Anyone with any amount of sense immediately found Rollins’ suggestion a little confusing, even if they didn’t completely know why. For me, I immediately considered things like, “Most people who receive Medicaid live in poverty; how many of them can afford to relocate to where crops are available to harvest and then follow them? Where will they get money to move there, money for deposits, etc.?” Beyond that, since the administration’s point of view has been, “All these freeloaders can get jobs and have health insurance that way,” I really had to wonder - what health insurance are all these migrants getting?
So, like any person in the digital age, I did some web searching about health insurance and migrant farm work, because her stated goal is 100% “American” employment, and apparently Americans who aren’t working now are just lazy layabouts who will work or else, because everyone knows we don’t need poor people stealing our tax dollars. We have billionaires for that.
Here is some data I found at ruralhealthinfo.org:
Migratory and seasonal agricultural workers (MSAWs) face unique health challenges which include: hazardous work environment, poverty and insufficient support systems (in part because we don’t let non-citizens have access to benefits), inadequate and unsafe housing, limited availability of clean water and septic, inadequate healthcare access, continuity of care issues, lack of insurance, and lack of transportation. There were two other issues listed, but they were about language barriers (which could still be a problem), and fear due to lack of immigration status (which shouldn’t be, since she said only good, red-blooded Americans will now do migrant work).
The whole lack of health insurance thing didn’t surprise me. Harvest for some crops is a few weeks here, a few weeks there. You’re lucky if you get federal minimum wage, and they sure aren’t interested in investing in health insurance for someone who is there until the harvest is over and then won’t be seen until the next one.
The lifestyle required of migrant work exacerbates health conditions, with the population experiencing serious health issues including diabetes, malnutrition, depression, substance use, infectious diseases, pesticide poisoning, and injuries from physical stress and machinery. It sounds like a really rough existence (which I also knew). They are at a much higher risk of heat related illness, UTIs from lack of bathroom availability at the worksite, and infectious diseases like tuberculosis and Covid from crowded living conditions.
Honestly? We should be ashamed that anyone is forced to live that lifestyle in this country, full stop. That said, either Secretary Rollins is an absolute idiot that does not know the standard of living and lifestyle most migrant farm workers are forced to endure (which you would hope the secretary of agriculture might have awareness of) or she actively wishes an even more difficult life on people currently accessing Medicaid than the current poverty they already live in, because they dare to access the social safety net. Neither one speaks very highly of her.
We live in a country that gives subsidies to billionaires while cutting benefits to its most vulnerable citizens and terrorizing people working in fields in horrible conditions because they might be here without a work visa doing a difficult and dangerous job. We should be punishing the people taking advantage of them, not the workers who risk everything for an income.
A translation of Secretary Rollins: “We’re going to kick out all the brown people so we can punish the poor American people (multiple colors there - maybe she doesn’t realize that and like so many white people, assumes only brown people use the safety net) for using tax dollars that we would rather invest in arresting and detaining more brown people.”
Once again with this administration: the cruelty is the point.
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