Hit Hard by Hurricane Helene, Georgia’s Immigrant Farmworkers Struggle to Get Aid

As Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida, residents are bracing for their second catastrophic storm in less than two weeks. Since September 26, when Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 4, communities across the Southeast have been grappling with the aftermath of that storm’s destruction. Among those hardest hit — and most overlooked — are farmworkers in southern Georgia.

The Georgia Department of Agriculture estimates that the storm has caused billions of dollars in damage to the state’s agriculture industry, affecting more than 100 farmers. Absent from many of these headlines, however, is Helene’s impact on the predominantly Latinx farmworker community, many of whom are undocumented or migrant workers with temporary visas. Ever since Hurricane Helene tore across Georgia, destroying pecan farms, poultry houses, cotton fields, and more, thousands of farmworkers have nowhere to turn as they grapple with decimated homes and lost livelihoods.

“I’ve been seeing pretty much every struggle that farmworkers experience in their daily lives, but magnified times 100,” said Alma Salazar Young, the UFW Foundation’s Georgia state director. “Everybody in South Georgia is struggling, especially in those really hard hit areas, but farmworkers are still an afterthought. Nobody has thought about going the extra mile to take care of them.”

Georgia is one of the top states employing migrant farmworkers through the federal H-2A program, which offers temporary visas for agricultural work. Before Hurricane Helene, living conditions for farmworkers in Georgia were already notoriously poor. The H-2A program requires employers to provide housing for their migrant workers that complies with the standards for temporary labor camps set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. These standards, a legal expert noted, are already the bare minimum and have not been updated in decades. Still, they are often not met by employers; federal investigations have cited Georgia farms for mold and water damage, dangerous exposed wiring, and more.

Undocumented workers, meanwhile, rent their homes, usually single-wide trailers. Desperate for affordable housing, these workers also tend to be pushed into substandard conditions, including mobile homes riddled with holes in the siding and drywall, roof and faucet leaks, lightbulbs dangling from wires, pest infestations and front doors lacking locks, secured only by a rope. And that was before the storm. When Hurricane Helene hit, these shoddy structures stood little chance against 90 mile per hour gusts.

The roughly 35,000 H-2A workers in Georgia, as well as an untold number of undocumented immigrants, are not eligible for disaster relief from FEMA.

“Conditions for the workers were already terrible to begin with, but now, many of them don’t realize that they’re homeless,” said Young, who has been traveling to the various farmworker communities in South Georgia that have been impacted by Hurricane Helene. She has seen trailers with their roofs blown off, littered with debris and the floors caving in, while families still attempt to seek shelter in whatever remains.

The roughly 35,000 H-2A workers in Georgia, as well as an untold number of undocumented immigrants, are not eligible for disaster relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), nor do they qualify for food stamps or unemployment assistance.

The financial burden is exacerbated by the fact that many farmworkers already lived in extreme poverty before the hurricane. Minimum wage for H-2A workers in the state is $14.68, while undocumented workers often earn less — usually 10 to 12 dollars an hour, according to Young. If workers are paid by the piece — a basket of blueberries or a busload of watermelons, for instance — that hourly rate can be even more meager. Now, with fields and farms destroyed, it’s unclear when, if at all, workers will be able to return to earning a living.

Many agents that companies hire to recruit H-2A workers charge those workers illegal fees which the workers often pay by taking out crushing loans. If they’re unable to work, these workers will be unable to pay back that debt, on top of struggling to support themselves and their families. Visas for H-2A workers are also tied to one specific employer; if that employer no longer has work for them, they must return to their home countries, primarily Mexico, or risk being in violation of the law.

In the absence of government aid, local churches and groups like the Red Cross or Salvation Army are the only sources of relief for many of Georgia’s farmworkers. But these resources don’t come without barriers.

“Even before the storm hit, we were getting information on the storm, on shelters, and I would have to translate it before I could text it to our farmworker leaders, because it was not being provided in Spanish,” said Young. Sometimes information would be posted to Facebook groups that most farmworkers might not be familiar with, “so even if they do find out, they don’t find out about any type of assistance until it’s gone.”

I’m just so disheartened by how little everybody in general cares about farmworkers, because during the pandemic, they risked their lives to bring food to everybody.

Additionally, police officers and National Guard members have often been present at aid distribution sites, which dissuades undocumented workers from accessing those resources. In May, aiming to crack down on undocumented immigrants, Georgia passed House Bill 1105, which requires local law enforcement agencies to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if an arrested individual cannot provide documentation. Even though the Red Cross and other groups don’t ask for a name or ID, Young said that farmworkers are still afraid to show up: “They’re not going to risk getting deported over trying to get some food.”

In addition to food and water, farmworkers’ most requested items right now are diapers and baby formula. “They’re just trying to make it day by day,” Young said. “They haven’t had a chance to think about the future, while they’re trying to just figure out what they’re going to eat today.”

Immigrants form the bedrock of the country’s food supply, making up an estimated 73 percent of agriculture workers in the United States. Young joined the UFW Foundation after working as the director of Valdosta State University’s College Assistance Migrant Program, during which she witnessed firsthand what farmworkers sacrificed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to put food on tables around the country.

“I’m just so disheartened by how little everybody in general cares about farmworkers, because during the pandemic, they risked their lives to bring food to everybody. Not just in several states, but all over the country,” Young said. “Now that they’re in need, we forgot about them.”