LAWRENCE CO.—The practice of specialty farmers bringing in government-subsidized “migrant workers” has cost Lawrence County taxpayers thousands of dollars in the form of testing and screening after a child turned up with tuberculosis and had to be hospitalized.
And if people weren’t already resentful of the migrants coming into the county and causing various problems among locals, they now have about 7,000 more reasons to dislike the situation that Terry Vieck, of JMR Farms, Inc., has brought into the area, because that’s the preliminary report from the Lawrence County Health Department of the cost the migrant workers, brought in from various countries, as regards TB testing and screening.
The snackfood connection
JMR Farms touts themselves as “Your Snackfood Connection” and operates farms in Lawrence County, Illinois and Knox County, Indiana.
They specialize in generally non-subsidized produce such as sweet corn, potatoes, broccoli, white milling corn, processing vegetables (such as green beans and beets) as well as the very subsidized soybeans.
“Subsidies,” however, are not subjective. The U.S. Government, each year, allows specialty farmers, such as pumpkin farmers in White County, tobacco and melon farmers in Wayne County, tomato and pepper farmers in Gallatin County and apple orchards in Jackson and Johnson counties to bring in “migrant workers” from countries south of the U.S. border—Mexico, Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, etc. There are entire programs that will outfit the specialty farmers with migrants who ostensibly pass screening, both for legal issues such as criminality and health issues such as tuberculosis, to make it into the country on perfectly valid work visas.
Get big or get out
With the U.S. government having taken over farming as an industry in a gradual move over the decades (most of it coming to a head in the mid-80s, when the premise was “get big or get out” for small family farms who were eking out an existence after years of fighting export restrictions on grains), subsidies—taxpayers’ money used to fund factory farming—became the way to go.
And when the government misuses taxpayers’ money in any way, that’s going to create problems of its own.
What once might have been a family-owned farm, unable to “get big” and unwilling to “get out,” becomes a gradually growing operation that has to have help in the form of physical labor, but only at certain times of the year. Rather than hire on the locals at Illinois’ ridiculously-high minimum wage, many farmers turned to federal programs designed to bring in large numbers of workers at poverty-level wages…therefore, the taxpayers pay to have the migrant workers brought in.
Migrant housing often substandard
What happens when the migrant workers get here is often up to how much funding the farmer can obtain, or has at-hand.
In White County five and six years ago, old farm houses were rented out and the tobacco or pumpkin farmers slammed migrant workers in there, as many as 20 in a three-bedroom location…where they proceeded to trash the premises both inside and out, ultimately making some locations completely untenable after one season.
In Gallatin County, an old school was converted into dorms and, because the school had minimal heating and no cooling capacities, migrants sweltered in the summer, spilling out onto the lawn after toiling all day in fields of peppers, hoping to catch a breeze.
In Johnson County, subsidies paid for the erection of squat cinderblock, single-room dorm complexes, the individual “student-type” rooms suitable for a college kid and a roommate suddenly cram-packed with migrant workers, their wives, and many of their small children.
The conditions these workers lived in prompted many who learned about the reality of them to point out nearly 150 years before, America was so proud to have gotten rid of slavery…so the excuse for this kind of thing was completely unclear, except for the fact that this was how the federal government wanted it, so this was how it was going to be.
Eligible for aid
Along with poverty-level wages (which is to say, below minimum wage; despite the fact that most farmers employing these people would scream that they were paying minimum and posting labor board notices that they did, the fact remains that the farmer pays only a portion of the wages; the U.S. government takes up the rest in wages and benefits issued in bulk to the farmers), the migrant workers are all eligible for state-level public aid.
Depending upon how many of their family members come with them when they sign up for the program, a migrant worker who is not itinerant (moves from one place to another easily, without taking family along) is eligible for every benefit a jobless legal American is: Temporary Aid to Needy Families, food stamp benefits, Medicaid and more. Some migrant workers in more southern counties have even had the benefit of Land of Lincoln legal services, pro bono (free) to represent them if they get crossways with the law.
All this has an indirect impact on local economies.
An influx of migrant workers will of course displace jobs that could theoretically go to the locals; because employment in an already-rural area is low, unemployed people go to get public assistance; because public assistance is overwhelmed, the taxpayers are made to struggle even more, which impacts the middle class and drives them to look for their own ways to “get big or get out” (become one of those who, as a business, takes government support/subsidies, or stop working altogether and go on public aid); which puts the expense even further on the taxpayers either way, and drives more “government programs” to deal with the situation.
Purchased motel; problems with Haitians
In the case of Lawrence County, the situation didn’t start out to be as dire as has been previously seen in White and Gallatin counties.
