Death of Migrant Farm Worker - Change Immigration' and Trade Law

Petition to Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Peter Welch

The Death of Josй Obeth Santiz Cruz Cries Out for Change in U.S. Immigration and Trade Policies.

We the undersigned concerned about the health and welfare of farm workers in Vermont and aware that many are immigrants to the U.S., we are saddened to hear of the death of Josй Obeth Santiz Cruz a dairy farm worker in Franklin County. We send our sincere condolences to his family and friends.

The accidental death of Mr. Santiz Cruz, who was 20 years old, and the subsequent trauma experienced by his extended family, many of whom also work on Vermont farms, highlights a shameful fact about U.S. immigration law. Without these workers many of Vermonts farms would have to shut down for want of enough hands to do the essential work. In the words of a staff member of the Vermont Farm Bureau, without migrant farm workers we could kiss Vermonts landscape goodbye, as those farms became development tracts.

Yet U.S. immigration law treats these men and women, and their children, as criminals. While they put food on our table, keep agriculture and farming communities viable, and help preserve the unique landscape of Vermont, they live in the shadows of our society. If they work on dairy farms there is no government program that would allow them to work here at all. No matter how much they contribute to our society and economy, they constantly face arrest and deportation and remain isolated on the farm where they work.

We are further saddened by the fact that here in Vermont and throughout the United States migrant farm workers cannot even gather as a community and mourn family members deaths without fearing deportation.

Although Mr. Santiz Cruzs family members might like to gather together as a family and community here in Vermont to mourn this tragic death, they expressed fears that doing so would mean risking deportationthey are not free to do so. They have expressed concern that his body is respectfully and swiftly returned to his family in Chiapas, Mexico.

We are outraged that anyone should be treated this way in a nation of immigrants. We decry the fact that in the state of Vermont and throughout the United States the people who milk so many of our cows and pick so many of our vegetables, who literally put food on our tables, live and die invisibly without the dignity and respect that all human beings deserve.

We call on Vermonts congressional delegation and President Obama to work for changes in U.S. immigration law which acknowledge the dignity and worth of every person, not just as workers but as human beings, and recognizes the contributions immigrants make to our nation.

We also call for a thorough review of U.S. trade policy which too often results in the impoverishment of rural people and forces them away from their communities and loved ones to seek work in factories and on farms throughout the U.S.