Children of the Blueberries

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Imagine having no marketable skills to navigate through life with. The only tool you have to earn money is your unskilled labor. You end up in the traditional low-paying jobs as a janitor, restaurant worker, warehouse person, landscaper laborer, or any other job where your physical labor and work ethic are basically the only skills you need for the job. The pay is so low that your spouse is forced to join you to to make the meager ends almost meet. But at least your kids are safe at school during the day when you and your spouse are out toiling at your low-paying jobs. At the end of the shift there is an apartment to go to- home, sweet, home. Dinner is cooked, conversation is shared. Every evening there is a shared semblance of family life together. Now, imagine that you have no apartment to go to. You have to live in the parking lot of the factory with the families of the other workers. The "camp" has no hot water. The walls are not insulated from the extremes of the weather. Bugs and rodents thrive in the over-flowing dumpster located outside the living quarters. Mark Heller, managing attorney for the migrant farm worker and immigration program with the Ohio-based Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, said his organization regularly files complaints against and sometimes even sues farm operations for failing to keep their camps up to code. "We see a lot of problems there because a lot of the units are really old," Heller said. "It's all pretty primitive -- especially considering how hard people have to work all day." Across the state, migrant farm workers are forced to live in camps that lack hot water, fail to properly empty toilet facilities and let trash dumpsters overflow with garbage that attracts disease-spreading pests. (Sandusky Register On-Line) Your kids are not in school. Either you leave them at the squalid camp in the parking lot or you bring them to work.  Wages are so low and tied into piece-meal reimbursements, that you end up with your out-of-school children working along si..
Nov
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Imagine having no marketable skills to navigate through life with. The only tool you have to earn money is your unskilled labor. You end up in the traditional low-paying jobs as a janitor, restaurant worker, warehouse person, landscaper laborer, or any other job where your physical labor and work ethic are basically the only skills you need for the job. The pay is so low that your spouse is forced to join you to to make the meager ends almost meet. But at least your kids are safe at school during the day when you and your spouse are out toiling at your low-paying jobs. At the end of the shift there is an apartment to go to- home, sweet, home. Dinner is cooked, conversation is shared. Every evening there is a shared semblance of family life together. Now, imagine that you have no apartment to go to. You have to live in the parking lot of the factory with the families of the other workers. The "camp" has no hot water. The walls are not insulated from the extremes of the weather. Bugs and rodents thrive in the over-flowing dumpster located outside the living quarters. Mark Heller, managing attorney for the migrant farm worker and immigration program with the Ohio-based Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, said his organization regularly files complaints against and sometimes even sues farm operations for failing to keep their camps up to code. "We see a lot of problems there because a lot of the units are really old," Heller said. "It's all pretty primitive -- especially considering how hard people have to work all day." Across the state, migrant farm workers are forced to live in camps that lack hot water, fail to properly empty toilet facilities and let trash dumpsters overflow with garbage that attracts disease-spreading pests. (Sandusky Register On-Line) Your kids are not in school. Either you leave them at the squalid camp in the parking lot or you bring them to work.  Wages are so low and tied into piece-meal reimbursements, that you end up with your o
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