Written By: Sravika Pillarisetty
“Millions of... workers... face a wrenching choice: financial ruin or risking their health and, possibly, their lives” (Carcamo). Many migrants here in America have an illegal status, and must have small jobs such as farming and factory packaging in order to pay their rent and feed their families. With the coronavirus, they have to find work and live in any kind of shelter. These migrants have terrifying working conditions where they work right next to each other, and even have to share their homes to stay afloat. Migrants are getting infected everyday just to pay for their basic needs. The US has policies that help under-paid workers stay afloat, but since most of these migrants have an illegal status, these policies do not apply to them. We have a rising death toll and historic unemployment rate. With so many farm workers and meat plant workers being infected with Covid-19, how are they being infected? What will be the long-term effect?
To begin with, migrants have terrifying working conditions, and not only is it a bit unsanitary, but it is also dangerous. Factory workers and farmers are told to follow social distancing; however, there is no space in a factory or farm because they have to keep up with the efficiency. The workers must work close to each other in a lane to keep goods up to pace. They have to do their jobs so quickly that they barely have enough time to go to the bathroom. These migrants have such unethical treatment; however, they are the reason our purchases and goods come in quickly. With barely any room or time to work, they have no option of social distancing. The situation is much worse for factory workers because it is so hard for them to use a mask as it always gets wet and slows the process down. As a result, most factory workers do not use masks during their jobs.
Furthermore, beyond such horrid working conditions, it does not get any better with their living conditions. Many migrant farmers and factory workers do not have fair wages, so they end up having to share small living quarters in order to survive. A worker at the North Carolina Farmworkers’ Project says, “‘They all share the same bathroom, they all share the same kitchen, they’re all usually within the same living area” (Engel-Smith). With at least three different families living under one shelter, it is practically impossible not to spread the virus to family members. As a result, what is their current situation? Migrant factory workers and farmers are the most vulnerable to the virus, and without them or their efforts, our economy and food are in trouble. Even with all these horrible situations, “employers do not always prioritize the safety of farmworkers, and federal law exempts farmworkers from some of the rights most other workers enjoy” (Willingham and Mathema). Low-income immigrant families do not have any financial aid during the pandemic either. This is so sorrowful as these migrant workers must risk their lives and others’ around them to make money to eat and have a roof over their heads. They have no choices at the moment. As migrants keep getting infected and pass away, our national supply chain breaks apart too, leading to the destruction of our economy.
In addition, this leads to the topic of our national supply chains. What is a supply chain? A supply chain is the process of how your purchases come to you, and it can be described in these simple steps: plan, source, produce, deliver, return. However, over the years, companies have been working to make the national supply chain efficient. The products we purchase arrive quicker due to the efficiency that our economy has been working on, but that is also why our national supply chain is so vulnerable: we do not replenish our backup stockpile. We also barely produce supplies here in the USA; goods are exported from all over the world to us. In a national emergency, this type of chain would not last. For example, the USA ran out of basic medical supplies such as masks, gowns, and ventilators as soon as the coronavirus pandemic hit. We used products supplied from the national backup stockpile, but never replenished it. During the pandemic, it is also difficult for other countries to supply us with basic supplies as they themselves need it.
Moreover, our food supply chain is also similar to our product supply chain. Farmers have been looking at ways to speed up the process of growing vegetables and fruits to get it to our grocery stores in time. However, certain fruits and vegetables have specific seasons, so migrant workers must continuously move to keep up with the work. However, since the pandemic started, they must still keep the same work ethic and stay safe. At the moment for farmers, it is really difficult to stay safe in an open field crammed together. This is why so many migrants are losing their lives. The migrant population is slowly dwindling, and not only is that ethically devastating, but it could also single-handedly destroy our economy.
However, what is the long-term issue? “the outbreaks could also create labor shortages at the worst possible time” (Dorning and Skerritt). The migrant population is slowly dwindling, and not only is that ethically devastating, but it could also single-handedly destroy our economy. It would take decades to rebuild our economy and our supply chains.
