BROWNSVILLE HERALD

March 12, 2006

Center helps Valley migrants

Arkansas facility provides a place to spend the night, wash the clothes

BY SARA INÉS CALDERÓN
The Brownsville Herald

It’s a long ride from Brownsville to the agricultural fields in the north, and for those passing through Arkansas on the way to work, there is respite.

“We’re kind of considered a half-way stopping point when they are coming from the Rio Grande (Valley) to Michigan and Ohio to work in the fields,” said Evelyn Trumble of the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services.

The Hope Migrant Center located in Hope, Ark., 35 miles northeast of Texarkana.

The goal is to provide a wide range of services for migrants en route to work destinations in the Rustbelt. It opened to migrant registration March 1 and since has registered more than 100 people. Registration is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and closes on Dec. 31.

“We’re considered a migrant one-stop for migrant seasonal farmworkers,” Trumble said.

The federally funded center has been around, in one form or another, since 1950 and currently provides shelter, laundry facilities, childcare, training, employment opportunities and medical care. All services are free, with the exception of the housing units, which cost $3 for 12 hours.

The creation of the center was a response to migrant demands dating back to the 1940s, Trumble said. Employees of the then Arkansas Employment Security Department noticed a lot of migrant families travelling through the Hope area on their way north, stopping over on the side of the road for the night, and then moving on in the morning, she said.

A pilot program called the Migrant Information Station was created in 1950 as a way to test the waters for the need of such a program. The Station assisted families with information such as crop information reports and directions.

Two years later money was allocated for a larger center, Trumble said, and in 1955, the sStation was closed and gave way to a more permanent center in 1957. In 1998, the Hope complex opened as a completely new center from its old location there.

The Hope center is run by the Arkansas Migrant Farmworker Labor Center under the state Department of Workforce Services. Registering tens of thousands of migrants from the Rio Grande Valley each year, the center has adapted to serve the needs of the thousands of migrants who choose the area as a stopping point, Trumble said.

“The migrants themselves chose this area as a stopping point,” she said. “They are used to coming to this area, and we want to be able to provide them those services they need while travelling to their work destination.”

June is the peak month for registration, Trumble said. Last year alone, the center registered more than 30,000 people from the Valley, the highest recorded number was 52,000 in 1972.

The center is just one link in the chain of the country’s agricultural industry, and without it, everyone who consumes agriculture would suffer, Trumble said.

“The people in the U.S. could not survive without the service that the migrant seasonal farmworker is providing,” she said. “They are the ones that make it possible for us to go into the grocery store to take home food to our families.”