Recorded on April 26, 2023. Child labor violations are on the rise, while some states are trying to loosen child labor laws. Host Roy Wood Jr. sits down with investigative reporter for the New York Times, Hannah Dreier, and the Chief Programs Officer for Justice for Migrant Women, Norma Flores López, to discuss why the number of unaccompanied minors entering the United States has climbed since the pandemic, the types of unsafe working conditions these kids face, how the Department of Health and Human Services has failed to place them in safe environments, and what impact this has on children’s education, health, and overall sense of worth. Norma also recounts her time working in the fields as early as 9 years old.Original air date: May 9, 2023Beyond the Scenes is a podcast from The Daily Show. Listen to new episodes every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts, or watch at YouTube.com/TheDaily Show
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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hey, what's up working behind the scenes, the package that goes deeper into topics in discussions that we had.
The daily show I'm here
Roy, would junior. This is what this package is like. I have explained this every week because we always got new people. You know chicken in on this package. This package
Ok, so the daily show was waffles right. This pat cast is the whipped cream
and the strawberries and the butter.
In the syrup and the bacon and all that extra strip you pile on to it, to make it really delicious and the truth is it's not even breakfast is technically dessert. Why is there ice cream on my breakfast plate? Okay, I feel like I'm going a little too deep right there today. We're talking
about the issue of child labour, and
the rise of child labour violations and how some states are actually trying to loosen those laws. Do not a club.
Some say legislatures looking to villa needed in the labour market, are considering child workers as a solution lawmakers in iowa minnesota introduced bills last month to loosen labour regulations around age and workplace safety. Minnesota's bill would allow sixteen and seventeen year olds to work construction, jobs and the iowa measure aims to allow fourteen and fifteen year olds to work certain positions in the mining meet packing and logging industries. The ilo.
proposal would also she'll businesses from civil liability at the youth workers, get sick,
injured or killed on the job.
Everybody at fourteen year olds work in mining logging in meat packing. Those are like the three most dangerous jobs, what they they didn't, even
openings in the ukrainian army. I'm sure this will surprise you, but the law makers sponsoring these bills call themselves pro life.
if they are if women are forced to have babies who's going to pack, this god damn meet the go a little bit deeper into this topic. We are joined by pulitzer prize winning investigative reporter at the new york times. She broke the story about migrant child labor across the united states. Hannah dreier work.
Behind the scenes. How do you do happy to be here
Well, I'm happy that you're here to talk about this thrilling and light topic, I think, will be through just fine. Also join us is the chief programmes officer for justice for migrant women, the domestic
but the child labour coalition in a former child farm worker. Nor
The floor is lopez, welcome to the show normal high.
thank you for having me happy to be the sprinkles on your breakfast waffle think see that's what I'm talking about.
What we need positivity does this is this: is a serious topic Hannah I'd like to start with you, though, you spoke with what
Is it about a hundred child migrant workers across twenty states? How did they end up?
The situations that you saw them in her thoughts were basically thing: an unprecedented rise in children crossing the border without their parents. Right now, we ve seen almost three hundred thousand of these kids come across just in the past year, two years,
and what a child crosses the border alone. What happens if they go to a shelter run by the government?
Nan workers in that shelter try to figure out what? Where can this kid go and they,
eventually end up, usually with a cousin and uncle, maybe somebody from their village their release to these adults, who are supposed to take care of them and send them to school,
and what I found is that in the majority of cases, these kids are actually being put to work so they're working overnight chef sat slaughterhouse as their working in these really industrial settings and in our factories, making cheerio
and we are seeing this in a way that we really haven't seen. You know- maybe it's for a hundred years. This is something that was going on in the nineteen thirties and and was banned by a child labour laws and is not supposed to be happening. What were some of the first hand, things that you saw you know with the children and what they were dealing with in those actual working condition, so we know how they got here. We
while they kind of get dispersed out into these places. What is some of the work that you've seen them get into? It's really dangerous work. Like you say, I talked to more than one hundred kids, who are currently under age and currently working in jobs that they should never be at like the most dangerous kind of work. I talked to a boy in Florida who came over when he was twelve a year or two ago, and he was released to somebody. You know who had been a neighbor and the very next day he was put to work and roofing.
I hung out with him on the top of a three story: building he was putting up the roof and he was sort of teetering on the edge he'd already fallen twice doing this work. He told me that he really wanted to go to school, to learn to read, but there was just no way cause he had to pay rent. He had to pay off a debt to this man who had taken a man. I talked to a fourteen year old, who got his our main goals working overnight at a poultry plant, and this is a kid who came when he was fourteen. He got this job and one night you know his arm got caught in the machinery and he just got pulled through the factory, and he told me that he was in hospital for three days and nobody came to visit him cause they're, just very very on their own.
