Alien Slavery in America

Imagine not being born in the USA. Imagine being born in a poor Mexican town. Picture a widowed mother, an aging father. Picture a pregnant wife and children bloated with hunger. Picture a clean low table spread with tortillas and salt- the only food available.

You know that there is a way you can make your lives better. You know there is a place where you can get work and send money to your family. A place where people have so much food, they throw it away without even thinking, a place so multi-cultural, so diverse that anyone can blend in.

The United States.

So you scrape what little money you can together to pay a “coyote”, someone to help you get across the border.

In the dessert, daily temperatures reach 104°. You don’t have fancy hiking boots. You have cheap sneakers to take you across the dessert. It’ s impossible to carry enough water on that long walk. You might be bit by a snake. You might be shot by the border patrol. You might die of hunger or thirst, or be crippled by an infected blister or some other injury. What motivates you?

Is it the dream of becoming a doctor? Is it the thought of Christmas presents for your children?A house with a clean kitchen, stocked with food?

Whatever it is, it carries you across the desert and into the States, where a new life awaits you.

But this life is far from the American dream.

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The people who pick our food are underpaid, exposed to pesticides, deprived of a stable education and prone to medical problems they cannot pay for. When the picker is also an illegal immigrant,as is sometimes the case,the abuses are much worse.

American-born citizens know about the Suffragettes, the Civil Rights Movement. Americans have a heritage of standing up for our rights. We know this country has regulations about pesticides, living standards and wages.

If you’re new to this country,you don’t know any of this, but the people who hire you know about it. Being able to pay a worker next to nothing saves you money. It allows you to “pass the savings” to your customers. Some of the biggest corporations in the USA benefit from the cheap labor of people who can’t defend themselves.

Migrant workers make about $7,500 per year. By living on a few dollars per day they manage to send $300-500 home to Mexico . People in Mexico rely on the money so much that some villages’ entire economies are based on wages sent from the US.

Labor contractors often steal the workers’ wages. Growers hire the contractors to distance themselves from the workers. Labor contractors often take the heat for farm-worker abuses, although some are calling for the “higher-ups” to be held accountable.

Sometimes, workers are “bought” and kept in trailers under lock and key, forbidden to leave.

The illegals are totally dependent on their labor contractors and the culture of the growing system. Their housing is usually provided, consisting of a rat-infested trailer without heat or air.. Hundreds of deaths go unreported, including those of minors.

South Americans are not the only ones slaving in America. Large groups of South Asian wanna-be-citizens are brought over to America. They are told they can pay their passage at a later date, but when they get to the U.S, they are told that they have to work to pay off their debt. They work for no wages, living in sub-standard conditions. Women are often sold into prostitution. Children also fall prey to human trafficking.

Immigrants who are injured can’t afford their medical bills. It is estimated that thousands of migrant worker children go to public school, even though their parents don’t pay taxes.Still, the characterization of these people as freeloaders is wrong and allows us to ignore a growing evil in the land of the free.