JMR Farms was able to make a purchase of a fairly decent “dorm” location (the old Mr. K’s Motel on the east side of Lawrenceville), which, reports indicate, was converted to house large numbers of migrant workers. The facility has stayed clean and unobtrusive to the public as to its nature.
The workers, however, became another story.
All at about the same time, in July and August, some incidents began occurring and the finger was pointed at the “migrant workers.”
Reports coming in to Disclosure August 4 indicated that whole families of Haitian “migrant workers” (which, in broken English, they identified themselves to be) were attending yard sales in town and, while “one young woman would come up and stand in your view and try to barter for lower prices,” almost “making a scene,” others in the group would take off with various items from other parts of the yard sale.
The reports indicated that the Haitians would be “very distracting” for a period of time, then when they left, items would be found missing.
One report even described a car they were driving: a gold Nissan Altima, 1990s-style body, with a fender in a different gold color and a Florida license plate.
It’s unclear whether or not any of this was reported to authorities.
TB risk unfolds
What was reported to authorities was a tuberculosis risk as created by roughly the same bunch of people.
In July, it came to the attention of Lawrence County Health Department officials that one of the migrant workers (reported to Disclosure to have been of Mexican origin, not Haitian) had had to take his 12-year-old child to a local emergency room, where it was determined the child was suffering from the effects of a tuberculosis (bacterial) infection. She was transferred to a major hospital in Indiana, where meningitis reportedly set in.
This set off a flurry of activity, and the Lawrence County Health Department became extensively involved. In order to determine whether TB was brought in with the migrants, a series of screenings were set up, most of these going on in the parking lot of the converted motel.
Health department officials (Administrator Phyllis Wells, with the assistance of Julie Smith) responded to FOIAs submitted by Disclosure and revealed that between July 31 and August 20, “field visits” by HD employees “to motels” (Wells and Smith said it wasn’t just limited to the Mr. K’s location; the Gaslight Motel also houses a number of migrant workers) were made.
The costs of tests, analysis of TB workups and cost of chest x-rays and radiology fees, as of September 4 when the data was compiled for the FOIA, was approximately $7,000.
IDPH says it’s the fed’s job
This, Wells cautioned, was subject to change when hospital costs, which is where the radiology fees originated, were assessed as to the analysis end of it.
She noted in her FOIA response that the investigation is ongoing.
“We do not have any final results,” she stated. “We may learn that more people need testing so the results may change as we are following CDC and IDPH (Illinois Department of Public Health) guidelines.”
When Disclosure contacted IDPH, it was learned that, as Wells stated when asked directly, it’s not up to the locals to ensure that the local migrant workers are disease-free; it’s actually up to the federal agencies that allow the programs put in place to bring them here.
However, if there is a disease brought with them, it falls upon the local entities (county/state) to handle it; and that includes the taxpayer paying for it.
IDPH stated that oftentimes, the federal authorities find the migrant workers have skipped the “checkup” part of their entry into the country, since there’s such a massive influx of both the legal workers applying for the jobs, as well as illegals simply skipping the whole process and coming right on in.
IDPH said there’s no “single, sure-fire way” to make sure the public is protected from diseases that run rampant in third-world places like Mexico but due to diligence on the part of public health authorities, have been largely eradicated in this country.
“It’s a combined effort,” the IDPH source, who wished to speak without being identified, told Disclosure. “Steps have to be taken before the point of entry and during the point of entry, so that when the migrant workers come to their destination, they are approved for work just like any American worker.”
Disease risk
The problem comes in that they oftentimes aren’t, and that leads to horrific situations like the 12-year-old with meningitis, the risk of TB being transmitted to those in the community who aren’t among the migrant workers, and worse, strange diseases like amoebic parasites that are more commonplace in Central American countries, but unseen in this country until vast numbers of south-of-the-border immigrants began swarming the country a little more than 10 years ago.
While many migrant workers handle food ready for human consumption after some preparation (potatoes, pumpkins) or shielded in some way (corn on the cob with husks on, melons with rind in place), other vegetables like tomatoes or peppers are often consumed raw, after just washing with tap water.
Most of the time, migrant workers handle produce with gloves. But TB is airborne via coughs and sneezes, and carriers can be completely unaware they have it yet can pass it on to others either directly, or by surface contact if the contact is quick.
Community not exactly welcoming
Few view the presence of migrant workers in Lawrence County with any kind of welcome.
One past attempt reported to Disclosure of JMR Farms trying to purchase other property in Lawrenceville—an old church behind the hospital on Lexington Street—to convert to migrant worker housing was shot down not long ago by the city council, responding to concerns locals had about it.
It remains unclear whether the migrant workers will move on after the season’s over, or will remain in the area on their work visas.