Injustice On Our Plates

SPLC researchers interviewed approximately 150 women who are either currently undocumented or have spent time in the U.S. as undocumented immigrants. The women all have worked in the U.S. food industry in Arkansas, California, Florida, Iowa, New York or North Carolina. A few have now obtained legal status. The interviews took place from January through March of 2010. Researchers also interviewed a number of advocates who work with immigrant women and farmworkers.

The interviews were conducted almost exclusively in Spanish, and recordings were transcribed and translated into English. The women were first asked questions from a standard survey and then, based on their answers, asked by a researcher to elaborate on their experiences.

In most cases, the women quoted in this report are identified by their first name only, to protect their identities. In other cases, in which the subject did not want to be identified in any way, a fictional first name is used. Those names appear with an asterisk.

Authored by: Mary Bauer and Mónica Ramírez 

View our Teacher's Guide (PDF) published by Teaching Tolerance. 

Facts About Immigrant Women Working in the U.S. Food Industry

Undocumented women are among the most vulnerable workers in our society today. They fill the lowest paying jobs in our economy and provided the backbreaking labor that helps bring food to our tables. Yet they are routinely cheated out of wages and subjected to an array of other abuses in the workplace. They are generally powerless to enforce their rights or protect themselves. The following are facts from the SPLC report Injustice on Our Plates.

Undocumented Immigrants

• There are an estimated 4.1 million undocumented women in the U.S. today. In addition, 4 million U.S.-born children — citizens by birthright — live in a household with at least one undocumented parent.

• Undocumented women typically earn minimum wage or less, get no sick or vacation days, and receive no health insurance.

• Legalizing undocumented workers would raise the U.S. gross domestic product by $1.5 trillion over a decade. On the other hand, if the government were to deport all 10.8 million undocumented immigrants living on U.S. soil, our economy would decline by $2.6 trillion over a decade, not including the massive cost of such an endeavor.

• Each year, undocumented immigrants contribute as much as $1.5 billion to the Medicare system and $7 billion to the Social Security system, even though they will never be able to collect benefits upon retirement.

Farmworkers

• There are an estimated 3 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers employed in the United States. The federal government estimates that 60 percent of farmworkers are undocumented immigrants; farmworker advocates say the percentage is far higher.

• The National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) published by the Department of Labor reports that about 22% of the farmworker population is female. Thus, there are an estimated 630,000 women engaged in farm work in the United States.

• The average personal income of female crop workers is $11,250, compared to $16,250 for male crop workers.

• A mere 8 percent of farmworkers report being covered by employer-provided health insurance, a rate that dropped to 5 percent for farmworkers who are employed seasonally and not year-round.

• According to the U.S. Department of Labor, farmworkers suffer from higher rates of toxic chemical injuries and skin disorders than any other workers in the country. The children of migrant farmworkers, also, have higher rates of pesticide exposure than the general public.

• Each year, there are an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 cases of physician-diagnosed pesticide poisoning among U.S. farmworkers, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

• Farmworkers are not covered by workers’ compensation laws in many states. They are not entitled to overtime pay under federal law. On smaller farms and in short harvest seasons, they are not entitled to the federal minimum wage. They are excluded from many state health and safety laws.

• Because of special exemptions for agriculture, children as young as 10 may work in the fields. Also, many states exempt farmworker children from compulsory education laws.

Poultry Workers

• Almost a quarter of the workers who butcher and process meat, poultry and fish are undocumented.

•  At least half of the 250,000 laborers in 174 of the major U.S. chicken factories are Latino and more than half are women.

•  Working in a chicken factory is one of the most dangerous occupations in America. Line workers endure a frigid and wet work environment, without adequate bathroom breaks, while being exposed to numerous hazards handling chicken on hangers that whiz by a rate of hundreds per minute. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has not enacted any regulation to limit the speed at which poultry and meat processing lines operate — despite the appallingly high rates of injury directly attributable to the line speed. In the decade ending in 2008, 100 poultry workers died in the U.S., and 300,000 were injured, many suffering the loss of a limb or debilitating repetitive motion injuries.

•  The U.S. Department of Labor surveyed 51 poultry processing plants and found 100% had violated labor laws by not paying employees for all hours worked. Also, one-third took impermissible deductions from workers’ pay.

Sexual Abuse On the Job

• In a recent study of 150 women of Mexican descent working in the fields in California’s Central Valley, 80% said they had experienced sexual harassment. That compares to roughly half of all women in the U.S. workforce who say they have experienced at least one incident.

• While investigating the sexual harassment of California farmworker women in the mid-1990s, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that “hundreds, if not thousands, of women had to have sex with supervisors to get or keep jobs and/or put up with a constant barrage of grabbing and touching and propositions for sex by supervisors.”

•  A 1989 article in Florida indicates that sexual harassment against farmworker women was so pervasive that women referred to the fields as the “green motel.” Similarly, the EEOC reports that women in California refer to the fields as “fil de calzon,” or the fields of panties, because sexual harassment is so widespread.

•  Due to the many obstacles that confront farmworker women — including fear, shame, lack of information about their rights, lack of available resources to help them, poverty, cultural and/or social pressures, language access and, for some, their status as undocumented immigrants — few farmworker women ever come forward to seek justice for the sexual harassment and assault that they have suffered.

•  In interviews for this report, virtually all women reported that sexual violence in the workplace is a serious problem.

In Mexico, Alma often couldn’t afford milk for her children’s bottles, so she filled them with coffee.

Alma

Today, the 39-year-old farmworker lives near Immokalee, Florida, the tomato capital of the United States. Like many of the other women interviewed for this report, she simply wants to spare her children the grinding poverty she experienced in Mexico. “I’d like to live (in the U.S.) for my kids — for them to study and not live the life I lived in Mexico, because it was very hard,” she says.

