CINCINNATI POST January 2, 2005 Housing issue for Hispanic workers By Kevin Eigelbach "It gets so frustrating to hear of people coming here and dying," he said. "It drains you to see the pain of such unnecessary deaths. I mean, it's just bad." Esparza heads the Hispanic Resource Center in Covington, which helps Hispanic immigrants. The run-down 14-by-70 foot trailer off Knox Lillard Road near Warsaw where Manuel Velasquez and his family lived was on property owned by Kenneth Cozine. Cozine said he told Velasquez the trailer was uninhabitable, but allowed the family to move in rent-free a couple of months ago after Velasquez said they had nowhere else to go and he could fix it up. Velasquez, who was stripping tobacco at the time of the fire, works for him and other local farmers, Cozine said. Velasquez's wife, Citialli Hernandez, 22, daughter Naomi, 2, and son Alexander, three months, all died in the fire. Wednesday's fire "highlights that whole (housing) issue," said the Rev. Michael Barth, pastor of St. John Catholic Church in Carrollton. The church hosts a regional Hispanic Center, to which Velasquez and his family belonged. Barth said Velasquez has been overcome with grief since he found his family dead. "It's even hard to converse with him, he's just sobbing most of the time," he said. The parish plans to pay for a funeral and burial for Citialli and the children, Barth said. It will likely be in Carroll County, he said, although Velasquez has said he wants to return them to Mexico for burial there if he can raise the money to do that. The Carroll County Ministerial Association has been concerned for some time about the quality of housing for farm workers in the area, said Rev. Barth. He thinks enforcing building codes would help, but said that's often difficult. The rolling hills and farms of rural counties like Gallatin County hide pockets of Hispanics, said Esparza. Often, the public doesn't know they are there until something tragic happens, he said. And in rural Kentucky, there's an attitude of, "This is my property, I will do with it as I please," Rev. Barth said. said. The other reality is that tenants sometimes don't take care of their landlord's property, he said. It's very hard for Hispanics who don't speak English to find decent housing, he and Esparza both said. "The migrant population is coming with nothing, risking their lives in hope of generating enough income to maybe help a parent finish building a house, or buying a piece of land over there, or putting their brothers and sisters through school," Esparza said. Hispanics first started to settle in Northern Kentucky about half a dozen years ago, many coming to work in agriculture because farmers found it increasingly difficult to find people willing to do the grueling work of cutting tobacco stalks, spearing them and hanging them in barns to cure. So they turned to workers from south of the border. "They're coming here because the work is available, and visas are available for agricultural work," Esparza said. The workers are typically paid from 10 to 13 cents for each stick of tobacco they cut. "The wonderful thing about our Latino brothers and sisters is that they're doing 1,000 a day," Esparza said. Without them, local farmers would have to spend a lot more money for labor, Kenton County Agent for Agriculture Patrick Hale said. "We would be in a lot of trouble if the Hispanics were not here, No. 1, because they're very good workers. They work from daylight to dark. "No. 2 -- and I hate to say this -- us Caucasians tend to be lazy, and it's hard to get laborers from around the community," Hale said. Some workers still migrate with the nation's growing and harvesting seasons, but many are settling down here and finding other jobs, Hale said, especially in restaurants or in tree nurseries. As the amount of tobacco that farmers can legally grow has been reduced, the number of Hispanics working in tobacco has fallen, Campbell County Agent for Agriculture Don Sorrell said. "We're not dealing with migrant labor issues as much as we used to," he said, but added that in more rural counties that might not be the case. Many Hispanics still work on horse farms, he said, which are year-round jobs. Kenton farmer Warren Richardson said some of his fellow farmers had trouble finding Hispanics to work the fields this year, and he suspects it's because so many have gone to work in construction. "They're excellent workers, excellent people. The ones we had, I thought the world of them," he said.
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