Ignorance should not be bliss. But - as Univision’s recent report on conditions at a major U.S. potato farm makes clear - when it comes to human trafficking, a simple “oops, didn’t know,” seems to be enough to get business owners entirely off the hook for horrific abuses going on under their noses.
The H-2A visa needs to be restructured and enforced more carefully
The men and women who come from Mexico and other countries to work these jobs can be abused - physically, verbally, financially - and they have no recourse to complain.
Por:
Andrea Rojas.
A worker sorts potatoes at the Larsen Farms processor in Dalhart, Texas.
Imagen Almudena Toral / Univision
If we truly want to end the epidemic of labor trafficking in the United States, that has to change. It is time to start holding business owners accountable for human trafficking on their watch.
And it is long past time to revamp the visa program that, as currently structured, has led to a near epidemic of trafficking in America's farms and fields at a moment when agriculture workers from overseas have never been more important to the U.S. economy.
As my mom worked and parented, all in one breath, she instilled in us the values that I carry with me today: “por la familia, todo.” Lee este contenido en <a href="https://www.univision.com/noticias/opinion/por-la-familia-todo-ruben-gallego-sobre-su-candidatura-para-ser-el-primer-senador-latino-de-arizona" target="_blank" link-data="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000147-f3a5-d4ea-a95f-fbb7f52b0000","_type":"ae3387cc-b875-31b7-b82d-63fd8d758c20"},"cms.content.publishDate":1726508089253,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017b-d1c8-de50-affb-f1df3e1d0000","_type":"6aa69ae1-35be-30dc-87e9-410da9e1cdcc"},"cms.content.updateDate":1726508089253,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017b-d1c8-de50-affb-f1df3e1d0000","_type":"6aa69ae1-35be-30dc-87e9-410da9e1cdcc"},"link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.univision.com/noticias/opinion/por-la-familia-todo-ruben-gallego-sobre-su-candidatura-para-ser-el-primer-senador-latino-de-arizona","_id":"00000191-fbe6-d0b9-a3df-ffee82b60000","_type":"ff658216-e70f-39d0-b660-bdfe57a5599a"},"linkText":"español","_id":"00000191-fbe6-d0b9-a3df-ffee82b10000","_type":"809caec9-30e2-3666-8b71-b32ddbffc288"}">español</a>.
"What a sad reflection that the Republican Party has moved from Abraham Lincoln, who <a href="https://www.lincolncottage.org/lincoln-and-immigration/" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.lincolncottage.org/lincoln-and-immigration/&source=gmail&ust=1722615259799000&usg=AOvVaw1h4-6RbvpglrZVIbOjgpuE" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">said </a>immigration was a ‘source of national wealth and strength’ and Ronald Reagan, who <a href="https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/farewell-address-nation" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/farewell-address-nation&source=gmail&ust=1722615259799000&usg=AOvVaw3smYQcjpnK2Yg75NSEOBUf" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">called </a>for his ‘city on the hill’ to be ‘open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here,’ to Donald Trump, who <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-immigrants-are-poisoning-blood-country-biden-campaign-liken-rcna130141" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-immigrants-are-poisoning-blood-country-biden-campaign-liken-rcna130141&source=gmail&ust=1722615259799000&usg=AOvVaw1u4LrDvU2tKeNxJCdbz96i" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">says </a>immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country".
"Our current immigration laws include so many hurdles that can keep families in limbo, and even being married to a U.S. citizen isn’t always enough to allow someone to get a green card".
"For those of us whose livelihoods depend on it, President Biden’s actions to protect and preserve DACA show a striking contrast with those of Trump and MAGA Republicans. Trump has a record of trying to end DACA and will try again if he wins another term".
"While immigrants by now are accustomed to being the tip of the spear in the GOP’s arsenal of attacks, let's be clear-eyed that the threat now is beyond harming immigrant communities or calling attention to the border. This is about using this issue as a tool to further Trump’s political ambitions, even if that means suppressing the right to vote, undermining our election results, or stoking more political violence".
"This month comes at a special moment in our nation’s history. For the first time, we have more Latinos serving in Congress than ever before. In the Senate, the Democratic Majority has confirmed a historic number of Latino judicial nominees and recently confirmed the first Latina to serve on the Federal Reserve in the Board’s 109-year history".
"This is the clean energy boom unleashed by President Biden: good-paying jobs in a fast-growing industry and lower bills for working families — all while addressing the climate crisis affecting our lives".
Putting presidents, former presidents and coup plotters on trial is an honorable and necessary practice to maintain a healthy democracy. Failure to put on trial presidents or former presidents who broke the law or committed crimes has had devastating consequences in Latin America.
Mexico's migrant policy bears responsibility for the deaths of 39 migrants in the fire at a detention center in Ciudad Juarez. They were in the custody of the Mexican government, in a federal facility.
The multimedia Univision report, Potato Slaves, tells the story of workers who came to this country legally on visas called H-2As to work on a potato farm in Texas. These visas were created because the agriculture industry was not able to find enough workers already in the United States who would take these difficult and usually low-paying jobs.
Video ‘They never told me I’d receive insults and personal threats’: The price of an H-2A visa in Texas
Under the terms of the visas, workers are only legally in the United States while they are employed by the business that sponsors the visa. This situation is a trafficker’s dream. The men and women who come from Mexico and other countries to work these jobs can be abused - physically, verbally, financially - and they have no recourse to complain. Their supervisors need only threaten to call “immigration” to coerce them into working in inhumane or dangerous conditions, for little or no money. This is labor trafficking, and it is, unfortunately, hardly an anomaly.
Data from the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline shows this kind of scenario plays out time and again, around the country. It is long past time to reexamine and revamp this program to allow some degree of visa portability. Until we do, workers will continue to be abused with impunity. But that is just the beginning of the change we need.
In the Texas potato farm case, the man who recruited and supervised the workers was eventually charged - with fraud and other lesser crimes - not with human trafficking, despite conditions that meet the legal benchmark for labor trafficking. That’s just one of the reasons it’s hard to claim that justice, or anything like it, was served in this case. The only person held accountable was essentially a middleman, likely a former laborer himself, who worked his way up the chain and may well have been subjected to similar abuses at some earlier point.
The person who profited most from the availability of cheap labor is the actual owner of the potato farm. As the story makes clear, the owner of the farm confessed to having heard about the abuses taking place over months on his property, for his benefit. He did nothing to stop it, benefitted from the labor, and yet he received no punishment.
Such willful blindness is undoubtedly unethical. If we want to stop labor trafficking in the farms and fields around this country, it must also become illegal.
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