Maria

Like Alma, Maria Concepcion, 27, crossed the border illegally. Four years ago, she swam across the Rio Grande, badly injuring her leg during the journey. After the crossing, her husband left her. Now, she is a single mother living in Florida, with a son in Mexico. Her parents and her child rely on her to send money.

Back home, the pay was too paltry.

“For me, this place was a dream, a hope for me and my family,” she says. Here, with her meager wages picking oranges and working as a cook, she has basic conveniences she could never have had in Mexico: an air conditioner, a stove, a refrigerator, carpet on the floor.

“In Mexico, my house was open,” Maria says. “The cardboard walls would break and bend. My dream was to arrive here for my family, to work. Just that.”

Alma and Maria are among the estimated 6.7 million Mexicans living in the U.S. without legal status. Mexicans make up 62 percent of the country’s 10.8 million undocumented immigrants, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s most recent figures. Four million of these immigrants are women.

Women like Alma and Maria help form the backbone of American agriculture. Their hands harvest the bounty that replenishes our tables. Their hard labor enriches the farmers and business owners who employ them at wages that are simply not enough for American workers.

A glance at basic economic statistics shows why millions of women like them are willing to risk detention, sexual assault, separation from their children and even death just for the opportunity to earn subsistence wages and live at the bottom of U.S. society. In the top four countries that provide the most undocumented immigrants to the United States — Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras— the per capita gross national income (GNI) ranges from about $1,700 to $9,990 a year.

In comparison, the U.S. per capita GNI hovers near $50,000 a year.

By migrating to the United States, Mexican immigrants like Alma and Maria are able to increase their annual incomes by 2.5 times, on average, even after accounting for the difference in the cost of living.

When such disparities exist between neighboring countries, is it any wonder that the poor will ignore the lines in the desert sand?

Looking for a decent wage

Time and again, these Latina immigrants say they don’t want anything given to them. They just want to work hard and earn a decent wage so that their children can get an education and climb the economic ladder, a path that immigrants throughout U.S. history have taken.

Gloria, a 37-year-old Mexican woman who works from July to December packing tomatoes, avocados, mangoes and papayas in south Florida, says she “risked everything” for the opportunity to work in the U.S. “That is the only objective that most immigrants have,” she says. “We don’t come to damage the country but to get ahead and progress.”

The fact is, they’re not eligible for most government benefits. Undocumented immigrants are prohibited from participating in most federal programs that benefit the poor and unemployed, including welfare, food stamps, housing assistance, disability and unemployment benefits, Medicaid and Social Security. Fear of detection keeps many from using the benefits to which they are entitled, such as emergency medical services.

But while they don’t receive federal benefits, most economists agree that their cheap labor results in a net benefit to the U.S. economy. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told the U.S. Senate in 2009 that undocumented immigrants have “made a significant contribution to the growth of our economy.”

In addition to their labor, each year undocumented immigrants contribute as much as $1.5 billion to the Medicare system and $7 billion to the Social Security system, even though they will never be able to collect benefits upon retirement.

Deporting these immigrants en masse would shrink the American economy by as much as $2.6 trillion over 10 years, according to one recent study.

The decision to stay or go

The decision to leave their country and culture is not something taken lightly, the women say. Often, family members — children, husbands, fathers, mothers — are left behind. The dangers and cost involved in the journey do not allow for whimsy, and the pain of leaving loved ones is wrenching, often unbearable.

Gullermina, a 30-year-old farmworker in Florida, still cries when she remembers the painful decision she made with her brother to leave their mother behind in Mexico. “My mom became a widow when we were little. She always worked, and there wasn’t enough money. So we had to leave Mexico. Yes, it was difficult,” Gullermina says, her voice trailing off before she bursts into tears. “I don’t think I can go on,” she says, excusing herself from the interview.

More than 5 million children live in households with at least one undocumented parent. Approximately 4 million of those children are U.S. citizens.

One woman from El Salvador left behind three children and a 21-year-old son. Her wages there, $6 a day, were simply not enough to pay for food. She hasn’t seen her children in two years. “Now, more than ever, I feel like my hands are tied,” she says. “I asked myself what I’m doing here. I can’t see them. I can just call them. They have to eat every day, and they ask me if I can send them a little something. And my mom says that if I can’t, that they’ll come here, because they’re suffering a lot because of our separation.”

For many women, the decision to stay in the U.S. or go home is complicated by their children. There are currently 5.5 million children living in households with at least one undocumented parent; 4 million of them were born in the U.S. and are, thus, U.S. citizens.

Edilia, 26, has been in the U.S. almost a decade. She always dreamed of saving enough moneyto build a home in Mexico “and not be here suffering any longer in the fields.” But she doesn’t earn much picking tomatoes in Florida — clearing about $30 a day after paying $10 for a babysitter.

Now, her mother is sick, and she would like to go see her in Mexico but cannot. “I haven’t gone back, because my daughter was born here,” she says. “She has papers and I don’t. How would I come back with her?”

Likewise, Lucila*, 34, had planned to work in the U.S. for only a year and then return to Mexico. She’s now been here for 15 years. “I worked in everything from factories to restaurants,” she says. “I had kids and I couldn’t go back. It’s not easy to go back with three kids.”

Contrary to the “anchor baby” myth, women like Edilia and Lucila are not eligible for citizenship simply because they gave birth here to children, who are automatically U.S. citizens. The fact is that children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents cannot petition for the permanent residency of their parents until age 21. Even if a 21-year-old child does file such a petition to legalize the parent, the parent will likely be subject to a 10-year bar — a requirement that she leave the country for 10 years before she receives legal status. Under this scenario, the parent would finally receive legal status when her child was in her 30s.

Crossing: The fallen have no names

Araceli knew if she stopped walking she would die.

Many women stay in the U.S. for their children.

