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odinsblog · 11 months
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Around 772,000 Florida workers, students, and community members are undocumented. And Governor Ron DeSantis wants to make it a felony for anyone to have them in their home or even give them a ride.
Senate Bill 1718, part of Desantis’s broad repressive legislative agenda this year, targets not just undocumented people but also anyone associated with them. The bill, which passed the Republican-controlled state legislature, criminalizes anyone who transports an undocumented person “into or within this state.” In other words, anyone—co-worker, friend, neighbor, classmate—giving a simple ride to someone they know or care about who is undocumented would be guilty of a third-degree felony.
The bill also criminalizes anyone who “conceals, harbors, or shields” (or “attempts” to do so) an undocumented person in “any place within this state.” Nearly 4 percent of Floridians are undocumented. The bill text, reading like an edict issued in Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Shadow Children series, foments fear about these hundreds of thousands of people. It isn’t hard to imagine law enforcement agencies conflating a house party or simple afternoon cup of tea with a secret migrant-harboring operation.
The bill also has a crackdown on healthcare, saying that hospitals must report the patient's immigration status if they are using Medicare.
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The Canadian and Jamaican governments are investigating allegations that an Ontario farm sent a group of Jamaican migrant workers home after they held a one-day strike to protest what they described as substandard living conditions.
Pearnel Charles Jr., Jamaica's minister of labour, says he met four of the five workers in question after a local newspaper reported they'd been expelled from Canada as "payback" for their work stoppage, and for blowing the whistle about their treatment to the media. 
"They expressed to me that they were disappointed with being returned early, which I think is normal and understandable. And they had some questions as to exactly what the reasons were," Charles Jr. told As It Happens guest host Katie Simpson.
Full article
Tagging: @politicsofcanada
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When watching the World Cup in Qatar remember this:
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reasonsforhope · 8 months
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"California will begin paying for free legal help with immigration for undocumented farmworkers who are involved in state investigations of wage theft or other labor violations, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced this week.
The $4.5 million pilot program will provide qualifying farmworkers with referrals for legal help with their immigration status. 
Roughly half of California’s farmworker population is believed to be undocumented. Fear of deportation and difficulties finding jobs can discourage workers from filing labor complaints or serving as witnesses in cases alleging unsafe work temperatures, wage theft, or employer retaliation for unionizing, officials said...
Respecting immigrant rights
Farmworkers in labor investigations who qualify for the new state program will receive a direct referral to legal services organizations that already offer immigration services, such as the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County or the United Farm Workers Foundation, which spoke in support of the program. 
The free legal services workers could receive include case review, legal advice and representation by an attorney, according to Newsom’s office...
Deferred deportation
State officials said the pilot program aligns with a new Biden administration policy that makes it easier for undocumented workers who are victims of labor rights violations to request deferred action from deportation. Because the federal Department of Homeland Security can’t respond to all immigration violations, it exercises “prosecutorial discretion” to decide who to try to deport.
State officials said they won’t ask for workers’ immigration status, but noncitizens granted this deferred action may be eligible for work authorization.
This year, California labor department officials began supporting undocumented workers’ requests for prosecutorial discretion or deferred action from federal immigration officials, including when employers threaten workers with immigration enforcement to prevent workers from cooperating with state investigators. 
“The Department of Industrial Relations’ Labor Commissioner’s Office … was the first state agency to request deferred action from DHS for employees in an active investigation, and that request was successful,” Hickey said. “This is an important process for undocumented workers to be aware of.”"
-via CalMatters, July 21, 2023
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Feb 2021
In 2019 it found that Qatar’s intense summer heat is likely to be a significant factor in many worker deaths. The Guardian’s findings were supported by research commissioned by the UN’s International Labour Organization which revealed that for at least four months of the year workers faced significant heat stress when working outside.
Qatar continues to “drag its feet on this critical and urgent issue in apparent disregard for workers’ lives”, said Hiba Zayadin, Gulf researcher for Human Rights Watch. “We have called on Qatar to amend its law on autopsies to require forensic investigations into all sudden or unexplained deaths, and pass legislation to require that all death certificates include reference to a medically meaningful cause of death,” she said.
those stadiums were built in blood
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Last year, during the hottest summer on record, Angel and hundreds of other workers on Dearnsdale fruit farm in Staffordshire were told to pick and sort about 100-150kg of strawberries every day inside polytunnels designed to trap heat. It was so hot that at least one worker fainted, she said. The strawberries they picked ended up on the shelves of some of the UK’s largest supermarkets, including Tesco, Co-op and Lidl.
An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and VICE World News has uncovered widespread mistreatment of migrants working at more than 20 UK farms, nurseries and packhouses in 2022. Workers reported a litany of problems, from not going to the toilet for fear of not hitting targets, to being made to work in gale-force winds. Some said they would be shouted at or punished for having their mobile in their pocket or talking to work colleagues while on the field. Others said they were threatened by recruiters with being deported or blacklisted.
Many were left in debt and destitution, and some left the UK being owed money by their employers. One worker even had to pull out his own tooth because he could not find appropriate medical care. Our findings expose a poorly enforced government visa scheme that is flagrantly breached by farms and recruiters, and which leaves people vulnerable to exploitation.
