Deacon Arnold Hernandez, a Texas-born farm worker who is now a Vincentian evangelist, tries to comment about the squalor suffered by these legal guest workers to farm owners and operators.HUNTINGTON, Ind. (Our Sunday Visitor) – There’s a barn in southeast Arkansas where legal Mexican guest workers sleep after a 16-hour day of harvesting tomatoes. Makeshift beds of planks on cinder blocks are set up in narrow rows, each with a small pillow and blanket.
If the foreign laborer is lucky, he won’t be charged for the accommodations. If he’s even luckier, he’ll get paid twice a month instead of once.Deacon Arnold Hernandez, a Texas-born farm worker who is now a Vincentian evangelist, tries to comment about the squalor suffered by these legal guest workers to farm owners and operators.
“In my experience, 98 percent of the employers do not comply with the rules of the existing guest-worker programs,” said Deacon Hernandez, who has pastored farm workers and prisoners for the past 25 years with the Vincentians, formally called the Congregation of the Mission. “Laborers are afraid they won’t get another visa if they complain.”
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Deacon Hernandez will tell you it’s just easier for employers to hire undocumented workers or those with counterfeit papers. That’s also the observation of Mirna Torres, an attorney for the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., a subsidiary of the U.S. bishop’s conference.
“Most people use illegals rather than deal with the paperwork and waiting lists,” said Torres, whose mother carried her across the Rio Grande near El Paso, Texas, when she was a child. “What rancher is going to wait? They need the help now.”
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It’s anybody’s guess if any type of immigration reform will pass this year. That’s not exactly what the U.S. bishops were hoping for.
Higher view
Earlier this year, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed the enforcement-only House bill and subsequently called the Senate bill “a good start.”
Among the bishops’ principles for just immigration reform is a guest-worker program that helps unify migrant families and provides a path to earn citizenship.
“The bishops are not opposed to border security or national sovereignty,” Torres told Our Sunday Visitor. “But they want to balance the right to migration and the dignity of all human beings.”
Catholic Charities USA has also supported S.2611 as a blueprint for immigration reform. Policy analysts would like to see workers able to petition for their own visas instead of needing an employer petition, as well as stronger protections against the kind of abuse witnessed by Deacon Hernandez.
“We would like to see a more level playing field for the workers,” Candy Hill, vice president of social policy for Catholic Charities USA, told Our Sunday Visitor. “We support pathways to citizenship and programs that promote people coming to the United States.”
Also high on the bishops’ list of principles is addressing the poverty in Mexico and other countries that drives immigrants here in the first place.
“There’s a lot of greed and corruption in the governments of Mexico and throughout Latin America,” said Deacon Hernandez. “It breaks my heart to see human beings being treated like animals.”
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