The 26-year-old from Chiapas, the southernmost state in Mexico, had been trudging through thesands of the Sonoran Desert for five days after leaving the border town of Altar, just a one-hour drive south of the Arizona-Mexico border.

Altar was once a small farming community. Now, by some accounts, its entire economy is based on the smuggling of people across the border. For many undocumented immigrants, the town is the final way station before embarking on one of the most dangerous migratory treks on the planet. Popular routes are controlled by unscrupulous human smugglers and terrorized by predatory gangs. The desert, which covers much of the northern Mexico state of Sonora and stretches well into Arizona and California, ranks in some spots as one of the hottest places on the planet during the summer. “The desert deceives you,” Araceli says. “You don’t know where you’re going. You’re easily disoriented.”

This is where the nightmare often begins for women and girls. They are, by far, the most vulnerable during the crossing — and their experience can have an enormous impact on their lives in the U.S. Some academics and humanitarian organizations estimate that as many as six out of 10 women and girls experience some sort of sexual violence during the journey through Mexico into the United States. Definitive numbers are not available because the plight of women attempting to cross is severely underreported and understudied.

The accurate collection of data depicting migrants’ deaths is also challenging because of the number of agencies involved and the differing reporting standards. The U.S. Border Patrol does not include data from the Mexican side of the border, which almost certainly ensures that deaths are underreported.

As illegal immigration began to increase dramatically in the 1990s, the U.S. began a massive buildup of forces along the border. In 1992, there were 3,555 Border Patrol agents assigned to the U.S.-Mexico border. That number increased to 8,580 by 2000. By the end of 2009, it had reached more than 17,000. Meanwhile, the Border Patrol’s budget has more than tripled in the last decade, rising from $1.06 billion in 2000 to $3.58 billion in 2010.

But this manpower hasn’t stopped the migration of people like Araceli. The population of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. has roughly tripled over the past two decades. University of California, San Diego, researchers have found that the vast majority of migrants — as many as 92 to 98 percent — keep trying to cross the border until they make it.

Carina trudged through the Sonoran Desert for six days and nights.

Many of the women interviewed for this report said they were not successful on the first attempt, but kept trying.

“They grabbed me five times, and on the sixth time I finally got across,” says Carina, a 24-year-old woman from Mexico. “It was a hard trip. The last time when we crossed, we walked six days and nights. My mind was set that I was going to cross and come here to work.”

The Obama administration has continued the buildup of border forces, announcing in May 2010 that up to 1,200 National Guard troops were to be deployed to the border. The White House followed that move with a request to Congress for 1,000 more Border Patrol agents.

This enhanced border enforcement may be resulting in more, not fewer, undocumented immigrants staying in the U.S. That’s because, with tighter border control, especially after the terrorist attacks in 2001, the “circular migration” of some migrants was interrupted. They could no longer work in the U.S. and then easily return home. According to one estimate, there were 3.9 million undocumented women in the United States in March 2005; by March 2008 that number had increased to 4.1 million.

More than 100 migrants, many of them unidentified, lie in this cemetery in Holtville, Calif., near the major crossing point of El Centro, Calif.

In recent years, the crossing has become more expensive and more dangerous. The U.S. government’s “prevention through deterrence” strategy, according to a November 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service, has “pushed unauthorized migration away from population centers and funneled it into more remote and hazardous border regions. This policy has had the unintended consequence of increasing the number of fatalities along the border, as unauthorized migrants attempt to cross over the inhospitable Arizona desert without adequate supplies of water.”

The number of deaths of female migrants along this border has been trending upward since 2000, according to data provided by the Border Patrol. In the five-year period from FY2000 to FY2004, border officers recovered the remains of an average of 61 migrant women a year along the 1,952-mile Southwestern border. In the latest five-year period — from FY2005 to FY2009 — that number jumped to 77.

There are surely many more who are uncounted. Often these migrants go unidentified, their fate forever a mystery to their families.

The Anonymous Dead

Araceli did not want to become another of the desert’s anonymous dead.

“What went through my mind is that this is where [the dead] stay, and the family doesn’t have any recourse,” she says. “There’s no way to claim those bodies. My children are waiting for me, and I don’t want to be like those people.”

Another of her fears had nothing to do with the elements. She was the lone woman in a group of 31 men. The trip was supposed to be completed in three days, but after five days the group from Mexico and Guatemala was still dodging authorities in the desert with very little food or water.

Araceli was falling behind. The smugglers — los coyotes — assured her they would not abandon her. But the mummifying bodies along the route, two young women and a man, told a different story. “I couldn’t stand to see those corpses.”

She questioned the smuggler. Though she never got a straight answer, Araceli suspected the bodies were once his clients and were left for dead when they could no longer keep up. She begged her companions to, if she could no longer walk, drag her to a spot where authorities could find her. The smuggler’s policy on saving stragglers frightened her. “He says, ‘I don’t know, but for one person we can’t risk the whole group, because it’s a lot of money.’” [[nid:3207]]

Typically, undocumented immigrants will pay smugglers anywhere from $1,500 to more than $10,000 to guide them and their families across the border. Often, amounts are far beyond their ability to pay, and they must borrow money or enter into repayment contracts that leave them in debt to the smugglers. Falling deeply in debt leaves immigrants even more vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous employers. Araceli borrowed $2,500 to pay for her trip.

Thousands of undocumented women work in California’s multibillion-dollar grape industry.

Finally, Araceli could no longer move. “I couldn’t walk forward or back.” She sat down under a tree. Overcome by the choking heat, she fainted. When she woke up, Araceli was alone. “They didn’t come back for me. I had to stay there for two days, conserving the little bit of water I had.”

She gave up hope. She thought of her four sons back in Chiapas. “I have a dream of being able to provide for my children,” she says.

Given the anonymity of the fallen migrant in the desert, there was a good chance Araceli’s death would not be recorded or noticed by authorities, let alone reported to her family. She waited for the end.

