Editor’s note: David Moats, an author and journalist who lives in Salisbury, is a regular columnist for VTDigger. He is editorial page editor emeritus of the Rutland Herald, where he won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials on Vermont’s civil union law.
When Enrique Balcazar arrived in Vermont eight years ago, he was 17 years old. A day-long hike through desert country along the border brought him across from Mexico, and three days later he was able to join his father who had already found work on a farm in Vermont.
Balcazar went to work in Addison County without knowledge of minimum wage laws or other rules that might have protected him. So, initially, he didn’t understand that his wages — $3 to $4 an hour — violated the law. He was living by himself in a mobile home, working 13 or 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and so he had little time for anything but milking cows and other chores. At the outset, he knew nothing about dairy farming, so he didn’t realize the iodine he was using to swab the cows’ teats would burn his hands if he didn’t use gloves. And the farm provided no gloves.
After several months, low pay, burned hands and continuing isolation led him to a different job on another Addison County farm. It also made him receptive to the outreach of activists who were trying to organize and defend the rights of farm workers throughout the state.
Now he is a spokesman for Migrant Justice, the Burlington-based group that works to defend farmworkers’ rights and to improve the economic conditions in which they live. He is also the plaintiff in a lawsuit charging the federal government with selective prosecution and the violation of the free speech rights of activists, including Balcazar himself.
The anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration have focused the attention of the nation on cruelty at the Mexican border and on the punitive policies of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. And yet the outrage provoked in the Trump era is also cause for frustration among activists in Vermont.
Will Lambek, coordinator and communications director for Migrant Justice, speaks of the “blinders of well-intentioned neighbors” who for years have been unable to see the dreadful conditions in which people just down the road may be living. The atmosphere is different now that President Trump has raised the level of hostility toward immigrants, but the exploitation of workers on the farm is not new.
Balcazar and Lambek both know of workers who have been unable to leave their farm for years. Fear of apprehension by ICE confines them. Lack of transportation hinders them. Their employers sometimes abet their confinement by providing them food, thinking they’re doing them a favor. Substandard living conditions persist in many places, but complaining may cost a worker his job. Another illegal practice, according to Lambek, happens when employers hold onto a worker’s first paycheck, keeping them tied to the farm if they want to get what they are owed.
Lambek acknowledges that the atmosphere has changed since the advent of Trump’s presidency, but he notes that President Obama was also aggressive in deporting those without documents. A trip to the grocery store under Obama or Trump could still result in apprehension by ICE, which is why Migrant Justice tries to alert farmworkers to their rights.
And yet the changed atmosphere is not insignificant. It has provoked a level of activism and awareness that didn’t exist before. Half a dozen years ago, it’s arguable that in Vermont the most prominent cause on the activist left was universal health care. That cause still exists, but it is the poor treatment of immigrants, including farmworkers in Vermont, that occupies center stage for many.
Awareness of the issue has been slow in growing. It was about 10 years ago that news reports brought the first focused attention to the fact that as much as half of the milk produced in Vermont depended on the labor of undocumented immigrants. Farmers still complain that it is hard to draw dependable workers from the local labor force. Migrant Justice estimates that there are about 1,200 to 1,500 immigrant farmworkers in Vermont, most of them Mexican and most of them without papers.
A farmer looking strictly at the bottom line might see advantages in employing undocumented workers. Fearful and isolated workers may not require as much of a financial outlay in wages, housing and benefits. It’s a form of peonage. Labor laws apply to the conditions and wages of all workers, undocumented included, but workers with a language barrier, unfamiliar with their rights, may be reluctant to cause the kind of trouble necessary for improving their lot.
It might be argued that no one forced Mexican workers to come here and no one is forcing them to stay. Yet economic realities, both in Mexico and the United States, must be part of the argument. Balcazar is from a rural region in Tabasco state, where petroleum companies have contaminated or bought out farmland, uprooting agriculture in the region. Mexico as a whole has suffered from the effects of low-cost corn imported from the United States, which has undercut local production. Poor villagers by the tens of thousands have been migrating north for decades. There is a reason for it, and part of the reason is the unquenchable desire of people everywhere to improve their lives. That sort of human striving is what drew Europeans to the Americas to begin with and is what drives immigration all around the globe. It will not be contained by a wall or thwarted by deportations.
The other economic reality is the need of U.S. farmers for workers. If the presence of immigrant workers were so pernicious, then the government could crack down on employers.
The persistence of the present system suggests that the real policy is to maintain a population of fearful and vulnerable workers to satisfy the economic needs of businesses. When ICE starts jailing farmers for employing undocumented workers, then we’ll know it is serious about halting illegal immigration. Prolonging the present system has its own pernicious effect, creating a caste of second-class residents who form a Dickensian reality that we allow by our acquiescence. Migrant Justice is not acquiescing. Earlier, it pressed the Shumlin administration to support a bill allowing undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses. That law has made a big difference to the lives of migrants, according to Lambek.
Another successful effort has been the Milk With Dignity program. Migrant Justice mounted a campaign to persuade Ben & Jerry’s Homemade to sign onto the program, and finally two years ago Ben & Jerry’s did. Ben & Jerry’s buys 20% of the milk produced in Vermont. By signing onto Milk With Dignity, Ben & Jerry’s agreed to pay farmers a premium if the farmer agreed to abide by a series of labor standards protecting the welfare of farmworkers. That means that, with 70 farms enrolled, 250 farmworkers are protected by the program’s code of conduct. Migrant Justice reports that more than $200,000 of premium payments have been passed through to workers through bonuses and raises.
Now Migrant Justice is working to get Hannaford’s supermarkets to join Milk With Dignity for its store brand milk, which is provided by a Hood plant in Barre. So far Hannaford’s has shown no interest.
Meanwhile, immigration authorities continue to detain undocumented residents at a rate of about one every two or three weeks, according to Lambek. Migrant Justice has pushed state government for what it calls fair and impartial policing, hoping to maintain a firewall between federal immigration enforcement and local law enforcement. The Scott administration has allowed several loopholes to penetrate that firewall, according to Lambek.
Balcazar knew he was taking a risk by becoming politically active with Migrant Justice. According to Lambek, ICE has subjected the organization to a multi-year campaign of surveillance and detention, targeting and arresting members. That campaign led to the federal lawsuit brought by Migrant Justice.
A broader challenge is awakening the public to the fact that the present immigration crisis involves not just children in cages in Texas, but workers in Vermont subject to a system that uses their labor while imposing a regime of fear that stunts their lives. It is a different form of cage.
“It’s a tremendous challenge to organize a community that’s under attack and fearful for its safety,” Balcazar said, with Lambek as his interpreter.
Farmers are caught in their own crisis, trying to survive in a period of chronically low milk prices, and the need to cut costs is unrelenting. Those who treat their workers well are doing so in the face of a continuing pressure to do otherwise. The Milk With Dignity program is designed to help them do the right thing. Yet doing the right thing will remain a challenge until the nation finally accepts that fair implementation of labor laws and a humane immigration system are essential for the humanity of the community as a whole.