Norma workers through your journey in becoming a farm workers as a child like what how many of those dots did
I like how many, how many of those eyes and tees of yours did Hannah crossing her own journey. What was your journey into that path? A little different? Well, I think what we are
you talk about. Is this term micron without folk sat Hannah had spoken to were children and that across international borders I grew up in south taxes in the Rio Grande valley. This is somewhere where I was born in the united states. My parents were also westward, but we were born into a migrant family and that we would still travel across the. U s following the harvests. In order for my parents to be able to work
That was something that I get my entire life and ignore any different. It was in something I was introduced to later in my life, but rather part
if our everyday life as having a pickup oliver belongings back into the back of a pickup truck driver
two days to go up to the northern states like Michigan
colorado, iowa, indiana and work in agriculture out there. So, while there sat distinction about how
We I started and that's the same way my parents are working in the fields of their arson themes of what sort of runs across an
you'll notice is that with migrant families of migrant children, you dont have the support network you're living in rural communities, where your isolated weathers language barriers and the one thing that sort of ties us all together is the desperate poverty that
Just ass to be out there in the fields I was working alongside my parents, something that was perfectly legal for me to deal in the union.
states where I was born,
which may ask
I started working, probably my earliest memories, around nine years old. I say that because
what you'll notice is that a lot of people that start working in agriculture they start with play when you're working in peace rate, you're encouraged to have as many hands as possible to be able to
buckets and then my dad, who was that the primary name on on our under on, I guess that the pay track he would then
he paid for all of our work and how much we all harvested. So it was easy to sort of sneak in there. It started off with who would fill up the bucket the fastest. My parents didn't have
somebody to watch us around their work schedule
those war areas with that they could be able to afford to. They took us with them. What they thought was the safest option
and then, once I turned twelve years old, I started working full time pulled. Him was eight to five monday to friday,
me where's ten twelve hour days, seven days a week. Some has three four,
a week street without any days are working and one of the most dangerous and issues which is agriculture, doing back reagan, work and having to keep up with you the rest of the adults,
in your family, then what did? What did play time? Look like for you as a child, just if there was an off day
does a child who was working forty hours. Excuse me
the hour weeks, smell alike.
Like a saturday
like seventy eighty hour work weeks at the age of twelve having to do that type of work. I mean like with any kid you're going to give them chores or tasks and you're going to make the best of it. So we would race each other. We would play pranks on each,
we were seeing signs. We would have long conversations and pretend time
It was I, while having to harvest fruits and vegetables and under a hot sign on it, which is part of our way of life, and you just made the best and created the best memories. You could
what you're about given. How is our government failed to protect children from this type of,
view slashes call it what it is.
Oh I'm not even sure, if I, like the word child labour as much as abuse
what are some of the ways hannah that our government has failed. You know when we talk about the department of health and human services, specifically what they haven't haven't done,
yeah. I mean it's really sort of cascading failure, like you, don't get this kind of shadow labour force without a lot of system breakdowns and with health and human services. This is the agency that is responsible for migrant children. These kids they're here what sort of a conflict
legal saddens they're, not here illegally, but they also don't have a visa and
though in this sort of grey area, health and human services is supposed to step up and make sure that their not trafficked or exploited. But what happens? Is they get released from me? Shelters?
and then there is no follow up. So it's not like the foster care system where you are placed in a home, but a social workers gonna see that home and get a check on you. These kids get released and then for the majority of them. Nobody ever comes to see how they're doing nobody, even really
calls to see how they're doing and that something that might now change there's a lot of pressure to at least give these kids a couple months of social workers a couple months of maybe legal services. By for now,
Oh there's just sort of no one looking out for them once they're out in this country living with a lot of cases.
The stranger wise age is properly investigating, what's happening with these children and to understand what went wrong. We have to go back to twenty twenty wine when a record number of these children started crossing the border, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of kids in the last two years, and so many kids were crossing that they ran out of room at the health and human services shelters.
and the concerted backing up in customs and border protection jails. So you might remember there was wall to wall coverage of these kids, sleeping on the floor, sleeping under those
we re actually get right.
Ray? It was like the beginning of the Biden, administration and all of a sudden. We saw kids in cages again, and so there was huge pressure to get these kids released sponsors more quickly and Javier VA. Sarah, the secretary of H, H, us started to
link staff members. This is no way to run an assembly line if Henry ford had run his factories like this, he would never have been rich and famous. He was buried
hitting them every day to get these kids released, more quickly,
and what you saw was a lot of these kids got released two people who never should have been able to take them in because they turned right around and put them to work. So the bureaucracy was
Let's just get this delicious, make it somebody! So it's! So it's a nimby issues. I don't want these kids here, so let me hot potato them off to somebody else, and then it looks like I've done my job. There was huge pressure to address this really visible crisis at the border, with the kids sleeping on the floor and this other crisis of child labor is basically invisible. There's never going to be. You know, news footage of the kids working the overnight shift in the factory. All of that is happening behind closed doors.
