Field of broken dreams

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Most immigrants who move to the United States do not win international prizes in physics or chemistry. Instead many of them fill the void left by other Americans who choose not to work in agriculture tending to crops. Americans who eat vegetables and fruits they do not grow themselves might be eating produce tended and harvested by immigrants.

The United States Department of Agriculture reported agriculture, food, and related industries comprise 5.5 percent of our Gross Domestic Product. A Voice of America article “U.S. Farmers Depend on Illegal Immigrants” recounted the anecdote of the United Farm Workers posting an announcement promising to connect unemployed Americans with jobs on farms. Thousands inquired but only three people accepted the jobs because of working conditions.

Union President Arturo Rodriguez stated Americans have lost touch with modern agriculture, and to fill the void in the workforce, immigrants – some here illegally – came from Mexico and Central America to maintain and harvest grapes, lettuce, cabbage, garlic and the other staples in our grocery aisles.

“The truth is, nobody [in America] is raising their kids to be farm workers,” Rodriguez said. So the overwhelming majority of workers in our fields are from south of the border, and as many as 75 percent of them are undocumented.

However, the Pew Research Center reported, “More Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico from the U.S. than have migrated here since the end of the Great Recession. The same data sources also show the overall flow of Mexican immigrants between the two countries is at its smallest since the 1990s, mostly due to a drop in the number of Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S.” The same report stated, “A majority of the 1 million who left the U.S. for Mexico between 2009 and 2014 left of their own accord.”

The point is there are many opinions regarding the immigration saga, and not all opinions are well founded in facts. As Nigerian writer and social justice advocate Chimamanda Adichie warned, a stereotype is a thinly veiled attempt to obscure a world of experience.