At Issue: A Migrant Summer

Okay, because when they come from Texas, you know they come up here to to look for work so they can feed their family. And umm, I would say this to you know, that they face a lot of problems you know doing that there's a migrant worker because for example they don't have no insurance some of the migrants do not have you know insured for a job and especially you know when they come in into the area they do not know where they gonna stay and and you know they're gonna have umm, they're just taking a chance you know to be you know in the initial you know in everywhere they go good evening I'm Twyla young what you see behind me here is a migrant farm labour camp near Muscatine it is owned and operated by Ivan Godard and it is the temporary home for migrant laborers who come to work at seasonal farm work in this part of Iowa although you have probably never seen a camp like this they are well off the beaten track they exist in several parts of the state although one of the common complaints about the presence of migrants is that they take jobs away from permanent residents in fact migrants in general work at jobs that no one else will do for pay so low that permanent residents would probably not accept it they cultivate and harvest where machines would damage the crop where hand labor is less expensive or more efficient than mechanization or where no machine has yet been invented to do the job migrants are farm workers that travelled from a home base to Iowa and don't return for anywhere from two or three or four weeks to about six months and those are migrants that come here to Iowa come primarily from the Rio Grande Valley area of Texas and that's where their homes and their families are year-round in addition to migrants we all have will also have a seasonal farmworkers that will stay in an area all for probably maybe about six months at a time and before they move on or go back home but since that's what the migrant is somebody who does not return to their home every evening they leave their home to find employment what kinds of work do migrants in do in our depends on the area of Iowa for example we have a pretty good population of migrants down in the Shenandoah southwestern part of Iowa down there the migrants work primarily in nurseries we have a fairly large population of migrants in the Muscatine area and a Muscatine they work primarily with tomatoes melons and peppers we also have migrants working in Ellsworth Ellsworth they worked in a turkey processing plant other migrants in Williamsburg there they do detest me so it kind of depends what part of Iowa they go to last year the migrant action program a federally funded agency that assists migrant families in a variety of ways made contact with 4,600 migrants a consulting firm studying migrants in Iowa estimated that there were about twice that many in the state at some time during the year most migrants come to Iowa in family groups and most live in migrant camps the Goddard camp is one of 18 in the state and by the estimation of migrant action program officials state health officials and the people who live here it is probably in the worst condition housing is a continuing problem for migrants they are in large part dependent upon the grower to provide housing for them as far as the migrants themselves are concerned they have no choice they want to work then this is where they live they don't want to work to me go someplace else why is that is that because what why is this particular group of people in that particular economic situation but they have no choice what are the factors though that make it true that they have no choice well any time he travels what 1,500 miles from home in a pickup truck with a wife and four kids and all all your belongings in the back of a pickup truck he either sleeping in the car at a truck why are you sleeping whatever whatever you can find at least when it rains there's something to keep the rain off you and that's better than sleeping on the side of the road but you remember when a migrant comes up here he he doesn't he doesn't he can't rent a motel he doesn't have money to rent an apartment in order to rent an apartment if you've got a wife and three children apartment dad sighs are running around 200 250 dollars plus 100 $150 deposit plus deposit for utilities in that you know would cost them five hundred dollars before they ever moved in you know taking a couple months during $500 so they don't there's no choice when we visited the Goddard camp one of the larger in the state we found large families living in small one-room houses appliances which worked poorly or not at all one water spigot and two privies to serve as plumbing and sanitary facilities for the entire camp of the 18 migrant camps in Iowa over half are in the Muscatine area the rest are scattered around the rest of the state ken shook at of the State Health Department says that although conditions here are probably less ideal than in any of the others there are four or five camps which he says are only a little better there are state laws which set out minimum requirements for migrant housing and which are the basis for Health Department inspections there are requirements which define the necessary amount of floor space and of window space the distance that water sources must be from privies and the like these houses by the way are not required to have any sort of indoor plumbing the law does require that drinking water test out safe so much for the requirements of the law in practice there are any number of obstacles between the letter of the law and the actual conditions in a given house occupied at a given time during the growing season by any given