So, then. If there's nobody knew and follow. Ups then normal. Then these demands to be laws. Does the kind
it because laws, the ad worked out, I've ever walk out. Through my childhood experience, I worked. I've worked Birmingham alabama the subway on twenty of st self pickwick subway. It's gone now think it's a nightclub, but you were only
supposed to work twenty hours a week, you couldn't work past nine p m on a school night. You can work best, ten p m and we gain blabber bub black, even
I was sneaking to in forty two hours when my father, my father, passed my senior year of high school to help my mom keep the house after he died because we lost his half of the income. I was working forty hours a week in highschool, so
as a child who wanted to break the rules, I could break the rules and nobody was unfortunate,
for someone wanted to force children into working even more in your same hannah? There's nobody shaken up on him within what what laws are in place. Norma that should have even
keeping this from happening to begin with and the fields. We know that
The laws are only as good as they are enforced, and so, if they were in force in an urban subway, even less laws are enforced out in the fields, and
That's part of the issue of wiser, so much exploitation that happens for migrant workers as a whole.
especially women, especially children and young girls, that are vulnerable to the dangerous industry. But then there's also the workplace, harassment, there's the pesticides that are used, there's all kinds of issues that happen and for folks that are undocumented and makes them even more vulnerable. I didn't have that particular issue, as I mentioned, but I wasn't
in fact it from a lot of the other issues, and so when you have laws that are already in place that are inadequate and those aren't being actually followed through where people like you could make the choice to just work more hours it. It just shows you how they're failing to protect, even those that there are. Sometimes you run into bad players
you wanna put profits over those. Let livelihood over the well being of the people that their employees and there's really nothing to be able to protect them, and even then these particular laws that we're talking about that are supposed to protect workers under the fair lightly labour standards, as those are the ones that were left already back in the ninety thirties, which we know where a country was in how it felt about people that look
Like me, people that were brown people that were black day in america has a history of racism norma.
absolutely I'm saying that at source
many other politicians back in those days that were very blatant about it and said this is why we're setting up the system as it is and they left out five workers from a lot of these?
sections from the right to union eyes, from overtime pay and for the protection of child labour laws. So
We already have inadequate laws that were set up in nineteen thirty that have not been updated and do not keep up with any standards. We have an industry that has been used in warm were coming
Joseph heavier machinery and much more dangerous for children to be at the deadly as industry for children to wear
and then you have nobody keeping an eye on this and lead and places like the department of labour, making the cuts to the budget for those that are supposed to be cut
The anyone the enforcement happened, which it growers its no
Where did they know that the chance of them getting caught are little to none a lot of the time
those funds are being collected altogether. So you could see it
a failure for even kids, like me,
who are born in the? U s, working alongside her parents, we're still not getting protected and don't really have a lot of recourse break. If I can add something, norma
absolutely I mean you are working in a subway, that's a job where children should be allowed to work at a certain point, maybe not the.
Our is that you were, I was working in in the morning on Friday night in the bar district,
the next two. That's not allowed, but a lot of these kids that I was talking to want to work at places like restaurants or grocery stores. Like they told me, they wished they could get a job doing fast food, but they can't unless they have a work permit, and so that goes back to the safety of services for these kids. If these kids had a lawyers, they can easily apply for a work permit and at least not work. You know the graveyard shift at the chicken plan by it because they don't
I have that piece of paper they sort of get relegated to the most dangerous jobs that nobody will take, as I also want to point out, though, that he taught Hannah his armor and what you pointed out to goi and what I had also as the driver for me to work
those hours that we knew where beyond what was good for us was because we needed money, and that's really would strive in these children, both those at across international borders. For myself,
It's the need for money that were willing to put ourselves in known dangers, and there are,
laws or safeguards that are protecting us from that or any other solutions? Addressing the very drivers of these issues?
but with the federal labour law protections. How do we get? How do we close those loopholes because
I am assuming that there is no health care
near this. I'm assuming there's no overtime
doing seventy hours, you're, not
in time and a half for picking asparagus. I would assume that right now, okay, so then,
how do we close those loopholes? Those are there.
