I have asked some of these doctors. among them members of the original team of doctors who in 1967 and 1968 made an inquiry into the extent of hunger and malnutrition in this country. to share their observations with the subcommittee. It is a public scandal to read from their preliminary reports thatThe conditions they observed in Texas and Florida are worse than those that existed In Mississippi in 1967. That migrant camps could only be described as "slave quarters". That the conditions viewed by one doctor were worse than in South America. That an examination of over 1.000 migrants in Texas revealed that rickets. scurvey. pellagra. and diarrhea were rampant. Polio. for which we have a vaccine. Is epidemic. and. That health services are almost nonexistenta boy going blind was given a urine test and sent home. I believe that America has its own version of the "tiger cages" of South Vietnam in the migrant labor camps of Texas and Florida and in the stream States where migrants travel to harvest our abundance of food. No other conclusion can be drawn from these reports. I further believe that it is time for this subcommittee to go further into the causes of this harvest of shame. And we intend to do so. We will not only look at the deplorable state of health and welfare of the migrant farmworker and his family. but we will investigate who is consciously determined to maintain this condition. If there are the powerless there are also the powerful. We will find out who is responsible for these conditions.
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migrants migrant