family Hector Sanchez director of the state spanish-speaking people's Commission says that there is more involved in condemning a housing camp than simply the condition of the buildings the other situations are doing with is the economic situation of a farmer himself individual farmer when you when you deal with that situation you say well why don't you fix up your housing or your betterevaluation here you need an inside restroom whatever and he says well you know I fix up the housing as best as I can with the money that I have to spare or to put it into or invest into this housing situation for the migrant the minor comes around here for 8 to 10 weeks out of the year and I'm not going to invest three to five thousand dollars in the house it's gonna be sitting there for the rest of the year or insulated or whatever so aside from his economic situation as well the utility of the the property itself and if you're dealing with a large camp with a company in a land which has the facility and the economic means not whether they would be probably more susceptible to abide by the rules and if they build anything they'll build it according to the law because they have the means and they're gonna use it a lot more if you go into the individual farming areas and you say you fix up you fix up you fix up in ten farmers who have violations and all of them have to fix up and out of those ten five don't want to and they say it doesn't do me any good to fix it up or I'm gonna lose money doing it it's not economically feasible to do it you know hey to let it go or I don't grow anymore and then you've lost five farmers and as a result of that you lost the number of miners that could come into that area and do the work and also the number of people that might have been able to settle out and so economically it affects things in various manners that instead of just saying well you've got a lot one violation fix it and that's the end of that the State Health Department did begin a crackdown about three years ago of camps with blatantly unsafe and unsanitary conditions and since then about half a dozen growers in the Muscatine area have stopped production of crops which require migrants rather than upgrade the camps enforcement is not just a cut-and-dried affair visit the camps measure the floor area check the water system and demand the owner fix the place up the present system requires a drawn out series of notifications and required time allowed to make improvements if the bad conditions continue to be ignored by the owner the health department turns the whole thing over to a local county attorney for prosecution according to Shu ket sometimes the county attorney has to be pushed to prosecute and often by that time the harvest is over the migrants have moved on the camp is empty and the matter is dropped as bad as some migrant camps are there is at least one camp in the state which migrant officials call model it is here at the Holden seed company near Williamsburg Holden foundation seed company had for several years used local students during the summer for detasseling and other hand work but expansion changes in the growing season and decreasing number of young people available to do the work main Holden look toward using migrant labor in 1975 Holden is something of a late comer to the migrant labor business the company built this camp it is in an isolated area outside Williamsburg and the apartments are built in an abandoned poultry building there's nothing fancy here but the stove and refrigerator in each apartment works there is running water in each one and separate indoor bathrooms for each family this is luxury compared to some migrant accomodations one of the most impressive features about visiting this camp is the attitude of the families who come to work here they are effusive in their praise of the work the pay the living quarters the attitudes of the people who run Holden seed and their desire to return here as most of them do from one year to the next interesting also is the view that others involved with migrants have of this camp the State Health Department doesn't worry about migrants at Holden seed not only because of the physical condition of the camp but they say also because of an attitude a willingness to do what is right and take the initiative in creating not only livable accommodations but also a good working relationship with their employees one official with the migrant Action Program described this camp as compared to others in the state as Fantasyland Ron Holden's ideas however cut a little closer to the line of pragmatism he is quick to point out that he has been well pleased with the work done by the migrants he employs he also points out less readily that all has not been smooth going for the Holden migrant camp Holden says he found distrust of his motives from migrant officials unbending and arbitrary rulings from federal inspectors inconsistency and unreasonableness on many fronts while building the camp Holden claims that when his company settled on using migrants he decided that good employer employee relations based on neutral respect would be his goal judging from his comments and those of his workers he's achieved it but whatever Holden has accomplished he is eager to defend other growers inability or unwillingness to go this same route for one thing this camp cost $40,000 to build and it requires considerable routine maintenance it is also occupied for several months a year a vegetable grower with a small operation and a camp that's only occupied for six weeks to a couple of months may feel and may be able to convince the authorities that such an expense is not a justifiable nor possible but although the living