Speech #910109312

Fla.. PostTimes has recently completed an eightpart series entitled "Migration to Misery." The author of the series. Kent Pollock. has written what I consider to be one of the most vivid descriptions of the realities of the migrant and seasonal farmworker problem that I have read. In the first of the series. Pollock discusses the people that he met in his field investigations. and describes the selfperpetuating cycle of migrancy in which they are caught. Migrant farmworkers. whose strong backs. calloused hands. and seasoned muscles are their livelihood. live in an American atrocity in terms of their housing. food. and the entire atmosphere in which they exist. Pollock finds that "migrants are the unwanted people. except at harvest time. Even then they are not accepted as members of communities." Pollock notes that migrants have few friends and many enemies. and that they are often exploited by many. including their own people. He gives an example of a man that sold migrants life insurance on a weekly basis. and when the migrant died and his family sought relief. they found the insurance was for an automobile. The man did not own an automobile. Pollock notes thatSome farmers have automatic systems to water their beans. but their workers live in housing without showers and inside toilet facilities. Some have insulated cow barns while their workers must live in tin shacks and cram old newspapers into cracks to keep the wind out. The second of the series of articles discusses in greater detail the perpetual cycle that traps the migrant and concludes: Sickness. disability. bad fortunetragedy sometimes provide the only exit from the migrant stream. Pollock attempts to understand what makes a migrant continue to travel from State to State in search of backbreaking work by analyzing his educational background. Migrant children at an early age work alongside their parents. and are rarely spared from working in the fields long enough for school attendance. Child labor laws are not enforced. and few compulsory attendance laws are applied to migrant children. It is not unusual that we find that the average migrant and his family had attained an education equivalent of only 8.6 years. and that over 17 percent of all migrants are functionally illiterate. This perilously low level of education perpetuates an inability to perform other than unskilled tasks. More importantly. it perpetuates a lack of confidence to try other work. and locks the migrant into the cycle of poverty. In the third of the series of articles. entitled "Squeezing Out a Living." the author discusses the pay that migrants receive. the extent to which laws such as the Crew Leader Registration Act are not enforced. and in describing the nature of the work. notes: The migrant might work like a machine and live like an animal. but he is a human being. In the fourth and fifth columns. the housing situation is discussed: Everyone in a position to better migrant housing is aware of the problem. But some simply wont publicly admit that there is a housing shortage. There is no quick solution. Meanwhile. the migrants suffer. They are serving life sentences in the prison of their environment. The plight of the elderly migrant is discussed in the sixth article. In the seventh of the series of articles. the author discusses an extensive interview that he had with Elijah "Bubba" Boone. who at one time was a migrant. but because of education and drive has been able to settle out of the stream. In this interviewmuch as he did when he testified before the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor. Boone discusses the reasons that migrants are unable to leave the stream and the need for change which he feels can be accomplished only through power: Money makes power. education makes power. legislation makes powerwe have none of these. All you can do is hope for change and this I do every day. In the final article. Kent Pollock talks about efforts to improve migrant conditions in Palm Beach County. Fla. He notes that although that effort has been expansive. it has not been enough.