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Long before COVID-19 struck, undocumented workers in Vermont felt like they’d been living in quarantine.
“We were scared to leave our homes because of the fear of being deported,” said Pedro, an undocumented dairy worker in Franklin County, speaking in Spanish through a translator. “People are sort of experiencing now the things we’ve experienced before.”
As the coronavirus crisis envelops daily life — and squeezes Vermont’s dairy industry — the state’s undocumented community faces exacerbated risks and unique challenges.
VTDigger agreed to refer to Pedro, a 24-year-old Mexican national, by only his first name to mitigate threats to his safety. He spoke via translation through Will Lambek of the activist organization Migrant Justice, as did Enrique Balcazar, a prominent former farmworker who is undocumented and a spokesperson for the group.
“The biggest worry that we’re hearing about is the concerns that workers have that, by continuing to go to work and be in close contact with other workers and people on the farm, they’re putting their health at risk,” said Balcazar, who is also from Mexico. “While many people are staying at home … that’s not an option for dairy workers.”
Gov. Phil Scott’s stay-at-home order last week exempted farms from shutting down in-person operations, deeming them essential services. A study in 2016 estimated that approximately 2,000 undocumented immigrants live in Vermont, accounting for about 4% of the agricultural workers in the state.
Balcazar, 27, said most of the undocumented workers have been happy so far with how farmers are addressing the coronavirus. They’re talking with workers about hygiene practices and making sure they have gloves, masks and cleaning supplies. Some farmers have put up signs about measures for slowing the spread of the virus, Balcazar said, though the messages aren’t always in Spanish, which many workers speak.
But some farmers have been telling workers not to leave their housing — often on farm property — and prohibiting them from having visitors, Balcazar said.
That’s had workers worried about food. Some people who helped bring workers food before are now either not allowed to visit farms or are isolating themselves because of the outbreak.
Pedro said the farmer he works for has stepped up so far. “She’s been sharing information about how to keep ourselves safe … and asking us to limit how often we go out, and even offering to get groceries for us.”
He added, “I hope that other farmers are doing the same because we know that they really depend on us, so they should take that into account.”
Pedro and Balcazar brought up another concern: housing conditions that complicate social distancing.
“Most farm workers live in cramped quarters, sometimes sharing a room or sometimes even three to a room and people sharing beds, even,” Pedro said. “Even before the virus, this was a really difficult situation for us, and now it’s even worse.”
He said he and his wife live in an adequate space, but in the past he shared a three-room house with seven other workers.
Undocumented workers likely won’t benefit from the federal stimulus package signed into law last week to address the economic impact of the coronvirus. In most cases, someone needs a Social Security number to be eligible for the law’s stimulus payments, and undocumented workers typically don’t have one.
That’s a concern to those talking to Migrant Justice.
“They aren’t going to benefit our community, despite the fact that people are continuing to work and putting themselves at risk,” Balcazar said of the benefits. “That’s something that doesn’t seem fair.”
Pedro said he’s grateful to still be working, but “it doesn’t seem right that we’re called essential workers, and we’re working, we’re exposing ourselves to the possibility of being infected … but that work isn’t being recognized.”
He wonders whether, when things improve, people will still think of undocumented farm workers like himself as essential.
Similarly, Balcazar highlighted that undocumented people often can’t get health insurance. “This is a time when it’s really important to reflect on the impact of when certain groups of people are excluded from health care treatment and how that impacts all of us,” he said.
Despite a high demand for food and produce, the Covid-19 outbreak has changed the landscape for Vermont’s farming industry, particularly damaging the already fragile dairy economy.
Milk prices in the Northeast took a hit in March as the economy ground to a halt — falling 10% in the last 14 days of the month. Prices tumbled to $15.80 per hundredweight, far below the region’s cost of production. And some dairy operations in Vermont have begun dumping milk as demand dries up.
Efforts are underway to address some of the dairy worker community’s concerns.
Migrant Justice is building a network of volunteers to deliver groceries to undocumented workers who aren’t able to get them. The Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont has created a database of “relief milkers” who are able to step in for shifts if a milker on a dairy farm gets sick.
Balcazar said he hopes the crisis illuminates what’s possible from a policy standpoint.
“We’re seeing that large changes can happen very quickly, and the government is doing lots of things right now that it wasn’t doing before,” he said. “And so we would call on political leaders to understand that immigrants and immigrant farm workers in the state of Vermont have been — and are and will continue to be — essential workers.”
He added, “The time for excluding us has passed.”
