KTVX-TV (Salt Lake City)

July 9, 2010

Migrant farmworkers need help

By Barbara Smith

SANTAQUIN, UTAH - There are more than 19-thousand migrant farm workers in Utah right now. They are the poorest of the working poor. Because of our slumping economy, and political backlash over illegal immigration donations to these legal workers are down, and the need is great.

The migrant workers enter the Santaquin orchards at first light. They pick cherries until midday, when the heat makes impossible to harvest fruit without damaging it. The men climb twelve foot ladders, carefully removing the cherries, one at a time, dropping them into metal buckets strapped to their backs. It’s hard work, and according to farmer who owns acres and acres of cherry trees, not something most Americans would be willing to do.

Domingo Chavez Morales says he works these orchards out of pure necessity. He says the work is difficult but he’s used to it. He tells me through a translator” his family is from a ranch, from a farm, and it is very familiar to him and he likes being here.”

None of the migrant workers will be in Utah for very long. Chavez Morales will head back across the Mexico border once the picking season is over. Isamael Uzuru tells the translator “he says they come on permit, usually for one month depending on the type of fruit they are picking, and so they come to work for that, and then they go home.”

Some will return to other crops in other places, but none of them will go home rich. They get paid by the number of boxes of fruit they pick. The average migrant farm worker makes no more than $7,500 dollars a year. Uzuru says ever dollar matters. “He says it is incredibly important that he earns quite a bit this year because his whole family depends on him, so if he doesn’t earn enough, his family suffers.”

Meanwhile, migrant workers struggle for a month at a time, moving from orchard to orchard. Jason Chandler, a case manager for the Utah Farm Worker Program, says “many of them come from different places, California, Mexico, other countries, and sometimes they come with the bare minimum.” He says that makes an already difficult job even harder. “They need supplies to help them be warm at night, protected from the sun during the day, hats and gloves, protected from the environment, and to just be able to live well.”

Donations are being taken right now by The Utah Migrant and Seasonal Farm Worker Coalition. They are asking for Men’s clothing: long sleeved shirts, long pants without holes, work boots, socks, and new underwear. They also need blankets to keep out the cold, insect repellant and non-perishable food items. The farm workers don’t receive assistance from any other sources.