conditions if migrant laborers are one of the most visible aspects of their lives their problems neither begin with nor end in the migrant housing camps more on that in a moment most migrants in Iowa come from extreme South Texas from an area which ranks as the poorest in this country and which borders on one of the poorest areas of Mexico although most migrants are native or naturalized United States citizens or resident aliens many were born in Mexico and many more are only a generation or so removed from Mexico the legacy that these immigrants bring with them to this country is generally extreme poverty and a lack of education to elements which tend in general to be self-perpetuating and which make it very difficult to break out of the migrant cycle the thing that makes anybody being a migrant is the economic situation in most cases cases don't move into another area if if the job that you have the situation that you're living under it's better than what is or people tell you is or exists on the other side of the fence it's like you know the old saying the marina on the other side of the hill but yeah if you haven't seen it you don't know so if you want to play it safe you stay where you're at but if economic conditions are so deplorable where you're at you're bound to go seeking something something else somewhere other than when you live what were you live in or the area that you reside in so if we're talking about the economic conditions and the the wages and the average income in some of these counties and Texas for example where the low income families are about 40 to 50 percent as compared to Polk County where the unemployment rate is about 2 or 3 percent for you know on the average well the conditions might or must be better and the opportunities you know are probably better in most cases ok it might be better for someone who's educated or for general public but for the migrant they may not be because even even if he comes all the way up here looking looking for something better or seeking the better life as you might want to put it he has to be trained and he has to be prepared you know to compete with people who reside in this area or people have certain skills so what he does is well I have to survive somewhere so well the first thing he does is comes and looks at the type of position or the job where he was accepted just for whatever he he has with him for whatever he's equipped with and the best equipment he has in his hands right so he can go out to feeling picking nobody's gonna give him a test to see if he can do the job or not they just turn them loose and there you go and we tell you what the rate is for whatever you produce and then you become a miner we're getting the fields you know slaver okay they rose from a dollar thirty two to fifty another that depending upon the type of labor the yes because you know you can win for the other you can work by the contract or you can work you know like if you were gonna soybeans you know you can work by a TRO by our or by the road but someone saw the cars you know what kind of work they're gonna do on housing some was you know some of the migrants you know is still favored they live in it and some they don't because you mean in grower owned camps like sometimes have to pay rent for that right hey do we know but still you know people doesn't believe that that is true because you know we have seen that because uh even though you know okay in some places you know they take bonus out you know that they say that if you don't stay you know to the end of the car the property you don't get their money back which that money not belongs to them but then you know they they do this way you know that okay you know how can I give you the money back because you know you were living in my place still come back you know that they have to pay rent but still it's kind of hard you know to really prove that a problem which dogs the footsteps of these families wherever they go is poor health particularly malnutrition linked diseases lack of information about proper nutrition and a lack of money for medical care are two of their biggest stumbling blocks to better health the microd action program has launched one plan and is designing another to combat those problems essentially what we try to do is with the nutritional unit which is a small mini Jimmy and it's equipped with with all kinds of cooking utensils and stuff like that we try to provide educational situations for migrants specifically aimed at enhancing their nutritional intake what is the nutritional value as a certain food how do you plan a menus for a week to ensure that you get all the nutritional value nutritional intake that you need for a week all in we're trying to try to find out this year is what how valid is educational education is a tool to combat anaemia another malnutrition deficiencies in the pastures there's always been money for stuff like food stamps and so forth well if the individual is is not purchasing and eating the right things of foods it doesn't do any good to give them foods food stamps so work from barking on is an experience and an experiment to see if through educational education we can change eating habits dietary habits of migrants which in turn will eliminate nutritional Deepti faith efficiency such as India I'm only allowed to spend for a whole year five hundred dollars on medical expenses for a whole family are five hundred dollars for a single person that there that the department labor makes no distinction while five hundred dollars is pretty good for a single guy theirs doesn't you know usually young and healthy and very sullen do I spend anywhere near that amount but four families are four wives that are