Yuma, the Farmland

      Over the last few days I have been in Yuma, I have come down here quite a few times over the last two years and have found it to be a rather unique place. I am from Michigan so being somewhere that boarders another country is not all that foreign to me, but I am used to the country on the other side being Canada, not Mexico.
       The first few times I visited Yuma I noticed that I was part of the minority, the Mexican food was amazing, and that there were a lot of farms. Eventually I started to pay more attention to the vast farmlands and the white buses that seemed to be abundant. The white buses all have two "port-a-potties" attached to them; these buses are parked on the edges of the fields. It took me a few times to really notice all of the workers from said buses lining the fields, walking the rows and picking the crop.
      Now, every morning when I drive by the fields I watch as the workers walk the fields and wonder where they are from-Mexico? I have been told that the workers are from Mexico and that they line up each morning on the boarder to be picked up, work all day (7am-4/5/6pm), then go back home. I tried to look up this information, but really had no luck. It is plausible here in Yuma where the border is a short ride away. I also found this article which talks about working on the lettuce farms in Yuma.

     Gabriel Thompson is interviewed about his experiences working in the Yuma lettuce fields, along with working in an Alabama chicken processing plant. Throughout his interview, Thompson explains that a typical day  on a lettuce field in Yuma beings around 7:30 in the morning and ends around six at night, and "during the course of a day [he] could be asked to cut about 3,000 heads [of lettuce]." He also expressed how he did not ever see another white person in the fields, which I found to be interesting and not surprising. It has been argued many a time that illegal immigrants take jobs (like that on a lettuce field), these jobs are argued to be ones that Americans would ordinarily take (if the immigrants were not taking them, of course). To me this argument seems quite illogical and really inaccurate, especially after reading of Thompson's experiences on the fields. If Americans truly were willing to take these strenuous jobs, they would, but in reality "there [are not] very many Americans who are going to want to do these kinds of jobs." In conclusion, I tip my hat (or imaginary hat really) to the workers and their hard work, fully aware that I would probably not last one day in their shoes.