04/05/2018 Tungol Law America Now, Business, Documents, Economy, Immigration "For Many Immigrants From Mexico, Farm Work Is Still The Only Way To The California Dream"

Julia Mitric of Capital Public Radio reports  that today 90 percent of California’s farmworkers hail from Mexico and half that population lack documents for legal residence, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey. “I’ve always seen the ‘California Dream’ as coming to the state and finding more opportunity than you had where you came from,” says professor Philip Martin, who studies farm labor at UC Davis. He argues that California still offers lots of opportunities to move up the socioeconomic ladder. “But in the case of farmworkers it may be the upward mobility is going to be more through the children of farmworkers rather than through the farmworkers themselves.”

Martin explains that the flow of migrants across the border has slowed dramatically in recent years,  due to changes in U.S. immigration policy, border security and an improving economy in Mexico.  In 2000, one in four farm laborers in the U.S. were recent arrivals from Mexico, meaning they had been in the U.S. less than one year, according to a Pew Research Center report. By 2013-14, the number of recently arrived crop workers had fallen to 1-2 percent.

There are still migrants coming from Mexico, says Martin, but those who come can afford to pay between $5,000 and $7,000 to a ‘coyote’ (or guide) to evade Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “These migrants tend to be more educated, more skilled, and they’re not going to work in agriculture,” says Martin. The average crop worker in California earns $15,000 a year, according to data collected in 2013-14 by the National Agricultural Workers Survey. Martin says recently arrived immigrants are in search of higher wages.

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