Possibility of our elected officials and visit the destruction there are steps taken. Take there are laws it. They can change, they can update them. We have the data to show that these are dangerous jobs for children that can cost and even their lives and affecting their school, affecting their health and nobody's
when anything, because it hasn't been that they have an issue. Thank sir Hannah's story. We ve been able to start talking about child labour in america, but for the long
time it's been are dirty little secret were putting millions of dollars to address as around the world, but we are not doing anything to protect the children that are here in the: u s in our backyards. After the break, I wanna get into it with you
It is about the actual world of the work and how it affects
the children on the day to day when they're in those environment, and not just that
simple harm that they face
the job, but what other dangers might even be? You know around
on them, while they're doing this type of work, this is beyond the scenes will be right, back pay their check out this news from boost info
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back to beyond the scenes, we're talking child labour in the united states and why it so rapid
I it's legal and what things we could do to stop this, not before we get into the actual.
Emotional all fall out and the ripple effects of this in the psyche of the children and do this work
it has brought a question. You know we talk a little bit in the previous break, about loopholes that
invest in some of these laws that dont protect farmers
girls or children
here. The water has a loose administration, lonely themes, gap the ship respectfully, I have the same question. So
we ran a story about migrant child labor in this country. On february, twenty fifth and february twenty seventh, the Biden administration, announced a huge raft of reforms that they said were going to target this problem. They said they'd never heard about this before they were completely shocked, and now they were going to step up,
and start trying to help these kids, and so I was wondering what how could that really be. I mean if I found these kids working in every state in this country divide and measures and didn't know a thing and reporting this out. It turn
how they were being warned about this. Almost since day, one there were
and those that went up there were reports about clusters of children working overnight chefs in poultry plants
otto factories that made it all the way to the task of you know. Susan rice Biden's top immigration advisor
and what they say is: oh yeah. There is evidence here and there, but we didn't put the pieces together on to me. It's it's been really surprising that the administrations line is while we just never knew would have been
better just go year. We need them. Kids. Capitalism, like I, would respect that.
or they go home no doubt
I mean now. You're getting into its of these states are doing very eyes their whistleblowers. Who say we tried to warn the bite administration. They ve shown me they're memos. They showed me they're emails and they're, saying clearly we're really worried. This is really serious and
nothing happened until you know two months ago, Norma.
Can't tell me a little bit about some of the other children that you met on these on these jobs that will work working as a child and their journey from them,
till now. What were some of the psychological effects, then
verses more chronically from people doing that work because,
you're not getting a good education
you dealing with a sense of a lack of self worth when you get older from that, having a type of
education also was there any type of abuse happening in the actual active working said the house's views, but
In addition to that, talk to me a little bit about the can
she's in the psyche of child of child workers and also how those things kind of a guess, infect ones, much regulation into adulthood. Why are the prime example with my parents as an action both in my mom and my god, where? U s boring? I bet my father how to get out of school at six grade. My mother and the second grade, and because our family whistling such desperate poverty, the ages,
than the rest of their lives working in the fields in rural communities, just sort of fine under the radar. Without anybody so much a question why they weren't in school. We knew the
answer the same way that by the administration knows the answer: it's because there are families that are living in that level of poverty, and so that was were condemned, my parents to have to work for the rest of their lives in the fields because they didn't know,
They get their education, they didn't have the english language skills, they didn't have anybody looking after them and their families needed to eat, and that's the great irony in this country is at the very people that are tasked with preparing and planting and growing and harvesting. Our fruits and vegetables are can't many times afford those same very fruits, vegetables that they pick for everybody else, and so I saw that through my parents, my father made us aware of the sacrifices they had to make because he didn't have and education and made it a point to make sure that me and my sister's, even though we spend our years working in the feed
Thus from when we were twelve years old on the wane till we graduated from high school pointed out that this was gonna, be our future even at sixteen years old.
I already had moments, run ins with crew leaders, which are infamous for being very tough, very hard on folks and and driving the profits for the farmers. I had a crew leader, then, on a daily basis. Would curse me out would tell me
I was worth less will tell me that if I couldn't even do farm work, what was good for- and I was gonna amount to nothing
this was on a daily basis to a sixteen year old child, but I knew that my parents need it that job, because at least in this job they got paid a little bit better than the other.
Islands, at least in this job they providers
housing that was in chicken coop that had the bathrooms closer by versus the previous place. We work that
that had the shower in the basement and outhouses that we had to use even the wording, the two thousands, and so I knew it was a better place for my family, and that was something that I should have swallowed my
I just took the beatings unabated a on a daily basis that same crew leader
and the exact same day would run into his white colleagues and the white teenage
is that where working from the local community and would be all smiles
shines and super helpful, but with me, which is completely turn around and two totally different person. So these are the type serves,
The ways that I would see in front of me about how it was such a different reality for me versus other white kids. I grew up,
on their dad's farmer and their neighbours? Firemen got to do it as a part time jobs.
