Category Archives: Immigrant Rights

Farmworkers Across The State Are Still Getting Sick and Sometimes Dying from Preventable Heat

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Unconscionable! … “20 years after California enacted a landmark heat safety law, farmworkers across the state are still getting sick and sometimes dying from preventable heat illness.
The law “is failing because of a lack of enforcement. It’s not doing what it was intended to do,” said state Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), a former farmworker who carried legislation last year that would have made it easier for farmworkers to receive workers’ compensation if they were stricken by heat illness on the job. The measure was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. “It is the kind of thing that should be keeping legislators up at night. People are dying.”
The enforcement lapses come at a time when farmworkers — many of whom lack legal status and fear deportation — are already hesitant to voice complaints about working conditions, fearful that employers could retaliate by reporting them to immigration authorities. It is estimated that more than half of California’s approximately 350,000 farmworkers are undocumented.
A 2022 study by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center found that many farmworkers were still laboring without the protections. Of more than 1,200 workers surveyed, 43% reported that their employers had not provided a heat illness prevention plan and 15% said they had not received heat illness prevention training.”

A Result Of Consistent And Unwavering Organizing

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Once in awhile … A result of consistent and unwavering organizing: “In a key win for immigrant rights organizations, a California Court of Appeal ruled that the University of California has not provided sufficient legal grounds to justify its “discriminatory policy” barring the hiring of undocumented students from on-campus jobs.”

If You Want To Protect Democracy, You Protect The Most Vulnerable

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Alvarado, from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, was grateful for their presence. “The way we view it is that you stop fascism, you stop authoritarianism by protecting those that are at the end of the whip,” he said. “If you want to protect democracy, you protect the most vulnerable. That’s what we want people from all walks of life to understand. That’s why it’s beautiful to see the soccer moms, the teachers, getting it.”

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Scapegoating At The Highest Levels

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Scapegoating at the highest levels attacking our immigrant communities to hide the systemic reasons for why immigrants come here, blaming them for the state of the economy, and to hide the tremendous profits made by multinational corporations here and abroad from their labor. We know who the real criminals are – and it is not our hard-working immigrant families. As the studies in this article show: “About 68% of those had no criminal convictions and an additional 57% had never been charged with a crime.”

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