having children unlimited $500 is pretty limiting employers do not furnish do not provide health insurance for the migrants in the migrants do not make enough money that they can afford to go and get their teeth examined anytime they want to like you even like you or I can so we're kind of in a dilemma here what I've been exploring is the possibility of providing hospitalization and medical insurance say through Blue Cross Blue Shield for the migrants for the time that they're here in Iowa essentially we would like to collaborate with the migrant himself whatever he can contribute to the cost of this to the employer that the buyer can contribute a portion to it and then some of that money that I have set aside for mental expenses and cover the cost of the premiums are the monthly premiums for the months that they're here in Iowa this would ensure that they would get they would not be turned away from hospitals like they are now I have contacted various people in hgw in Kansas in Washington Department labor in Washington nobody seems to have heard of anything like this before they don't know what to tell me they don't know whether they should tell me yes go ahead and do it or know you can't do it it's kind of like you're talking about something near in Iowa that's and it hasn't been tried anywhere we don't know what to tell you it might get up to the Secretary of Labor I don't know before I get an answer on it but I feel that for about the same amount of money and of course we're talking about tax dollars here about the same amount of tax money that I'm spending now and all the hassle the rigmarole that should go through I could get much better health care for the migrants through statewide health insurance plan yet but while the migrant action program is involved in a whole spectrum of what they call supportive services monitoring work and housing conditions providing medical and legal assistance in emergency aid of all kinds the main thrust of the program is to help families move out of the migrant style of life and into a stable life that allows them to remain in one community working at one job the year-round the process is called settling out and the migrant action program wants to settle out 350 families in Iowa this year it is a complicated process migrants that we we try to settle out as I mentioned before and enrollment skill training programs they have no money to pay for house you know they have no wait up to buy it to pay the rent they have no money to to pay enrollment fees they want to go to school they have no money to just to pay that day-to-day cost of living room two things I rinse that are in the micro stream continuously have extended families where they have cousins and closing relatives that travel and many ancestors together and they stay together and if one of them tries or wants to settle out and stays he may not socially you know he may not be able to stand the pressure as far as being my himself for being out here a known a little-known area where he has nobody to socialize with and can't stand it he's just not going home because that's where my friends are every family will do this do you know different different way the way that I broke the cycle was this you know that I had to know where I was gonna work out where I was going to live how much it was gonna get best to you you know it was just um to me was you notice that I had to take a chance to break the cycle to see myself you know my family to see if I can have a better future for myself and my family it's a lot of problems you're gonna say okay you have to face you know because you don't know the area you don't know where you're gonna be at and some of the families did you know that I see now they'd be you know they'd be in a migraine or for years and years and it's really hard you know to to break this cycle for them because they have to make their own decision that's a chance you know that I don't think you know that that the some of them will never break the cycle I was thinking about the future of my family did I didn't want my family know to go through what I went through I want them to have a better education because myself you know I did not have the opportunity in which my family does have the opportunity now you know through different through different agencies what kinds of changes have you seen in migrants lives in general since you were 11 to tell you trees you know I okay the only the only life you know they had changed it as this you know that that the migrant oak could could speak out themselves now you know that they know their rights know what rights they have and they're fighting for the rights like okay for example you know that that if you they need you know some some opportunity to go to school okay for the children no they do not you know just sit down you know they're afraid to to say you know or go to the to the school system saying you know they're not even my kids you know the opportunity and they're you know I would say you know that they that their lives are more open you know to say something then it was before and now they're getting more they had been you know they give okay true Lara through the agencies you know they had Kim you know education how to to become you know more freedom you know to say you know what they think but I would say you know there's some of the families you know the the older people you know they do not want to say anything because they're afraid the reason they're afraid because are you know that they know that they would not find a job you know and because they had worked their lives as a migrant and they would there ever be like that instead of you know rocking the boat I'm Twila young good night