Making migrant workers feel at home in Wood County

By DAVID DUPONT

BG Independent News

The workers who come into Wood County to pick crops may be here for just a few weeks, but La Conexion de Wood County wants them to know they have a friend while they are here.

On Sunday La Conexion and the First Presbyterian Church of Bowling Green welcomed migrant workers at an event held at a camp in Bloomdale.

They didn’t go empty handed. The Brown Bag Food Project came with boxes of food to tide them over until their first paycheck. The Wood County District Public Library staff was on hand with books and activities for the children. The Cocoon Shelter was there to offer its support.

The event, now in its third year, was initiated by the church as a way of working with La Conexion, which works out of the downtown Bowling Green Church.

Beatriz Maya, the managing director of La Conexicion, said that about 200 workers “at most” are now in Wood County.

The numbers of migrants arriving has been declining as agriculture has mechanized and the mix of crops grown locally has changed.

Now the demand is for people to pick cucumbers. Those jobs last for about six weeks, then the workers will be off to Michigan to pick apples or to Georgia or Florida to harvest other crops.

As the number of crops in a region diminishes it becomes less worthwhile for workers to travel at their own expense to a place to harvest.

Though their numbers are down they still have needs, she said, and La Conexion wants to help meet them either directly or by connecting them with other service groups.

Maya said she has been trying to help facilitate the workers signing up for Medicaid. Though a federal program, the health program for children and the poor is administered by states, so whenever the workers move to new fields, they must give up Medicaid coverage in one state and sign up again in a new state. That means more detailed paperwork, submitting documents and waiting periods, that in Wood County can take longer than a family’s residency in the county.

Last summer, she said, a child was hurt while playing, and had to go to the emergency room, but the family had no medical coverage.

“We’re working with Jobs and Family Services to see if we can change the scheduling a little bit,” Maya said.

That’s the kind of service La Conexion provides to Latinos in the county throughout the year. She said the forms needed to register for school are daunting enough for native English speakers, but for non-English speakers they can appear nearly impossible. La Conexion has worked with the school district to translate many of those forms.

Maya said the group also advocates for services such as the hospital to provide translation services as required. Those services are provided online using Skype. She said the Bowling Green police employ such an online service.

The migrants in Bloomdale, she said, are mostly from Guatamala, in the country on H2A visas.

On Sunday those from the church, La Conexion and other groups shared pizza and stories, and offers of help for whatever problems they may face.

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This welcoming is appropriate for a place where so many residents of Mexican heritage first arrived as migrant workers. Most of them, Maya said, actually were already residents of the United States, and living in Texas.

Over the years some stayed. Maybe they didn’t have enough money to move on. Or maybe they found permanent work here.

The flow of Mexicans and others into the United States increases and contracts based on economics.

During the recession, Maya said, fewer Mexicans came because there was less work. Now that’s picked up with the economy.

Maya said the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement had a deleterious effect on Mexican farmers whose small and heirloom varieties of corn could not compete with the flood of imports from big agriculture in the United States. “It really devastated the agricultural community in Mexico,” she said.

These economic peasants, Maya said, come north to take low-skilled jobs that “domestic workers are not interested in anymore.”

La Conexion was founded in 2013 to give help provide resources to those in the Latino Community and give the community a voice. For more information contact: laconexionwc@gail.com or 419-308-2328.