Luckily for her, a passing group of migrants stumbled across her. At great risk to themselves, they helped her out of the desert.

Today, Araceli is happy to be alive. But the experience has left her scarred. “It was a horrible nightmare that I would never want to repeat.” She eventually arrived in Georgia and took a job in a restaurant where her sister worked. Cutbacks left her without employment, however, and she migrated to Florida, where she found work at a nursery tending plants.

She lost the position, however, when a co-worker’s husband made an unwanted sexual advance. Though she says the man was clearly at fault, Araceli’s boss found it simpler to get rid of the undocumented worker. After losing her job in November 2009, she found temporary, part-time work picking fruit but was driven from that job, again, by sexually explicit overtures, this time from her supervisor. She lasted less than a few weeks at each job and has not worked since. “I’m leaving it in the hands of God to see what happens,” she says.

She is deeply concerned that she will not be able to repay the money she owes the coyotes who brought her over the border. “I owe $2,500, and I don’t know where to find the money to liquidate that debt. And so many problems on top of it.”

Araceli says she arrived in the U.S. with the sole desire of finding work and providing for her family but now feels lost. “I’d like to be in a job that’s well-paid, good treatment, to better myself and others,” she says. “But I’m seeing that everything is very bad.

Dangerous Road

Stories of violent abuse during their migration were common among the women interviewed. Many talked about the prevalence of rape — something so common that some women begin taking birth control pills before migrating to ensure they do not become pregnant. Some described trying to protect themselves from abuse by traveling with a male companion.

Thousands of migrants a year are kidnapped, assaulted, robbed or raped by criminal gangs. According to a recent report by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, as many as 9,758 migrants were kidnapped over a six-month period ending in 2009. They are often held until family members pay ransom. In these cases, such payments leave immigrants even further in debt and vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace.

Failure to pay kidnappers can result in death. In August 2010, Mexican authorities discovered the bodies of 72 migrants — 58 men and 14 women — at a ranch near the Texas border. A survivor told authorities that the migrants, believed to be from Central America, had been massacred when they refused to pay extortion fees to the gunmen who had kidnapped them.

Miranda, a Guatemalan who works in a meat-processing plant in North Carolina, crossed into the U.S. as one of two women among 20 men. She asked a man named José to pose as her husband. The decision may have saved her from a horrific attack. “It’s difficult,” she says as she fights back tears, “because they raped my friend.”

Miranda says her friend was frightened into silence during the attack because she didn’t want to be left behind.

Elvira’s story

Araceli almost died in the desert.

Elvira, a 32-year-old mother, grew up uneducated in a rural area of the central Mexico state of Zacatecas. She had eight siblings. Her father picked crops. “We were so poor that my eldest sister picked up cardboard boxes to make us sandals,” she says. “It made me so sad that it rained so hard that the rain ruined my sandals, and the water took them away.”

To help her family make ends meet, Elvira went to the state’s capital city to find work cleaning houses. She was, by her own admission, a country “bumpkin” in the big city. “I didn’t know what a phone or a TV was.” She quickly found work with the family of an optometrist, working seven days a week. “It was a two-story house, and I had to clean the optometry office, make food, wash dishes, take care of the kids, clean the tables, iron, wash clothes, everything.”

Elvira was painfully self-conscious of her humble origins but was determined to better herself. “They called me a ranch Indian, and (an) Indian with a mustache, an ignorant person. They said that everyone who lived on farms [was] ugly with big stomachs and with black skin.”

Though her boss resisted, Elvira was allowed to enroll in school with the condition that her studies not interfere with her duties. To keep her job and attend classes, Elvira began her day at 4 a.m. She eventually got her diploma.

The sense of accomplishment was short-lived, however. Her employers accused her of stealing money. Her boss apologized after it was determined one of the family’s children had taken the money, but the damage to Elvira’s pride was done. She returned home to her village and married. “What else can I do here except get married?” she asks. “There weren’t stores to work in, there wasn’t anything.”

Crushing poverty pushed Elvira, the daughter of a Mexican farmworker, north across the U.S. border from her home in Zacatecas. She narrowly escaped a sexual assault.

Soon poverty forced her hand again. Her husband decided to go north into the U.S. She would follow later. Though they were living in extreme need, the decision was not easy.

“We didn’t have enough for food or shoes. We couldn’t do it anymore. But I thought, how? What if he dies? What if he doesn’t come back? What if he goes and leaves me? So many things go through your mind. But I thought, if I don’t risk anything, I can’t earn anything.”

Her husband crossed successfully. A year later, she attempted to cross. Her brother went first, while she waited in Nogales, a Mexican city along the border with Arizona. For three days, she heard nothing.

Then, while returning to the rundown motel where she was waiting, Elvira saw a “man who was walking with his clothes all ripped, all beat up, full of blood, full of mud and dirt. … It was my brother!”

He had been kidnapped and tortured by the coyotes he had paid. And he had a frantic warning.

“He ran and hugged me and says, ‘Don’t go. Don’t cross. No, let’s go back to the farm, but don’t go. Don’t cross.’”

Elvira was determined. She wanted to keep studying and become a teacher. She believed in the promise that the United States has made to immigrants for more than 200 years: If you work hard, you will succeed here.

After two unsuccessful attempts, Elvira left Juarez in the early morning hours as the lone woman in a group of migrants planning to cross the Rio Grande. Before entering the water, they stripped off their clothes. After reaching the opposite banks, they ran in different directions. As she prepared to sprint after the group, the coyote directed her down another path, telling her that she would be less visible if she didn’t follow the larger group. The skinny, tattooed coyote led her down an isolated trail. She asked him: “But why are you taking me this way?” His response was: “Don’t you want to go to your husband?”

As they continued running, Elvira grew uneasy. They finally stopped. Elvira said a quick prayer to herself. The smuggler continued: “Look little lady, if you want to arrive with your old man, you have to cooperate.”

