With Texas suffering from its worst drought in decades, migrant
workers are struggling to earn a living. Thousands of migrant workers
have lost their jobs because there are fewer crops to pick. The
drought is expected to cost the state $2.4 billion in lost crop and
livestock production, and more than $6 billion in related losses to
retailers and distributors.
No one knows how many hired or migrant farm workers there are in
Texas. The Tomas Rivera Center of Austin, Texas estimates that there
are as many as 200,000 migrants working or living in the state. Many
of the workers live in South Texas during the winter months, and then
follow the harvest to the Texas Panhandle.
Many of the migrant workers depend upon verbal "contracts" with an
employer who rehires them year after year. Without personal
relationships, it can be difficult to find work. If workers cannot
find work in Texas, they usually continue north.
East Texas counties have seen their Hispanic population double
since 1980. But the Hispanics are still only five percent of the
population in the 38-county East Texas area, versus 28 percent
statewide.
Many employers are turning to Hispanics to fill jobs in poultry
processing and dairies, a switch from hiring Blacks, who are 19
percent of the population, to fill such jobs.
Pilgrim's Pride, a major poultry processor in East Texas, has
encountered local opposition to expansion plans in part because of
its reliance on low-wage, Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants. When
Pilgrim attempted to move to Sulphur Springs, Texas, residents
complained that Pilgrim's Pride would turn their town into another
Mount Pleasant, the home of Pilgrim's Pride's biggest plant--with
4,000 employees, half of them Hispanic.
Pilgrim, the nation's fifth largest poultry processor, has 11,000
employees in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona and Mexico.
A new poultry processing plant would, according to critics,
attract low-income workers and their children who would live in
rental housing, contribute little tax revenue to the county and crowd
the schools.
The Hispanic population in Mount Pleasant and surrounding Titus
County has increased almost 500 percent - from 608 to 3,637 - since
1980, according to census data, straining local schools. Pilgrim
counters that "We intend to help save rural America in the US and
Mexico. God wants poor people to have jobs."
Diane Jennings, "Surviving on Hope: Despite drought, migrant
workers scrabble out a living," Dallas Morning News, June 30, 1996.
Diane Jennings, Hispanic Influx brings changes to East Texas," Dallas
Morning News, June 23, 1996. Michelle Levander, "Caught between
Countries: Children of migrant workers shuttle between US, Mexico,"
Dallas Morning News, June 9, 1996.
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