Farmworkers bring a feast to a nation they may be forced to leave | Opinion

Maria Garza of Raleigh knows the hardship of being an immigrant farmworker, but she has also harvested the fruit of the American dream.

After beginning work as a 10-year-old picking cotton in the blistering heat of south Texas, Garza, 64, is now chief executive officer of the East Coast Migrant Head Start Project based in Raleigh.

The program provides federally supported childcare for the children of farmworkers up to age 6. To be eligible, a family of four cannot earn more than $30,000 annually. The program also creates rural jobs and ensures a workforce for farmers.

“We are a beacon of light in very rural America,” Garza said.

These days, amid President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, Garza defends the value of farmworkers to the economy and stands by her faith that the people of the United States will see that value, too.

“I love America. I think and know that we are better,” she said.

It’s a message that resonates strongly in this season as the nation enjoys feasts of turkey, sweet potatoes and other meats, vegetables and fruits. “Anything served on Thanksgiving has been touched by a farmworker,” she said.

Garza’s program is vulnerable on two fronts. First, many farmworkers – about half of them undocumented – could face deportation. Second, the Head Start program for immigrants could lose funding under draconian measures expected from a new Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Garza knows that deportation threats are real. As a child, her mother was swept up in a Depression-era deportation drive that saw hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent – many of them U.S. born – deported to Mexico to support the now familiar and equally false claim that they were taking jobs from “real Americans.”

“When I hear people tell you what they’re going to do, I know it’s real,” she said.

Garza was born in Mexico, but her mother was a U.S. citizen, which might have made Garza a U.S. citizen born abroad. But that claim went unrecognized when she and her family returned to the U.S. to pick tobacco, cotton, fruits and vegetables. She went through the process of becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen, effectively becoming a citizen twice.

Now, farmworker families are bracing for deportation and possible separation as they hear rumors about how the incoming administration will act.

“There’s a lot of bad information and that leads to tremendous fear,” Garza said. Some farmworkers who expect that they may be abruptly removed from the U.S. are rushing to give friends and relatives power of attorney to care for their children.

A push to deport farmworkers would go against what drove many to vote for Trump – concern about high grocery prices. Pushing out low-paid farmworkers, many of whom have developed valuable farming skills, will reduce crop yields, increase labor costs and raise the price of groceries.

Trump’s pledge to drive out undocumented immigrants who he alleges are a danger and a burden for the nation doesn’t fit with what Garza sees in rural North Carolina and in other states served by her program. What she sees are hardworking immigrants helping the economy in areas where a lack of opportunity drives local young people to leave.

This is a vexing time for farmworkers. Families could face separation and loss of income. Rural communities are likely be hurt by the presidential candidate they overwhelmingly supported.

But Garza is putting her faith in resilience. She came back to the nation that deported her mother. She worked the fields, gained citizenship, earned a GED, then a bachelor’s degree and a master’s. Amid the fears, she also sees hope in the young people with whom she works and the people they serve.

There will be hard times ahead, she said, but “Latinos, immigrants and the people of rural America, we have tremendous grit and perseverance and the future is bright. I refuse to see it any other way.”