Elvira says that a word popped into her head that she didn’t completely understand. As the smuggler inched closer, his intentions clear, she told him: “I have AIDS.”

The ruse worked. The man ran away.

“I thought, what could this be that I said? I’ve never told my husband this. Never. Maybe because, I don’t know … I don’t even like to remember it.”

Abandoned by her guide, her third attempt to enter the U.S. failed, and she was detained by the Border Patrol. She made it across on her fourth try with the help of two teenage boys.

Tales like Elvira’s escape from sexual abuse as she crossed the border are in the minority. Once in the hands of smugglers, migrants are typically at their mercy.

Antonia, who crossed into the U.S. in 2006, says that her group of 40 immigrants was crammed into a house when they first arrived over the border. “I felt panic because we heard that they were taking away the women,” she says. In reality, the smugglers were taking only the women from El Salvador.

“We didn’t ask where they had taken them,” says Antonia, who is Mexican. “One of the husbands said that he wanted to go with them, and (he asked) where were they taking them.”

The smuggler simply responded that they were taking the women to another hotel and that there was nothing the angry husband could do about it. “The girl was crying,” Antonia says of the man’s wife. “But what could they do?”

*Not her real name

Olivia came to the U.S. from Mexico to escape an abusive relationship. “I suffered a lot with my husband,” she says. “It was a lot of mistreatment and beatings.”

But what the 46-year-old meatpacking worker experienced in this country was a greater horror that haunts her still.

Early one morning, after a 12-hour shift, she found her car buried beneath a heavy Iowa snowfall. As she waited there with a co-worker, one of her supervisors came walking toward her. The women were both wary of the man. He frequently made unwanted and obscene sexual advances inside the plant where they worked and was growing more aggressive. “I’m getting out of here because that dirty old man is coming,” Olivia’s co-worker said as she slipped away.

The supervisor invited Olivia to climb into his truck, assuring her that he would be a gentleman.

“It was 3 a.m., and there was a lot of snow and he started saying things to me, for me to go with him, to sleep with him,” Olivia recalls. She refused and insisted that he go away.

Olivia was fed up and tired. The work at a meatpacking plant was difficult. Adding a steady torrent of sexually explicit and belittling comments made the job nearly unbearable. She had had enough. “I told him ‘no,’ and I threw down my lunch.” [[nid:3215]]

His viciousness caught her by surprise. The supervisor punched her in the face. Olivia crumpled. Dazed, she fought back, but the supervisor’s powerful arms kept her pinned. He grabbed and tore at her clothing. A pick-up truck approached and shined its headlights. “Hey, what’s going on?” the driver asked in English. The supervisor responded in English. The driver, apparently satisfied, drove away.

The man tightened his grip and struck her in the head. Olivia slumped over and passed out. When she awoke, she saw the tracks left in the snow as she was dragged to a nearby bench. Still in a fog, Olivia was vaguely aware that her pants had been removed. The supervisor raped her.

During the attack, Olivia lost consciousness again. When she awoke, Olivia was alone. She noticed a crumpled $20 dollar bill nearby on the ground. She dressed and stood up. That’s when she first became aware of the excruciating pain. She made her way home.

“I saw that my pants had a lot of blood,” she recalls. “My mom asked what it was, but I didn’t want to tell her. I went to bed and didn’t say anything. I don’t even want to remember it.” She sought medical attention the next day. The doctor, who spoke Spanish, was alarmed by her injuries and encouraged her to report the attack to the police. She refused. “No, I was scared of the police,” she says. “And I was scared of [the attacker].” She gave up on seeking justice in hopes of finding a little peace.

Returning to work was difficult.

She tried to report the attack to upper management, but her complaints were met with indifference. “What is so bad about that,” another supervisor asked Olivia. “He left you in one piece, didn’t he?”

She responded the way many undocumented immigrant women do when faced with similar circumstances: She stayed on the job. “I had a lot of need, and if I didn’t go to work, what would I do? I had to pay a lot of rent, many bills, my sick daughter, my sick parents who depend on me.”

Olivia buried the pain and shame of the attack. It wasn’t until recently that she sought out therapy. Her counselor did not believe the extent of the savagery until Olivia provided a medical report.

Farmworker women often cover their faces with bandanas to protect themselves from pesticides and the weather, but also to ward off unwanted sexual advances.

Undocumented immigrant women like Olivia are, in most cases, virtually powerless to protect themselves against such attacks. They do not know their rights. They often fear, quite rationally, that reporting abuses will lead to job loss and, in some cases, deportation and separation from their children. Some feel too much shame to report harassment or sexual violence, leaving them extremely vulnerable to exploitation by male co-workers or supervisors. Often, they are faced with threats of firing or offers for jobs in exchange for sex. Their abusers use their lack of legal status against them, knowing they are not likely to report sexual harassment or even violent attacks.

Because of the many obstacles arrayed against them — fear, poverty, shame, lack of access to legal resources, language barriers, immigration status and cultural pressures — few immigrant women ever come forward to speak out against the wrongs committed against them. Too often, they are forced to compromise their dignity — to endure sexual harassment and exploitation — to obtain a better life and a measure of economic security for themselves and their families.

‘Perfect Victims’

Sexual predators view farmworker women and other undocumented women as “perfect victims” because they are isolated, thought to lack credibility, generally do not know their rights, and may be vulnerable because they lack legal status. Often, the perpetrators begin the harassment by grooming the women through suggestive comments or unwanted compliments. They may attempt to scare the women, wear them down and further isolate them until the perpetrator is in a position to commit a sexual assault or rape.

There has been little research on the extent of sexual harassment and abuse of undocumented immigrants. But the anecdotal evidence and the few studies that have been conducted suggest that sexual harassment and violence — including offensive comments, grabbing and touching, humiliation and repeated inappropriate propositions — is rampant.

