Esperanza Sánchez spends eight hours a day, from Sunday to Monday, bent over, pruning and harvesting leafy green vegetables and packaging them in boxes. She only takes a break if dizziness causes her to lose balance, which she attributes to hypertension, a condition she learned about last year when a severe headache prompted her to visit the doctor for the first time in a long time. Sitting in the kitchen of her mobile home after a day of work, she said she feels tired and wishes she could stop working, but doesn’t know how to do it. At 72 years old, Sánchez is the oldest person in her work group in the Coachella Valley in California. She is one of the tens of thousands of undocumented agricultural workers who have been working in the United States for decades without formal residency documents, doing the hard and exhausting work that drives much of the agricultural industry, but without access to social security, Medicare, or other retirement benefits that would allow them to stop working. Some have children or grandchildren who help support them in old age. In California, Oregon, and Washington, agricultural workers without legal permanent status have the right to receive healthcare and overtime pay. But most states do not offer them any benefits. For decades, retirement was not a problem: agricultural workers would cross the border between Mexico and the United States illegally for the harvest and then return to their place of residence until it was time to start the next season. But this type of circular migration became increasingly risky and costly when, starting in the 1990s, successive US presidents erected barriers and deployed technology and agents along the border to curb illegal crossings. At that time, many farmworkers crossed the border and stayed permanently, aging with each harvest. Throughout the past year, many workers in California, Oregon, Georgia, and Florida said in interviews that they had no retirement plan or idea of how they would live if they stopped working. In almost all cases, they had paid and filed their income tax returns. Some expressed concern about the need to pay for healthcare as they age; decades of exposure to pesticides, extreme heat, and exhausting physical work had taken a toll on some workers. The Department of Agriculture estimates that over 40 percent of agricultural workers in the country do not have legal immigration status at this time. Agricultural producers claim that they systematically hire people without legal work permits because they cannot find willing Americans to do such demanding work. But low wages, which industry leaders say are necessary to maintain the competitiveness of US-grown products, are another factor. In 2020, agricultural workers earned an average of $14.62 per hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and some even less. The government has tried solutions such as the H-2A visa program to bring seasonal agricultural workers to the country. But these workers, who usually return year after year, also do not have access to retirement benefits. In some cases, undocumented farmworkers and their employers have paid Social Security and other federal taxes for decades. According to the census, the average age of foreign-born farmworkers is 41, a figure that has increased in recent years with the decline of new young immigrants willing to work in the fields. Half of the agricultural workers interviewed for the National Agricultural Workers Survey, published last year by the Department of Labor, had been working in the fields for between 11 and 30 years, and almost one in five had been doing so for over three decades. They earned an average of $20,000 per year. Sánchez, who crossed the border from Mexico illegally 27 years ago, earns $620 for a five-day work week. After deducting Social Security and other benefits she is not entitled to, she takes home $566.99. She often shows up for the sixth shift on Sundays. But now she wonders how long she can continue working. Her right eye has started to tremble and hurt. She said that as long as she can hold on, she will keep working. In another part of the Coachella Valley, Margarito Rojas has been working for decades, since he started crossing the border between Mexico and the United States to help cultivate dates, peppers, and lemons that grow just a half-hour drive from the glamorous desert oasis of Palm Springs. Rojas said he used to work for six months a year and then return to his country. But his years of seasonal migration ended when the US government erected barriers along the California border; hiring smugglers to help him cross every year was dangerous and expensive. In 2006, he decided to come and stay in order to send money and support the seven children he left behind in his country. Working under a blinding sun, one day he met Teresa Flores, another Mexican farmworker, with whom he has shared an orderly, albeit run-down, one-room trailer for years. In California, thanks to a new law, the couple is entitled to healthcare despite their illegal status. They were also entitled to a one-time payment of $600 from the federal government for working during the pandemic. But they never received the payment: on a visit to town, they passed by a nonprofit organization, Todec, where a banner announced that checks were being distributed. Flores, who is now 66, cannot read, and Rojas struggles with reading as well. They walked past. They go to bed at 8 and wake up before sunrise. After having coffee and a concha, a Mexican sweet bread shaped like a seashell, they head to the pepper fields, where they earn $15.50 per hour. Rojas commented with a toothless smile that they were older, but still working. And he said the supervisors knew them. Flores, in a low voice, as if revealing a mischievous secret, said that the younger ones didn’t always show up or spent their time on their phones. They had one concern: after California passed a law last year requiring agricultural workers to be paid overtime, their bosses started restricting the couple’s hours, Rojas said. He commented that it was better for them when they could work more than 40 hours a week. When Juana Castro arrived in rural Georgia in the 1990s, there were few migrants and plenty of work: in the cabbage, cucumber, and melon fields, as well as in pecan and peanut plantations. The Mexican community in the southeast corner of Georgia grew rapidly, and Castro, now in her old age, was in high demand. She also provided healing services to migrant workers who lacked health insurance: massages and blessings. Castro, now 80 years old, said she works in the fields from Monday to Friday and dedicates her weekends to healing. On a recent afternoon, men and women arrived, many of them coming directly from the fields, and waited their turn on Castro’s porch. She applied lotion and oils to twisted ankles, aching backs, and dislocated knees, and then gently pressed on the painful points. She prayed for people worried about marital conflicts, high-risk pregnancies, or wayward teenage daughters. An hour later, with a satisfied smile, she said she had earned $80 for her services. The extra income was very useful after Castro slipped off a ladder while hanging Christmas lights outside her house last year. Medical care, including X-rays and a cast for a wrist fracture, cost her around $3,000. Months earlier, she had fallen seriously ill: fever, chills, vomiting, and diarrhea. A doctor diagnosed her with a kidney infection, prescribed medication, and within a few days, she bounced back…
