Migrant workers in crisis in the wake of California's wildfires

The Sonoma County Press-Democrat reports here under the headline "With no safety net, Sonoma County farmworkers struggle through pandemic and aftermath of wildfires."  Martin Espinoza writes of Lidia Chavez:  

Like so many undocumented immigrants, her ability to work is the essential yardstick by which Chavez measures her worth, her existence.

Today, however, she represents a crisis, as one of thousands of Sonoma County’s undocumented farmworkers struggling to pay rent and to stay healthy due to crushing blows from the lingering coronavirus pandemic and recent wildfires that decimated the annual wine grape harvest.

For the past month, Chavez only has been working a fraction of the 60 to 70 hours a week she’s accustomed to toiling during the busiest time of year for area vineyard workers, picking tons of grapes from August through October. Since wildfire smoke curtailed the harvest, she can no longer depend on her livelihood.

“There is no work,“ she said. ”I feel very anxious, like I’m not serving any purpose.“

She’s turned to house cleaning, logging 6 or 7 hours a day in between idle time worrying and longing to work amid the rows of grapes. She’s begged her boss, a local vineyard manager she holds in high regard, to put a shovel in her hand but his answer is always the same: sorry but no.

* * *

To be sure, public health emergency restrictions to stop the spread of the virus have taken a tremendous toll across the county, leaving many residents to rely on unemployment benefits and various forms of government assistance. But undocumented immigrants don’t have that safety net. They are ineligible for food stamps, Medicaid, state jobless pay, Social Security and health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

Chavez lives in Cloverdale, population 8,618, in the far northern part of Sonoma County.  

An August New York Times story about the impact of the pandemic, fires, and smoke on California farmworkers is here.  Somini Sengupta reports, dateline Stockton, California. An excerpt follows: 

Still, hundreds of thousands of men and women like Ms. Flores continue to pluck, weed, and pack produce for the nation here, as temperatures soar into the triple digits for days at a time and the air turns to a soup of dust and smoke, stirred with pollution from truck tailpipes and chemicals sprayed on the fields, not to mention pollution from the old oil wells that dot parts of the valley.