I know it sounds like a joke, but “the agriculture lobby” is actually a major part of the reason we don’t have laws that focus more on exploited agricultural workers rather than people doing sexual labour. #sexwork #labourrights
Can you even imagine the havoc it would cause if he deported farm workers? We would all starve. Literally, we would run out of food unless companies could employ Americans just as quickly. They probably can’t because they wouldn’t be able to get away with treating people as poorly as they do the migrants who grow our food.
That is LITERALLY true.
Not to sound like that guy from Parks and Rec but having worked at the Bureau of Labour AND having done research into trafficking—even the companies that treat their workers LEGALLY are paying starvation wages; there are hundreds and hundreds of farm that depend on a mix of exploited and uncoerced labour.
The government has made it incredibly hard for trafficked workers to get justice: IF they are able to get away and report it, they then have to stay in the same geographic location (often dangerous) AND if they aren’t citizens or in the states on a work visa they aren’t allowed to work, but the gov’t isn’t paying their rent or bills or food,
and THEN often ICE will deport such workers because god knows deporting them is way more important than forcing unethical motherfuckers to abide by the law and keeping track of and punishing those who don’t.
Honesto Silva Ibarra. 28 years old, a wife and three kids, working on an H2A visa from Mexico.
Collapsed in Washington berry fields while the sky was yellow with haze from the bad wildfires in British Columbia late last summer. His employers had previously denied a request for sick leave. By the time they got him to medical treatment it was too late – he died at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
When three of his coworkers complained about the work conditions, they were fired.
Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families United for Justice) is working to organize these laborers, I don’t want to end this story on a defeat when the braceros certainly haven’t been defeated. But Ibarra had all the proper legal documentation in place. Imagine how undocumented workers are treated.
Source: https://foodfirst.org/braceros-organize-after-one-worker-dies/
Farms that employ exploited and trafficked workers are usually white-owned and are sometimes owned by people with enough wealth to buy a member of Congress or three.
7-11 is a franchise, and stores are often run by their South Asian owners, families and friends who may have scraped together their savings for the initial costs.
Race and wealth aren’t the sole reasons for the choice of targets, but they are factors that should not be ignored.