Whereas a vocational training or sort of you note do justice to our delivery, extra costs
my was first survival, and so I had to deal with a lot of that and luckily I did
how to deal with the sexual assault or harassment that many women do. But I did see it around me where women are asked to do sexual favours to even just get their paycheck.
were young. Girls are asked to do that, so that their families can get paid the money that their owed and airy
in a whole lot of enforcement of out of it.
Formation, we're late.
These women and girls thing that's just a way of business appearing in the? U s where they have to do that in order to be able to get paid, and so
You see a lot of these abuses happening the workplace that are well known, well documented and nobody moving for policies and for those kids that are trying to make their way out and climb out it's really hard in school when you're having to go to to three different schools,
every year, a first day over and over again, where you are not able to participate in london
Recreational activities lot of fun time. You don't get a summer spring break those are times that are spent working in the fields. I never learn how to swim. I never learn how to play an instrument. I just had to work my butt off every single day in the in school to make sure I didn't end up in having to perpetuate
the cycle, like many of my other friends, family members at dead, who dropped out and having to be pulled constantly, always being behind in school. You could see why they drop out at four times the national average
farmer, could you, and so many of my friends and family members ended up back in the fields. That's where their children are.
Going up in the fields, and we just continue to see the cycle of poverty and exploitation, just continuing generation after generation.
Oh, we know all of that to be true
I are states trying to loosen
child labour laws like why
I do more of that sounds great more of
at please, but also
we don't know, drag queens at school and don't learn about black history cause. I could poison your mind and get your ass out there in that field.
Wires. Some of the states Hannah why
they trying to loosen the child labour laws
I mean it's unbelievable sower, seeing
out of nowhere a raft of states pushing back child labour laws and their making legal for kids to do things like work overnight.
Fourteen work with an assembly line. Fifteen years old and part of this goes back to
leave or short edge. I mean this is what's pushing the migrant
old crisis as well. It sort
two things at once: more children are coming over without their parents, but also these companies suddenly really need somebody working. These shifts that nobody wants is a people that is
a labour shortage or wage shortage. Yeah good question. I think what we can
If we say if there is a lot of jobs are now that pay badly have bad working conditions. Ah, you know their overnight serfs, usually and people who want to take those dogs they found. They can do other jobs that pay more and so employ.
Is our scrambling and many of them have said to me. You know we went to that staffing agency that brought in all those children because we couldn't find anybody to do this shift and states are sort of china codified us right now and to say well, yeah. Why not let the fourteen year old come and do that overnight saved. You know legally,
It's really shocking: how do they descend in your in your views, however,
politicians defending it is this
to have a policy that politicians are trying to publicize because it feels at virals policies that too
Aslan under her breath, because I see
t. It's got to stop at your look at what the teaching
children in schools, but would child labour is a year by the way you can convert to an amount of factories, you're gonna go to school in the morning. So why are they is vocal about that
as they are all these other lightning rod issues I mean the way,
kington posts had some great reporting recently about where these child labour law world are coming from and they traced a lot of them to this. One billion air backed, grew out of florida, which is where a lot of things to come from these days. That's going around different states in pushing this legislation and make of that. What you
but this is what happens when you live in a country that puts profits over people you're, seeing this sort of roll back, not just in the child labour laws, but pretty much in any workplace protection safeguards. You have people that are pushing back on any sort of risk
actions because they blame businesses not being able to do the work that they need to do because them said protections and restrictions
but what we see every day is that they are absolutely necessary to keep people safe. What you're not hearing from advocate, says you know all children should be banned from every play,
is what we are saying, as children need to be in places that are safe at safe hours, doing tasks that are safe, that are not gonna, cost them their lives, but instead what you have is people turning a blind eye, while these children are sacrificing their health or education
well being their childhoods they're, not having any of that and at the end of the day, what at the root of it is the people needing to put people over profits? And that's not what were seen right now
Our people buying into the spin on this like we're talking about this billionaire, you know,
we'll see Pagel whatever type group it is down there. There's some people
put in a spin on this and and oh well, you're fourteen, but does
then a printed ship and then you'll get a real job when you're, eighteen and you're learning a tray, you're learning responsibilities and values and apprenticeship does that fly
oh, is that bullshit propaganda. You know that's exactly where a lot of these sponsors have told me when I've asked them why they have. You know for children in their home, and all of them are working for
I'm not going to school. They come with that seem sort of rhetoric of legal rights. Blame display sponsorship. First, before we even get to spin
so walk us through that. So when a child
crosses the border alone. They go to the health and human services, shelter system and then health and human services releases them to somebody who has promised to be irresponsible at all.
