter these problems by placing health promoters in the farm camps year around, extending its night hours to 11 p.m. and buying two vans that for two nights per week take the medicine to the camps.

Another big issue, Arias said, is that many migrant workers, who are constantly on the move in unfamiliar places, don't know where to go to pick up medication.

“And they don't have the money to pay for them,” added Linda Flake, the center's president. To Flake, this nomadic quality can cause a disconnect between primary care, which the center can give, and secondary care, which often requires specialists for X-rays and lab work.

“We can handle the primary caring,” she said. “But they all move around so much it becomes difficult for them after that to find access to treatment.”

For Selerino Dominguez, a 20-year-old migrant worker from Mexico, the festival proved to be an eye opener. He said many of his co-workers didn't seek out help for fear of getting into trouble. Not him, however. After a few hours at the festival, he learned he had options and support.

“I've been talking to people and now I don't think it will be a problem,” he said through a translator about connecting with the various services. “I see so many people from my country here. It makes me feel better.”

His first order of business is to see a doctor about the small boils that have spread up his hands and forearms since his last stint picking oranges in Florida. Someone from the medical center gave Dominguez a number to call to schedule an appointment. And Karen Escalante from the Presbyterian Church at Hammonton set up a time after the festival for Dominguez to talk with a person from the Gloucester County Special Services School District about receiving assistance to pay his medical bill.

But Dominguez better move fast. In three weeks, he's off to pick apples in New York.