Categories: News

Migrant farmworkers are getting fired for seeking Covid-19 medical treatment

Reyna Alvarez, a 36-year-old mother of three from a village in northwest Mexico, was working at a crawfish processing plant in Louisiana when Covid-19 swept through two dorms that housed migrant farmworkers here on H-2A visas. She left to get treatment at a nearby hospital, and when she recovered and was ready to return to work, she found out she’d been fired for leaving her employer-provided housing, and had been reported to immigration authorities. She’s not the only one. As coronavirus cases explode at farms and food factories, workers like Alvarez are finding that they can’t escape the spread, unless they’re willing to risk deportation, Bloomberg reports. She and others have filed federal whistleblower complaints against their employers.

Related Post
The Counter
Share
Published by
The Counter

Recent Posts

Grist acquires The Counter and launches food and agriculture vertical

Grist, an award-winning, nonprofit media organization dedicated to highlighting climate solutions and uncovering environmental injustices,…

6 months ago

Is California giving its methane digesters too much credit?

Every year, California dairy farms emit hundreds of thousands of tons of the potent greenhouse…

3 years ago

Your car is killing coho salmon

Highway 7 runs north-south through western Washington, carving its way through a landscape sparsely dotted…

3 years ago

The pandemic has transformed America’s dining landscape into an oligopoly dominated by chains 

One of the greatest pleasures I had as a child growing up in the Chicago…

3 years ago

California is moving toward food assistance for all populations—including undocumented immigrants

Undocumented immigrants experience food insecurity at much higher rates than other populations, yet they are…

3 years ago

Babka, borscht … and pumpkin spice? Two writers talk about Jewish identity through contemporary cookbooks.

Writer Charlotte Druckman and editor Rebecca Flint Marx are both Jewish journalists living in New…

3 years ago