And often what am finding as this is gonna, be somebody who a child's as may be met on facebook. Maybe they sort of no them as a family friend somebody who has told,
the child haven come up here and live with me and your life,
gonna be great and you're gonna live the american dream, and so the tiles comes and they get released to this person.
And then they find out. Actually they have to work every day. Often the sponsor has already found them will place to work their sort of a broker they're, not gonna, go
Go to school? They're gonna be living the sort of adult life that they could never have imagined. What does a sponsor get out of this? The sponsors have been really surprised
lee willing to talk to me. I mean a lot of these. Kids are essentially in that bondage and their sponsors are, you know, in a very low
Golly daisy situation, so responses are taking a picture of the salary and sponsors are getting paid. They charge him
best on some of them have shown me list that they have captive the kids dat with you. No fifty percent interest depended sort of
The kids are in dire and they could never get out of. It is like a little would alone shark or some shit
I was living with the loan SARA Cu. Dita said your life was going to be better if you crossed the border and now you're here so you're screwed. So you can't snitch cause you're illegal and you need the money. So you have to keep working cause. You can't go
and also we also note the sponsor- is abusive, exact.
Then you don't speak the language and you know,
never gonna, learn it because you're not in school, so you're you're, just as well!
isolated place. Ok, thank you for the digression
Now the sponsors
spenders and say: oh
kid is learning a scale that will help him matriculate into the american workforce and what the sponsor say,
sort of sounds like this same idea of O. Kid needs to work. It's good for kids to work,
Their learning, how to be in a doll, their learning, valuable skills, lake, how to clean of veto meat processing plant.
you're sort of hearing at both ends now, for me, at least
talking to these sponsors and then sort of hearing out in these lakes, the level political debates. This idea like why not put kids to work,
for them to their must follow the money then, where, where does loosened,
These child labour laws benefit the republican law makers that are trying to get this this stuff, greenland was their pitch. Is it the pay?
from the companies that then support there.
india's or help find their re election campaigns like what is that
motivation,
for a law makers to allow children to be subjected to this type of shit. Legally, it goes back to their idea of deregulation.
and that's a very conservative value that we see especially Andy's agricultural communities, where they say
folks in d c, with their data and their phds? Don't know our way of life and can't tell us how to be able to raise our children and what they don't understand is that what's the ones that end up ood be a be left holding the bag are children that don't have any rights, and nobody.
to look after them. Even though I spent my life working in the fields that my parents bent their whole careers working in the fields, they never had
access. I will never have access to capital to land, to the actual opportunities
when they own my own farm. All I know is how to pick asparagus and how to pick onions and apples, and that's all I will ever do, because there is no climbing up the professional ladder that is just
smoke screen for in reality, what they just want is to be able to have a cheap labor force to be able to have cheap products that they can then have record breaking profits off of and it's built on, the backs of migrant workers, especially those at risk.
the children? What kind of country are we building when we need children to have to give up school? To be able to be out there working in those fields to feed
One families are, you know those healthy fruits and vegetables and end of
no thought that I'll leave, how many of those members of congress and those republicans have their actual
we are working at the same ours that I dead doing the same work that I did the answers, none of them and they their children will ever need to do. Any of that.
They're going to claim that their children know how the value of hard work and responsibility and go into adulthood without needing any of those steps, though that's a good enough pack for them, but not for us children that don't have
heather protections opportunities. We need to learn the value of hard work by breaking their backs, and sometimes even given up our lives.
have you read this article and in it
how's everything the norm already knew to be true that the binding administration was unaware was true,
and me what do you say? Two days later, they put out the statement that we're gonna get work on a figure out more work,
get to the bottom of this, which is basically but the statement said, was
rennie fall out with the companies. Did they
and I'm up the defense show up to the farm Hannah. Did they show up with the handcuffs you're, not like those mob movies, where they show up with the I've, got a I've got an arrest warrant for your whole family, and then they took everybody out the meat plant
just business as usual:
I mean what an image that did not happen, that the development of light
is looking into some of the companies that we named by it with these bigger brands
they have a lot of deniability. So, for example, we found kids who are making spicy hot shadows, and they told us there ones were burning. They were working these overnight chefs
with all this sort of spacey dust in the air than going a high school the next day and trying to sort of make it through their classes and then where he may overnight shift again and occasionally sleeping on the weekends.
and nobody is denying that that happened. But that was how
You got a manufacturer and she does the brand saying. Will we had no idea that this is who is made?
our product. For me, it is very easy to find this out. It was like waiting in the parking lot watching the sixteenth and no to saying that the people coming out looked late, fourteen and fifteen year olds, so the department of state
It is looking into this. There are active investigations and it sort of unclear how far up the chain it's gonna go by the Biden administration says they're, going to hold the brands to account, which would be a depart.
