Key Issues

Fruits of Labor is an excellent tool for outreach and will be of special interest to people who want to explore the following topics:

• Immigrant and Mixed Status Families
• Experiences of Undocumented Immigrants
• Mexican-Americans
• Coming of Age
• History of and Current Status of Agricultural Work in the U.S.
• Risk of Deportation
• Gender roles within the family
• The Global Food Economy & Food Systems
• Sleep Deprivation & Child/Teen Development
• Farmworkers

Children of undocumented Immigrants/Mixed Immigration Status Families

In the film, Ashley and her mother, now both increasingly fearful of the possibility of Beatriz’s deportation, visit an attorney to discuss a contingency plan for the family. After they initially bring up the idea of Ashley adopting her three brothers and sisters, the attorney explains how serious and permanent those ramifications would be and instead suggests alternatives, such as Ashley being granted legal guardianship.

While Beatriz is considered an undocumented immigrant, Ashley and her siblings were born on U.S. soil and are therefore automatically considered citizens of the United States. This right - jus soli, more commonly known as birthright citizenship, dates back to the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified on July 9, 1868, and granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Families like Ashley’s are often referred to as “mixed-status families.”

Under U.S. immigration law, the parents of a U.S. citizen who are aged 21 or older are considered immediate relatives and are eligible for a green card. However, if those parents have already been living in the U.S. unlawfully for six months or more, they are not permitted to enter the country for three years. If they have been unlawfully living in the U.S. for more than one year, they would have become "inadmissible" to the U.S. for ten years. Even once Ashley turns 21, the path to legal citizenship for her mother is a complicated and risky one.

Millions of others are in a similar situation to Ashley and her siblings, living with the persistent threat of their parents’ deportation. As of 2018, well over 4 million U.S. citizen children under the age of 18 lived with at least one undocumented parent. In 2019 alone, ICE deported 27,980 parents of U.S.-born children. Following the deportation of a parent, children left behind face economic hardship, housing instability, food insecurity and the emotional trauma of being separated from a parent, among other consequences.

When a child’s parent is deported, there is the possibility that they are put into the child welfare system. However, they may also end up in the home of grandparents, other relatives, or close family friends. These families are often referred to as “grandfamilies.” More than 2.6 million children in the U.S. are being raised, not by their biological parents, but in these grandfamilies. Of this number, approximately 1 out of 5 are living in immigrant grandfamilies, though it is not known how many of these formed as a result of detainment or deportation.

Feeding America - The Essential Work of Agricultural Workers in the United States

“Every single day we sit down to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and at our table we have food that was planted, picked, or harvested by a farm worker. Why is it that the people who do the most sacred work in our nation are the most oppressed, the most exploited?” - Dolores Huerta, Political and labor Activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America union

Ashley and so many other farm workers play an absolutely vital role in getting food to the tables of millions of Americans across the United States. So much so that at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Department of Homeland Security deemed agricultural workers “essential,” along with nurses, first responders, law enforcement and others, with the expectation they had “a special responsibility to maintain their normal work schedule.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, people were not lining up to take on the physical demands of agricultural work. The American Farm Bureau Federation estimates that U.S. agriculture requires a total of 1.5 to 2 million hired workers each year, but farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to fill these positions. In 2019, 56% of California farmers reported that at some point over the last five years, they had been unable to find all the workers they needed.

So who are the people filling these roles and taking on these responsibilities?

Today, immigrant farm workers make up an estimated 73% of agriculture workers in the United States, of which about between 50 and 70 percent are undocumented. Women account for roughly 32% of the workforce. These agricultural workers pay taxes, contribute to the economy, are considered essential workers, but are neither protected against deportation, if undocumented, nor by U.S. labor laws. Minimum wage provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) do not extend to most kinds of agricultural work and farm workers are also not entitled to overtime pay under the FLSA. According to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, 30% of farmworkers live in poverty, with the medium income falling between $15,000 and $17,499 annually.

While precise data on youth farm workers does not exist, the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs estimates that there are approximately 500,000 to 800,000 farmworkers under the age of 18. Since 1938, federal labor laws have also excluded youth farmworkers, making children in agriculture the least protected by law compared to other sectors.

Under federal labor law:

• children of any age can work on farms operated by their parents
• Children as young as 10 can be hired to work on farms not operated by their relatives during short-term harvests
• children at the age of 12 can legally work unlimited hours on farms of any size with parental permission, as long as they don’t miss school.
• By law, children working in agriculture can do jobs at age 16 that health and safety experts deem particularly hazardous. In all other sectors, workers must be 18 to do hazardous work.

Despite representing only an estimated 5.5% of working children, a Human Rights Watch report found that between 2003 and 2016, children working in agriculture accounted for more than half of the work-related deaths reported in the U.S.. Young girls, who often work completely alone on farms, are exceptionally vulnerable to the lack of laws and protection.