Obviously, there are many factors that play into making the situation as it is, and one of them is the actions of the Trump Administration. According to the Los Angeles Times, “Immigrant rights advocates and other critics say that the Trump administration has refused to help these workers directly in any significant way during the pandemic, leaving many without a financial safety net afforded to most Americans” (Carcamo). This only forces migrants to risk their safety and put earning money over their lives. It has only made things difficult. Here is another example. Do you remember when there was a shortage of meat, and we were restricted in how much we could buy from stores? However, a few days later, it went back to normal? Let me explain what happened. There were multiple coronavirus breakouts in meat packing plants from Tennessee to Georgia, and this harms the meat packing plants’ reputation. As a result, many of them shut down. This led to the shortage of meat, and within two days, many stores put limits on how much meat you could buy. On the third day, the Trump Administration signed a Defense production Act (DPA), keeping meat packing plants open. To quickly summarize, the Defense Production Act “allows the president, largely through executive order, to direct private companies to prioritize orders from the federal government. The president is also empowered to ‘allocate materials, services, and facilities’ for national defense purposes, and take actions to restrict hoarding of needed supplies” (Siripurapu).Within a few hours, media and news stations had these similar headlines: “Trump orders meat plants to stay open in pandemic”. News stations used the words ordered, forced, mandatory, required. However, when you read the fine print that was signed by the Trump Administration, the DPA allowed meat packing plants to avoid any liability charges that may come from the coronavirus outbreaks. In simple words, if any factory workers get infected by the virus while working at the meat packing plants and any serious outcomes occur, the companies are free from any liability. Within hours of the DPA being signed, the factories that shut down, reopened again.
Overall, there are many factors that play into how migrants are being affected and the long-lasting effects. However, as long as the pandemic lasts, migrants are being forced into an uncertain situation. Their harsh living and working conditions do not help their situations either. As time goes on, not only are many migrant workers dying to sustain our economy and basic needs, our national supply chains are slowly crumbling. The longer the pandemic goes on, our country’s complex machinery falls apart. As each day passes, innocent, low-income workers are dying to supply us, and along with them, our economy plummets. It would take decades and decades to rebuild the economy we have at the moment. Each moment leads to our country’s inner working’s destruction; it is crucial that the pandemic ends soon.
Works Cited:
Carcamo, Cindy. “He's Diabetic. He Works a High-Risk Job. But to Pay Rent, He Has No Choice.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2020, www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-22/coronavirus-immigrants-worker-migrant-paycheck-health-choice.
Dorning, Mike, and Jen Skerritt. “Coronavirus US: Every Worker at One Farm Has Covid on Harvest Eve.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 29 May 2020, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/every-single-worker-has-covid-at-one-u-s-farm-on-eve-of-harvest.
Mathema, Zoe Willingham and Silva. “Protecting Farmworkers From Coronavirus and Securing the Food Supply.” Center for American Progress, 23 Apr. 2020, www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2020/04/23/483488/protecting-farmworkers-coronavirus-securing-food-supply/.
Mazzei, Patricia. “Florida's Coronavirus Spike Is Ravaging Migrant Farmworkers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 18 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/us/florida-coronavirus-immokalee-farmworkers.html.
Morales, Andrea. “For Migrant Workers in NC, Coronavirus May Be Hard to Avoid.” CommWell Health, www.commwellhealth.org/news/for-migrant-workers-in-nc-coronavirus-may-be-
hard-to-avoid.
Siripurapu, Anshu. “What Is the Defense Production Act?” Council on Foreign Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, www.cfr.org/in-brief/what-defense-production-act.
“Executive Order on Delegating Authority Under the DPA with Respect to Food Supply Chain Resources During the National Emergency Caused by the Outbreak of COVID-19.” The White House, The United States Government, www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-delegating-authority-dpa-respect-food-supply-chain-resources-national-emergency-caused-outbreak-covid-19/.
Taylor Telford, Kimberly Kindy. “Trump Orders Meat Plants to Stay Open in Pandemic.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 29 Apr. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/28/trump-meat-plants-dpa/.
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