Or so then it sounds like. The brands are playing the same game that the government is playing and go. We know that there was a button down due to they just delivered
Spicy does powder, do not make the cheetos in my factory, I didn't know they was doing it. Oh hey! Stop doing that over there
and you say that these corporations should have been doing the due diligence from the job to make sure that they were partnering with production companies that were found,
the law I mean
I can't say: what's in people's heads,
I can tell you is everyone the politicians? The companies are shocked and appalled, and
for me. It was easy to find these kids and people, like my, have been sounding the alarm for years and years.
But the reality is that the systems are set up. This way, too, where people have deniability, you have contractors in sub contractors and you have crew leaders, indifferent
where's, whether it's in the fields or anywhere else and that's how they ve been getting around it, because then it becomes a finger pointing
game of the lie. To me. That presented me with with false documents, but nobody is ever held accountable is what the short answer as people keep going round and round circles, and that's why decades later used to have this?
his after the break amounts of about solutions to this issue, I feel like we ve had a
nice one time
press in one another, just kind of ping. Parliament ball a sadness around the room, but after the break
but such solutions- and I want to talk about-
what you ve been able to do. Just make sure you, mental health
well a normal you as well on the backside of you know of this one.
Being in that journey into you, investigate alleged
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welcome back to beyond the scenes were round and third and headed for home, we're talking
child labour, and while people want to keep Keith working in these factories and given abused in keeping them into what I consider to be a form of
Leave the last enslavement wishes call it what it is you you went to factory after
actually talking to child after child and here
mean trauma after trauma
How have you been able to get better mentally? On the other side,
of this, because the amount of bad you have to take it to create the article is probably what
quadruple tin toppled. That's not a word deca dodecahedron time
I'm trying to show my may have skills are failing.
what what are some of the things that you were able to do on the other side of the story to
That'll yourself,
I mean how is there even a way, yeah journalists to do sort of trauma reporting, I think, have lots of strategies and they sort of fall into two camps and some people get really into wellness and like exercise and
some people are just like at the bar, and I hear it can work if it drinking cited. Article is in fact no I mean this reporting was so intense, but it's nothing compared to what these kids are going through
and like normal talking about earlier, their kids. So a lot of the conversations I was having with them or about how much they missed their parents or how worried they were for their future
right, but they also were really into like their video games, are really into you know the girlfriend who they had or were trying to get, and they were often sort of silly or sort of just hanging out and and said that, for me, was comforting like it was really sir reassuring to see that these kids still could do things that were just sort of normal, silly kid stuff, even as they were in these really dark circumstances, and that sort of given me the you know, comfort and helped me keep going on this reporting. The other thing is, I think things really might change. I mean there have been, I think, a dozen congressional letters written about this stuff. Since the story ran there have been laws introduced to try to make child labor a criminal offense for the employers and there's been real change.
apartment of labour less at the health, inhuman services, but it sort of the rare investigation where it seems, like things actually might get better if the pressure is kept up normal. When you reflect on your childhood or their parts of it, that you still
work to reconcile, or is it just and understood thing they just had to be done for the sake of your family, and at least you all were together like with any other child. You think backing you treasure the staff that really matter, and I would
very fortunate to be able to be alongside my parents, my mom, my dad, and so I had their unconditional love and through great sacrifices that they made. They made sure that I was able to get the education they could add.
and my sister to too, and so I went on to finish school and be able to change the trajectory of
life and now my daughter won't have to work in the fields and now I have access to healthcare and being able to get it
our best and being able to through my education, unifying
and solace in amazing, authorise, like my favorite maya Angelo, who you know, talks about often about the sort of things ass, she witnessed and
Oh, that incur could either turn into a cancer or fuel your passion to being able to write the wrongs of the world, and so I took that
experiences and I've been now dedicating my career to being able to make a difference for migrant workers for children form.
women people from my community and making sure that people recognise eyther humanity. I think that's incredibly important for us to be able to see that
our people, as I mentioned you know I as a kid. I had the same sort of hopes and dreams
and enjoy that other children dead, we're just put in different circumstances and be making sure that were keeping up the pressure. That is the name of the game, is none of these people at him. Do the right thing
that's because so chose to us. I would have done it already and so
My job now is to make sure we keep up this pressure and every time that there is a sort of reports that come out that show
any one of these members of congress and our government officials about the realities that are happening out here in the fields that they are actually moved to doing something, and not just empty words until the next campaign.
