"Sometimes the choice is more complicated - the U.S. isn't as safe for them as it was, but its school districts still offer things like mental health care and physical therapy that migrant workers fear they won't get in their home countries. Balanced against that is the possibility of one or both parents being deported, leaving the children with no legal guardians in this country."
"Statistically, it's difficult to even know the number of farmworkers employed today, let alone how much the fear of deportation is affecting employment in the industry. In late October, Ag Alert, a publication of the California Farm Bureau, broke the news that both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Labor canceled annual farmworker labor surveys. That means that, for the first time since the late 1980s, there is no federal documentation of farmworker hours, wages or demographics. Historically, about 40% of farmworkers in the last decade were undocumented."
"The road into Firebaugh rolls up and over a wash, next to the spot where Andrew Firebaugh founded a ferry across the San Joaquin River that became an important stop on stagecoach routes. The river has always been what kept this town alive, first as an obstacle around which they built a settlement and later as the lifeblood of its farms and fields."
Immigration uncertainty and deportation fears force migrant farmworker families to weigh access to U.S. services against the risk of parental removal. School districts provide mental health care and physical therapy that many fear will be unavailable in their home countries. Federal data on farmworkers disappeared after the USDA and Department of Labor canceled annual labor surveys, ending documentation of hours, wages and demographics for the first time since the late 1980s. Historically about 40% of farmworkers were undocumented. Pew Research Center found more immigrants left or were deported than arrived, potentially reducing the immigrant population. Some workers plan to return to earn money for their children.
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