At Dearnsdale, those who made mistakes or failed to hit targets were routinely sanctioned. The most common punishment was to have their shift cut short – every day several workers would be sent back to their caravans after only a few hours’ work. That meant that on a day when a worker was hoping to earn money for eight hours of work, they would be paid for only three. The practice is common on farms using the visa scheme.
For workers like Angel, who took on debt to pay for visas and flights to come to the UK, having their earnings cut was devastating. Even after picking fruit and vegetables for five months, she still has not been able to pay off her £1,250 loan.
[...]
Human rights experts and lawyers say that the design of the UK seasonal worker visa puts workers at an increased risk of exploitation. Because these visas tie migrants to their sponsor, a recruiter, workers are then unable to seek work with anyone else, even if they have problems with their employer or their recruiter stops offering them work.
Workers are not only dependent on their recruiter and the farm employing them for work, but also for their housing, transportation and even information about their employment rights. Workers who are this dependent on their employer can find it harder to leave exploitative situations.
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iww-gnv · 8 months
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Every summer, people flock to Maryland to eat blue crabs. Named for their brilliant sapphire-colored claws, blue crab is one of the most iconic species in the Chesapeake Bay. The scientific name for blue crabs, Callinectes sapidus, means “beautiful savory swimmer.” In restaurants and at home, diners pile steamed and seasoned blue crabs in the middle of a table covered in paper. Then, using small mallets, knives, bare hands and fingers, they break open the hard shells and extract the juicy meat from inside. It is a messy experience, especially with Old Bay seasoning and beer known locally as Natty Bohs, one that is quintessentially Maryland. Though many people know firsthand how difficult it is to pick and clean crab meat, they often don’t realize how crab is processed when it is sold in stores already picked and cleaned. Most people also may not know that crab picking is a livelihood for many, mainly poor, women. For generations, African American women from Maryland’s rural, maritime communities labored for crab houses on the Eastern Shore. Today, fewer than 10 crab houses are left on the Shore. The workforce consists of mainly female migrant workers from Mexico who do the grueling job of picking crab for eight to nine hours a day, from late spring to early fall. They make on average of US$2.50 to $4.00 for every pound of crabmeat they pick. That pay is roughly one-tenth to one-twelfth of the wholesale price of one pound – or about a half of a kilogram – of the seafood they pick, which is $35 to $44. In comparison, the Maryland minimum wage is $13.25 an hour, while the federal minimum wage is $7.25.
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ferrarer17 · 1 year
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tearsofrefugees · 1 month
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odinsblog · 11 months
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Different red state, same old Republican bullshit.
Republicans and Ron DeSantis are on a mission to turn Florida into a shithole state with an oceanfront view.
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Jamaican migrant farm workers in Niagara Region wrote an open letter to Jamaica's Ministry of Labour requesting more support in the face of what they call "systematic slavery," days before a migrant worker died in Norfolk County.
Garvin Yapp, 57, of St. James, Jamaica, was killed on Sunday in an accident with a tobacco harvester at Berlo's Best Farm in Norfolk County, two hours southwest of Toronto.
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Two other Jamaican workers and a Mexican worker have died this week as well, according to Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC).
'Feels like we are in prison'
"As it currently stands, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) is systematic slavery," the workers wrote in their open letter.
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Workers wrote they were scared of sharing their grievances with Samuda directly for fear of being kicked out of the SAWP. They also said that workers from Mexico and the Philippines share the same grievances.
Workers described housing conditions as so poor that rats eat their food. They live in crowded rooms with zero privacy with cameras, and lack dryers to dry their clothes after it rains, they wrote.
"It feels like we are in prison," the letter reads.
On working conditions, workers wrote they're "treated like mules" and punished for not being quick enough. They said they're exposed to dangerous pesticides without adequate protection, and their bosses are verbally abusive.
"They physically intimidate us, destroy our personal property, and threaten to send us home," the letter reads.
"This is very much the reality of the migrant farm worker program in this country," MWAC's executive director Syed Hussan said. "Working in farms in Canada is a human rights disaster."
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mckitterick · 8 months
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Racism at heart of failure to tackle deadly heatwaves
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Jeff Goodell, author of The Heat Will Kill You First, reports that migrant workers bearing the brunt of record-breaking temperatures on farms, construction sites, and delivery are not guaranteed lifesaving measures like water and shade breaks because they are considered expendable.
"To be blunt about it," he says, "the people most impacted by heat are not the kind of voting demographic that gets any politician nervous. They’re unsheltered people, poor people, agricultural and construction workers. They’re not seen as humans who need to be protected. Racism is absolutely central to the government’s failure to protect vulnerable people."
more in the Guardian story: X
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rapeculturerealities · 5 months
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Revealed: allegations of abuse and captivity without pay at UAE’s lucrative recruitment agencies | Women's rights and gender equality | The Guardian
Abuse within the UAE’s kafala system, which ties low-paid migrant workers’ legal status to their employers, has been well-documented. Domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to abuse within their employers’ home, and those who do leave without their employers’ permission face criminal charges for “absconding”, punishable by fines, arrest, detention and deportation. Less well known are the conditions within the recruitment centres where women are kept, sometimes for months, until an employer is found.
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