And so that's what I've been doing out to sort of kept me going at last
way to being able to just spending more time with my family. It's me
so much to me to be unable to provide for my parents and know that
even though they high no retirement plan as a far marker, they had no health care that I can now provide for them as a professional to be unable to me. No help them meet their most basic needs when an emergency comes up, which is a lot to be said that a lot of other people who came up in the fields don't have, and they don't have the
mental health support that I did you know I was able to overcome a lot of the complex as you do get when you're being told, day after day that you're worth less that your less than that you don't deserve the same protections or opportunities that other children,
do in this country and when your constantly question about,
how american you are because of my last name, because I know how to speak. Spanish, because I have round skin and still constantly having to prove.
Just how american I am, even though I was born in this country. My parents have bore my grandparents or naturalised, and yet somehow and still not american enough
how can migrant children Hannah seek safe work environments? Now? What are the options now know? What are some of the things that they can do so I have talked to some children who were able to get a lawyer and apply
for a work permit and those kids are actually doing great. I mean I talk to one kid whose job now is to collect the shopping carts outside a supermarket
Do you know, that's not a great job that is much better than what he was doing and it pays him more and he's
going through school he's a straight. A student like his life is totally turned around that sort of
the rare situation where a child was able to get legal services. Most of the children are never going to get a work permit, and so there are always going to be in these terrible badly paying jobs. But these are
to have a time of energy like they're. Really pro active people who came all the way across several countries to come here in search of usually a better life,
so from what I've seen when these kids are able to sort of do those very first steps toward taking care of themselves and working an easier job? They really thrive. Okay, so the last question: what do you think
don t create a lasting change because, like you like, we were talking early Hannah is the
above held in human services, to make sure that, when these kids come over, that therein a deal
situation. Why are they
the mai: should the bullshit is it? I happened to him
so. This is one of the changes that divide administration is promising. This is part of that announcement, two days after our story ran about how everything's going to get better. Now the department of health and human services is saying that by twenty twenty four they're going to provide services to every kid who comes over and at some point after that
they're gonna provide legal service as to every kid and like normal was saying you know, people say
eggs in a moment, and then it sort of up to other people to keep the pressure on and see. If that really happens, but in
hurry. This is something that the administration is promising to do at some sort of undetermined point in the future and we'll see if it happens, while he's running for reelection. So hey, let's finish the job. The thing is that,
logan a measure and its double check normal. What do you propose? We could do to make sure that these laws are being properly enforced across these industries, because it seems like at the federal level there still a little bit of disorganization. You know to the people that are the parents of china,
workers. What options do they have if they are also migrant workers themselves? What things can they do to help themselves?
Is there a way to blow the whistle on your own factory there? Absolutely,
as but we need to make sure that there are the protections and place to keep. These was
applause from having all the blow back because often times they are the ones that feel all the burden and everybody else walks away unscathed. But what it comes down to is evening the playing field
for that. You need comprehensive immigration reform. You will hear me say two thousand times that is such a huge issue and being able to even out the playing field,
to make sure that vulnerable workers who know that they're not gonna, be separated from their families that they're not gonna, be ripped away from
each earning opportunities for Iraq, asking for employers to do the right thing and
until that. We also have to close the loopholes that we ve been talking about. It makes no sense.
continue to allow children at such young ages to work out in agriculture or in other types of jobs that are so dangerous to them, whether risk
keen so much just so that we could be able to have artificially cheap foods and vegetables and also makes no sense for us.
To feel like we're in more danger going into the workplace, then, let's say a police officer and that's what often happens with migrant women and there's pay
equity where people are not being value, especially those migrant women. There are places like the be heard act that that would benefit from
bill like that. That would make sure that women are having the safeguards in the protection that they need to feel safe, that work and we
We need to make sure that everybody is held accountable for the violations that they are propagating.
whether it's against women, whether it's against migrant workers, whether it's against children, because right now we do not have that accountability and that takes funding, and that takes commitment
and that takes really going beyond just the words but actually putting into action, because we have the proposal whereby
with the regulations and all kinds of things to make things better, it just takes political will and that's what seems to be lacking in washington d c right now. Well, I cannot think the two of you enough for getting on and talking about a very, very essential topic. Thank you all so much Hannah Norma. Thank you for going beyond the scenes with me and thank you both for being the sprinkles
top of my desert waffle. Thank you. Listen to the daily shall, beyond the scenes of apple podcasts, the iheart radio app or where
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you get a wheelchair, listen to it.
It's more shows from an early job. I guess universe by searching the daily show. Wherever you get your project watch the daily show we noted eleven den central globally, central and stream full episodes any time on their work. This is better.
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Transcript generated on 2023-11-14.