TAMPA TRIBUNE December 21, 2005
Group Plans Aid Trip For Migrant Workers
DADE CITY - Local advocates for migrant farmworkers plan to head south to Lake Okeechobee on Thursday with relief supplies for other farmworkers still struggling from Hurricane Wilma. "I don't think anybody's really paying attention to what's happening in South Florida," said Margarita Romo, executive director of Farmworkers Self-Help Inc., who plans to travel with one or two other agency workers to Belle Glade. Conditions there are "real bad," said Tirso Moreno, the general coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida Inc. In October, high winds from the storm tore apart farmworkers' mobile homes and destroyed a significant portion of the state's citrus crop. The damage left an unknown number of Florida's migrant workers - estimated at about 198,000 statewide - with less work for the harvest season, which began last month. Migrants who work in nurseries and on vegetable farms also lost work because of hurricanes Wilma and Katrina, the storms that affected Florida's citrus country. "They don't get work, there's no income," Moreno said. Aid from government agencies and nonprofits has been slow and spotty, Moreno said. Sometimes money is not available to migrants who are here illegally. Consequently, farmworker groups are turning to other sources for help, including fellow farmworker groups across the state. That's how Farmworkers Self-Help became involved. Each year, the Dade City agency organizes a Christmas Eve distribution of toys, blankets and food baskets to area farmworkers, who generally live in meager circumstances during normal harvest seasons. The donations come from churches and other private groups and donors. This year, they'll go to 249 families with about 900 children. When local aid workers realized they had a surplus of donations, they asked Moreno where they could send them. He suggested Belle Glade. So Romo and others will spend this afternoon packing supplies into a 30-passenger church bus. People with last-minute donations can bring them by the Farmworkers Self-Help office at 37240 Lock St. this morning. Other farmworker groups are providing disaster relief, too. Redlands Christian Migrant Association is raising money for groceries, rent and utilities for 400 families in Immokalee, where the tomato crop was devastated. RCMA's main work is providing child care and early childhood education for migrant children. After farmworkers weather this harvest season, they may face a bigger problem: canker. State agriculture officials fear the 2005 hurricanes might have spread citrus canker to 28 percent of the state's commercial groves. They won't know the extent of the damage for sure until the spring. That would mean a smaller citrus crop. The only way to get rid of canker, which is harmless to people but causes fruit to drop from the trees, is to destroy infected trees. Some grove owners don't replant after an infestation because they can make more money selling the land for development or other uses.
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