A majority of the women interviewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center said they endured some sort of sexual harassment that, at times, rose to the level of sexual assault while working in the fields, packinghouses or processing plants.

Many, however, were not even familiar with the concept. As less acculturated immigrant women, they struggled to understand the notion of sexual harassment, let alone grasp the means and methods of reporting an incident. Indeed, many were not aware of their rights and seemed to regard incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence as yet another unpleasant aspect of their job that they had no choice but to endure.

Maria, a 30-year-old farmworker in Florida, says she is filled with anger when she thinks about all the sexual harassment she has suffered. “I really didn’t know [what sexual harassment was],” she says. “If I would have known about it, I would have [reported it].”

Many of the Latinas, ingrained with the culturally reinforced idea that a woman shares blame if she is sexually victimized, expressed bafflement when they found themselves the target of sexual harassment.

Maria, a 57-year-old field worker from Oaxaca, Mexico, who picks grapes and strawberries in California’s Central Valley, says she could not understand why a certain supervisor kept touching her inappropriately while she was going about her job.

“Well, I felt bad,” Maria says. “I felt bad because I didn’t know why he would do that to me. When you don’t give him a reason, he shouldn’t abuse a person.”

Genoveva, a 27-year-old farmworker in California who has picked grapes, peppers, asparagus and other produce, worked for a man who offered her $500 for sex and often made her uncomfortable with his lecherous stares. The supervisor, who drove a van, also happened to be her only means of reaching work. She hated the unwanted attention but never spoke up. She felt relieved when she found another means of transportation.

“I felt depressed, I felt like leaving that job,” she says.

Alina Diaz is an advocate for farmworker women in upstate New York. She travels to labor camps armed with Spanish-language information on sexual harassment, rape and violence. She says sexual harassment is a fact of life for many Latina farmworkers, who are among the poorest and most easily exploitable workers in America.

“It’s very serious,” Alina says. “The women complain a lot that the crew leaders and supervisors, even the contractors [harass them]. For [the women], it’s hard to talk about this. They’re ashamed or afraid that someone will say they asked for it or said something to provoke it.”

This problem, of course, also affects farmworker women who are U.S. citizens or have legal status. But most farmworker women do not have legal status, and that makes them even more vulnerable than farmworkers who are legal. The federal government estimates that 60 percent of farmworkers are undocumented immigrants; advocates say the percentage is far higher. Most studies show that about 25 percent of farmworkers are women.

While investigating harassment of farmworker women in California in the mid-1990s, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found that “hundreds, if not thousands, of women had to have sex with supervisors to get or keep jobs and/or put up with a constant barrage of grabbing and touching and propositions for sex by supervisors.”

In Salinas, Calif., a worker told the EEOC that farmworkers there referred to one company’s fields as the field de calzon, or “field of panties,” because so many women had been raped by supervisors there. In Florida, women farmworkers dubbed fields “the green motel” for the same reason. In Iowa, women said they had encountered the problem so often that they believed it was a common practice in the United States to exchange sex for job security.

More recently, a study published in January 2010 found that among 150 Mexican women and women of Mexican descent who were working in the fields of California’s Central Valley, 80 percent said they had experienced some form of sexual harassment. That compares to roughly half of all women in the workforce who experience at least one incident. Virtually all of the women in the California study who reported sexual harassment said they also experienced sexist comments and degrading insults.

The 2010 study cited a confluence of factors — including extreme poverty, language barriers and discrimination based on race, class and gender — that make farmworker women extraordinarily vulnerable to sexual abuse. It also cited the nature of farm work as a major factor. Not only are farmworker women dependent almost entirely on men for their continued employment, their assignments and the evaluation of their work, they often are assigned to work in isolated orchards or fields far from co-workers. Further, the nature of the work, the continuous stooping necessary to pull weeds from tomato fields or pick crops such as strawberries, lettuce and broccoli make the women susceptible to “sexual stares, verbal comments and unwanted grabbing.”

“No one sees the people in the field,” says Virginia Mejia, a 59-year-old farmworker from Mexico who worked in the California vineyards. “We’re ignored. You have to let them humiliate you, harass the young girls just entering the field. Imagine, they have no protection. You allow it or they fire you.”

The EEOC filed suit against a company called Rivera Vineyard on behalf of Mejia and 56 other women, claiming sexual harassment, retaliation and sex discrimination. The company denied the allegations but settled for $1.1 million in 2005. Mejia lost her job and was blacklisted by the industry.

While sexual harassment in other parts of the U.S. food industry, including the meatpacking industry, has been studied even less than in agriculture, anecdotal evidence, the growing presence of undocumented Latinas in meatpacking plants and a few high-profile cases suggest that the problem in the factories rivals that of the fields.

Few lawsuits brought by immigrant women

In terms of taking legal action to stop abuses or to hold abusers and their employers accountable, the odds are stacked against these women. Very few lawsuits have been brought by farmworker women or other undocumented immigrant women.

It wasn’t until more than 40 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted that a farmworker woman had her case heard before a federal jury. That was a lawsuit brought by the EEOC on behalf of Olivia Tamayo, a migrant farmworker from Mexico who spent 25 years picking crops for Harris Farms in California’s Central Valley.

In a 2005 trial, Tamayo told the jury she was raped repeatedly by a supervisor who threatened her with a knife and gun and said he would kill her husband if she told him. She tried to tell a deputy sheriff, but a company representative intervened, and no criminal charges were ever filed. The EEOC said she was subjected to repeated verbal sexual harassment and intimidation, sexually offensive and threatening gossip from co-workers, and retaliation from the company, including suspension after she reported the harassment. Eventually, she was forced to resign. The jury awarded her nearly $1 million in lost wages and other compensatory and punitive damages. The decision was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2008. To date, Tamayo’s case is the only one to reach a federal jury.

