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.
Migrant farmworkers are one of the essential components of the Vermont economy, and yet they are uniquely vulnerable to the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic consequences. At the same time, their resilience and endurance give their community unique strengths in a time of crisis.
This is the assessment of people who work with migrants in Addison County, where as many as half of the migrant farmworkers in the state live and work. Estimates on their numbers vary between 500 and 750. Because most of them are undocumented and afraid of apprehension by immigration authorities, they live in the shadows. But because the dairy industry of the state depends on them, they have been deemed essential workers during the pandemic. Essential and invisible — a paradox that captures the ambiguous status of workers here for economic opportunity who are also subject to economic deprivation and cultural isolation.
They are not without friends. In Addison County, volunteers remain active providing health care and reaching out to workers on the farm to educate them about the coronavirus.
Julia Doucet is an outreach nurse for the Open Door Clinic in Middlebury, which provides free health care for those who are uninsured or underinsured. Since March she has visited 51 farms in Addison County, providing supplies such as masks and thermometers and working to educate farmworkers with materials in English and Spanish about the dangers of Covid-19. Doucet said 50 physicians provide volunteer help for the clinic. In all the number of volunteers working at the clinic, including physicians, physical therapists, nurse practitioners and others, totals about 160.
The farmworker population would seem uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic. Often seven or eight people live crowded into one double-wide house or other small dwelling, often dilapidated and with few amenities. They have limited access to reliable information about the pandemic, often relying on information from Mexico, which can be misleading, according to Doucet. Cultural attitudes sometimes get in the way of the steps needed to protect people from the virus. Mexicans are family-centric, she said, and conveying the importance of social distance is sometimes difficult. Religious beliefs sometimes persuade people that all is in God’s hands anyway.
And yet the isolation that has always characterized their life on the farm may have helped protect them. Their employers are eager to keep them healthy and so are usually welcoming to Doucet and others seeking to help them. Otherwise, farmers try to prevent visits by guests who could spread the disease, she said. Living in isolation out on farms in Ferrisburgh, Bridport, Shoreham and elsewhere in dairy country is the norm for the migrant workers, so in a way, little has changed for them.
Doucet reports that only one migrant worker in the area has become ill with Covid-19. He was on a ventilator for 11 days but has recovered from the illness.
Meanwhile, volunteer efforts on their behalf continue. Before the pandemic a network of volunteer drivers ferried farmworkers to medical appointments, language lessons and other errands, often in the evening. For a time before the pandemic, I was one of them. And though I have lived in Addison County for more than 40 years, I became acquainted with remote back roads I’d never seen before and saw the remote often shabby cottages where they live. The workers I transported were bright, self-reliant young men accustomed to hardship and hard work, and they appreciated the assistance the volunteers had been able to provide.
The volunteer drivers have been coordinated by an organization called Addison Allies Network, which, because of the threat of immigration enforcement, generally prefers to operate under the radar. Since the pandemic took hold, the transportation service has ceased in order to protect drivers and passengers from the virus. But in an informal way, the volunteers of the network continue to provide small grants and material help for farmworkers. They might deliver bicycles, small refrigerators, baby furniture or a new stove to workers in need. The group helps people obtain driver’s licenses and sometimes help with English language lessons.
Doucet, whose work focuses on the health needs of the migrant population, acknowledged that some people object to the reliance of Vermont farmers on undocumented workers, or the presence of the workers in the state at all. And yet she notes the workers pay taxes in Vermont like everyone else, and their taxes go to pay for the unemployment benefits enjoyed by Vermonters. Those benefits don’t extend to them.
The national debate about immigration has been under way for many years, and its outlines stand out in bold relief during the present pandemic. For one thing, the Vermont dairy industry, a major component of the state’s economy, depends on undocumented workers.
Second, the workers’ illegal status and vulnerability to deportation make them vulnerable legally and economically. Advocacy groups such as Migrant Justice, based in Burlington, have as their mission the defense of workers’ rights regarding pay, housing and other basic needs. The vulnerability of farmworkers to the pandemic and other threats to their health is also obvious.
Third, the economic inequality between Mexico and the United States means that the tide of workers northward will remain inevitable. Despite the hardship that workers experience traveling north and living on American farms, the work provides an income that often allows them to send remittances home, supporting families there. Workers endure years of separation from loved ones for that purpose, which is an indication of the strength of the pull of U.S. jobs and the commitment of the workers.
It is political hypocrisy for policymakers to bemoan the presence of a class of second-class citizens, while allowing businesses, including farms, to take advantage of them.
The volunteer workers in Vermont try not to engage in these arguments openly. They are focused on safeguarding the health and welfare of people who often may go unnoticed, but who are our neighbors. That only one farmworker in Addison County is known to have contracted the dreaded virus is good for the farmworkers and good for everyone else who is trying to contain the spread of illness to everyone else in Vermont.
