On January 17th of this year the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that Haitian workers are now eligible to apply to an H2A and H2B work visa programs. These programs allow U.S. employers to bring foreign citizens to the United States to fill temporary agricultural jobs and temporary non agricultural jobs, respectively.
If you or some you know is interested in applying to the H2A program click here for more information. Migrant farmworkers travel from state to state to do an intensive labor of harvesting our nation’s food. They usually follow different migrant streams to find agricultural work in order to support their families. Statistics reveal that the majority of agricultural workers are Hispanic; however 7% of farmworkers are Haitians. This percentage may increase in coming years.
Haitian farmworkers are mostly concentrated in the East coast and usually migrate from Florida-North Carolina-Maryland- New Jersey -New York up to Maine typically harvesting blueberries. Like many migrant farmworkers, Haitian face numerous issues such as culture adaptation, unfair treatment, unsanitary housing, health issues, and much more.
The Christian Science Monitor shared the following: A Haitian migrant picker named Peterson says, one only needs “eyes in the field” to see the difficult conditions. Peterson, who is using a pseudonym, holds out a paycheck for a recent day’s work in Florida, showing he made $69.77, after taxes, for a 13-hour workday in the cucumber fields. That’s even though he technically makes $8.50 an hour, the state minimum wage.
We cannot deny that migrant farmworkers are super heroes. They learn to cope with many issues, and still they wake up every morning, and prepare to work for long hours, under extreme working conditions making sure that every product they plant and harvest are the best quality for all consumers.
AFOP’s Health & Safety Programs is proud to be able to provide multiple health and safety training topics to the farmworker community in a low-literate and interactive format in multiple languages including English, Spanish, Haitian-Creole, Mixtec and Burmese. We hope with these training opportunities, to be able help as many farmworkers as possible to achieve a healthy and safer life.
Both pictures are AFOP H&S property. Picture sent from PathStone.
Photos: Haitian farmworkers in NJ receiving heat stress prevention training.
Resources:
http://flchealth.org/your-experience/
Both pictures are AFOP H&S property. Picture sent from PathStone.
Photos: Haitian farmworkers in NJ receiving heat stress prevention training.
Health & Safety Programs 