A jury awarded Olivia Tamayo $1 million in lost wages and other damages in the only sexual harassment case brought by a farmworker to reach a federal jury.

Ultimate responsibility for sexual harassment rests with employers. Employers do not have free rein to discriminate against employees simply because they are not legally eligible to work in the United States. The belief that undocumented women who are victims of sexual harassment or sexual violence, or gender discrimination, are not entitled to relief, in fact, flies in the face of the great weight of law under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Similarly, some states afford protection against sex discrimination that is parallel to and, in some cases, more extensive than Title VII.

In one precedent-setting decision, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1984 that an employer violated the National Labor Relations Act by firing undocumented workers because of pro-union activities, even though immigration laws made them ineligible to work in this country.

When considering Title VII discrimination, courts have likewise consistently held that the same rationale applies to protect undocumented workers from discrimination. Thus, there is no question that undocumented immigrant women who have been sexually harassed are protected by Title VII and that their immigration status (and that of any witnesses) is irrelevant to establishing whether they have brought forth legitimate claims of discrimination.

In recent years, however, employers have been emboldened by the Supreme Court’s decision in Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB in 2002. Hoffman essentially found that undocumented workers who complained (under the National Labor Relations Act) and experienced retaliation for supporting a union may not receive pay for lost work when they sue. This perverse ruling provides an enormous incentive for employers to hire undocumented workers — and little incentive for employers not to abuse them.

Of course, having rights in the workplace, on paper, and having the ability to exercise those rights are different matters entirely. Many of the women interviewed for this report said that, as a practical matter, it was best to remain silent. Their overriding concern is their precarious economic and legal status. The women know their low-paying jobs are hanging by a thread, and the prospect of deportation hangs over their heads like the sword of Damocles.

Fear of the police

When sexual harassment crosses the line into sexual violence, it becomes a matter for not only the civil courts but the criminal justice system. But many of the women interviewed said they were in no position to report crimes, primarily because of their fear of being deported, even as crime victims.

Their fears seem well-justified.

There are no legal protections to stop law enforcement officials from turning crime victims — even victims of rape — over to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The SPLC is aware of several cases in which female crime victims have been deported and several cases in which victims of trafficking were prosecuted by both state and federal law enforcement entities instead of being protected when they stepped up to complain.

Another chilling factor is 287(g), the provision of federal immigration law that was created to help immigration authorities capture criminals who threaten the community or national security. It allows local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of suspects who are arrested and to turn undocumented immigrants over to federal authorities. As of October 2010, the government had such agreements with 72 law enforcement agencies in 26 states. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the program is credited with identifying 173,000 “potentially removable aliens,” mostly at local jails, since the beginning of 2006.

But though it was intended for criminals, 287(g) has been used by many localities as a cudgel against otherwise law-abiding, undocumented immigrants. Minor traffic stops, for example, can result in detention, deportation and instant separation from children and other family members.

A report released in March by the DHS inspector general shows how the program has been abused by local law enforcement agencies. Out of 280 cases examined, only 9 percent (26 immigrants) involved immigrants convicted of or arrested for crimes such as murder, rape, robbery or major drug offenses — crimes that make these cases the highest priority for ICE. This is not only a serious failure and waste of resources but a prescription for more crime in our communities. When the SPLC surveyed low-income Latinos in two areas with 287(g) agreements in 2009 — Nashville and Charlotte — it found that most were reluctant to cooperate with police because of these agreements.

In May 2010, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder met with 10 top police chiefs from around the country about Arizona’s new immigration law, which requires police to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop and suspect is in the country illegally. The chiefs told Holder that local law enforcement efforts are seriously hampered by such laws. “If people don’t come forward to help the police solve and protect against crime, no matter what their status, then we are doomed to failure,” Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said. “It threatens to destroy a lot of the work that has been done.” The Justice Department has since filed a federal lawsuit to overturn the Arizona law, saying it unconstitutionally usurps federal authority, disrupts immigration enforcement efforts and would lead to police harassment of those who cannot prove their legal status. At least five other suits have been filed as well, mostly by civil rights groups that claim the law promotes racial profiling.

A rapist goes free

Even in areas without 287(g), the fear of police in immigrant communities can be pervasive and devastating. In 2007, for instance, the SPLC was contacted by a Latino family in south Georgia after a 13-year-old girl had been raped by a man known to the family. The local prosecutor said he would be willing to prosecute the suspect but added that he felt obligated to report the girl to immigration authorities if he discovered she was undocumented.

The family decided not to pursue the case. The rapist went unpunished.

Alina, the farmworker advocate in New York, said that in addition to fear of deportation, there are other reasons — including language barriers and police indifference — that explain why women don’t report crimes. “Sometimes, the police call immigration,” she says. “Or the officer who comes doesn’t have training in domestic violence or sexual violence. They view these women as disposable. Because they’re immigrants with no documents, they’re not human.”

Victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and other crimes are eligible for temporary legal status under the U visa program created by Congress in 2000. The program however, has been plagued with problems. It took eight years for the federal government to issue the first U visa. By the end of 2008, it had issued just 65, even though about 13,300 people had applied, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times found.

Under the Obama administration, the program has been revived. But that has led to a different problem: By July 2010, the government had issued all 10,000 U visas available for the 2009-10 fiscal year.

In addition, U visas don’t protect victims of every crime. For example, the statute under which they were created — the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 — may offer little protection for workers who experience wage theft or other types of abuse on the job.

More importantly, very few victims of crimes are aware of this potential remedy. Instead, they often endure horrendous abuse, believing that they have little choice.

The SPLC is aware of at least one case in which recipients of U visas were actually prosecuted for possessing false documents when they came forward to report serious abuse on the job. These actions severely undermine systems created to protect vulnerable workers.

Unfortunately, all of these factors combine to leave undocumented immigrant women facing a terrible dilemma: Be silent and further embolden their abusers, or speak up and risk having their lives and families shattered.

“You feel a lot of stress because [the abuser] is someone who has authority,” said Carmen, the farmworker from upstate New York. “At that moment, you say … what do I do? You doubt yourself. You don’t know what to do. If I tell him this, what if he does something so I get fired? So sometimes you stay quiet and don’t do anything.”

Virtually every American relies on the labor of undocumented immigrants who toil in the fields, in the slaughterhouses and in the processing factories where our food is produced and packaged. As this report demonstrates, immigrant women who provide this backbreaking labor are the most vulnerable workers in our country.

For them, workplace exploitation is the rule — not the exception.

The women interviewed for this report tell remarkably similar stories of wage theft, sexual harassment, pesticide poisoning, unsafe working conditions and other abuses. Working for poverty wages, they’re ineligible for most government programs that benefit the poor. They typically receive no overtime pay, health care coverage, sick or vacation time, unemployment compensation, retirement plans or other job benefits that most Americans take for granted. Many farmworkers have no access to adequate water or shade to ward off heat stroke in broiling-hot fields. Many have no clean toilets or hand-washing facilities in the fields. They’re unable to complain or seek legal remedies for employer abuses. And they live in constant fear of being detected and seeing their families broken apart.

Despite our dependence on these undocumented workers, we allow this shameful exploitation to continue. It is our responsibility to stop it.

It’s not enough to boycott a particular product or a particular grocery chain — because the abuses are too widespread. It’s not enough to buy local or organic products — because there is simply no reason to conclude that local and organic growers treat their workers any better.

The only way to bring a measure of fairness to the system — to truly improve the living and working conditions for immigrant women — is to enact wholesale reforms at the federal level. These include a path to citizenship for the undocumented workers who are feeding our country. They also must include far stronger worker protections — for all workers, whether they labor in the field or in the factory, and whether they have legal status or not.

Here are our specific policy recommendations:

Congress must:

• Enact comprehensive immigration reforms that provide a path to earned legalization for undocumented immigrants. A bill pending before Congress, known as AgJOBS, would create a path to legalization for many farmworkers. It’s a good start, and Congress should pass it.
• Enact legislation to overturn Hoffman Plastics Compound, Inc. v. NLRB, 535 U.S. 137 (2002). That decision has created a perverse incentive for employers to hire undocumented workers, because they believe those workers will not complain and will not be able to exercise a legal remedy to address exploitative labor practices.
• End special exemptions from labor rules for agricultural employers. There is no justification for the continued agricultural exceptionalism codified in our laws; it is clearly a legacy of discrimination and racism, and a product of political power wielded by growers. Congress alone has the authority to change many of those laws. Examples:
  
  • Many farmworkers are excluded from federal minimum wage laws and other labor protections — including the right to overtime pay for workers who labor more than 40 hours per week.
  • Farmworkers are not protected from retaliation under federal law when engaged in labor organizing.
  • Farmworkers are not entitled to receive attorney fees under the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, the principal federal law protecting farmworkers. Attorney fee awards should be available so that exploited farmworkers can attract private attorneys to handle their cases.
  • Farmworkers on smaller farms do not have access to toilets, hand-washing facilities and drinking water. Providing these essentials would greatly limit the spread of disease and protect human dignity.

Federal Agencies
Federal agencies also have a critical role to play in protecting workers, but many have failed to live up to their mission. Every agency with a role in protecting farmworkers should create a protocol for U visa certification to ensure that victims of crime can come forward to report abuse without repercussions. Agencies also should ensure that they have culturally competent staff members and use best practices for interpretation.

The following actions are particular urgent.

The Department of Homeland Security must do a better job helping to protect crime victims. It must:

• Issue guidance memoranda and regulations to protect crime victims in communities that have 287(g), Safe Communities or other enforcement agreements with the agency.
• Issue guidance to make clear that prosecutors and other law enforcement agencies may not engage in enforcement actions against immigrant crime victims when they come forward to report crimes.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration must do a better job keeping workers safe on the job. It must:

• End discrimination against farmworkers by ensuring that all relevant standards applicable to other workers (such as whistleblower protection, fall protection and protection against unguarded machinery) also apply to farmworkers.
• Increase fines against abusive employers so that they are deterred from further violations.
• Create strict rules related to the speed at which poultry- and meat-processing lines operate. Line speed is the single greatest cause of injuries in these plants, and there are currently no regulations that address it.

The U.S. Department of Labor must do a better job ensuring workers are paid their lawful wages. It must:

• Implement more strategic initiatives to investigate wage theft against low-wage immigrant workers, prioritizing investigations into industries that employ large numbers of women.
• Seek full recovery and steeper penalties against employers who exploit low-wage immigrant workers.
• Enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) to protect workers who speak out about employer abuses.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission must do a better job protecting women workers from discrimination on the job. It must:

• Reissue guidance memoranda stating that undocumented workers are protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Prioritize enforcement of cases involving discrimination against immigrant women.

States, too, play a critical role in protecting vulnerable workers. All states must:

• Ensure that all farmworkers are covered by state workers’ compensation laws. Currently, workers’ compensation is not available to many injured farmworkers due to state laws that exclude or discriminate against farm work, even though farmworkers cannot afford health care or health insurance and suffer injuries at higher rates than almost all other workers.
• Repeal state laws that discriminate against farmworkers. Currently, farmworkers are exempt from many state minimum wage and other laws protecting workers.

Not much has changed in the 50 years since Edward R. Murrow exposed the plight of migrant workers in the documentary “Harvest of Shame.” What has changed is that the majority of farmworkers are now undocumented immigrants, making them in many ways even more vulnerable to exploitation. As Murrow said, they have the strength to harvest our fruits and vegetables but no power to influence the laws and regulations that can improve their lives. That part is up to us — the beneficiaries of their labor.