\n<\/p>\n
F<\/span>arm worker Owen Salmon has picked apples in upstate New York for almost a decade, some 1,500 miles (2,400km) from home. In the midst of harvest season this year, Hurricane Melissa, a record-breaking category 5 hurricane, made landfall in Jamaica.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was terrifying,\u201d said Salmon, whose wife and two children were at home near Black River, a town on the country\u2019s south-western coast. \u201cFor days, I couldn\u2019t hear from them. When I finally did, I heard my roof was completely gone. My wife and kids had to run for their lives, but thank God they\u2019re alive.\u201d<\/p>\n An estimated 90,000 households and 360,000 people have been affected by the damage wrought by Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica. Salmon is one of roughly 5,000 Jamaican workers who come to the US each year on an H-2A visa.<\/p>\n The H-2A guest worker visa program allows US farms and agricultural firms to hire foreign workers for temporary jobs. It plays a significant role in the US\u2019s agriculture industry, which remains reliant on overseas labor at crucial points on the calendar: last year, more than 380,000 workers were authorized for H-2A visas, about 15% of the US agricultural workforce.<\/p>\n \u201cOur boss, he would tell us he likes the H-2A program because you can be there this year and next year he doesn\u2019t have to bring us back,\u201d said Salmon, who works at Wafler Farms in Wolcott, New York. \u201cHe threatened us if we didn\u2019t work fast, and there was nobody to stop him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDozens of workers\u201d who \u201cdid nothing wrong\u201d have not been able to return from one year to the next, Salmon claimed. Wafler Farms denied this, claiming they have never not recalled workers but are \u201crequired to actively recruit US workers and are required to offer any positions to them before we hire a worker through the H-2A program\u201d.<\/p>\n Salmon is one of several New York farm workers represented by the United Farm Workers, which has launched a fundraiser to rebuild their homes, and those of other union workers hit by the hurricane.<\/p>\n \u201cI came home to see what was going on, and everything was gone. No house, nothing,\u201d said Damian, a H-2A farm worker from Jamaica who has worked at Cahoon Farms in Wolcott, New York. Apprehensive about his US work status, he declined to provide his surname. \u201cIt\u2019s something that took 20 to 30 years to build, and in just a few hours, it\u2019s gone now.\u201d<\/p>\n A week before the storm, Damian\u2019s wife had a baby. He said he has struggled to care for his family since flying home in the aftermath of the hurricane. \u201cHere, if you don\u2019t have a job, what are you supposed to do? I\u2019m just hoping for the best,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n Marley, who also declined to provide his surname, has worked at Cahoon Farms in New York since 2018, alongside Damian. He was there when the storm hit Jamaica, where his mother and children live.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just hoping and praying that I could reach home before the storm,\u201d said Marley. \u201cWhen I heard my home was destroyed, I was devastated.\u201d<\/p>\n He has since made it back to Jamaica, but has been unable to get in touch with dozens of friends and co-workers.<\/p>\n Reports of price gouging have materialized since the hurricane. Marley said his family has grappled with price hikes on food, with several staples such as flour still unavailable.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not easy,\u201d he said. \u201cMost of my friends, I can\u2019t get in touch with them, and I still feel for them. And I\u2019m not going to be comfortable till I hear from all of those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the roofs on homes in Salmon\u2019s community in the Black River area of Jamaica are gone, Salmon said. Building materials are expensive \u2013 and have soared in cost since the hurricane.<\/p>\n Every year, he said, farm workers from Jamaica leave their homes and families to work on US farms, often for low wages and in poor working conditions.<\/p>\n In 2022, Salmon and his co-workers unionized. A Wayne county judge recently upheld the New York state labor board decision to certify the union, as the employer had argued that H-2A guest workers couldn\u2019t unionize while refusing to recognize the union.<\/p>\n Following the ruling, Wafler Farms has \u201cbegun coordinating with the UFW to move forward with the implementation of the bargaining agreement\u201d, a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n \u201cRegarding Hurricane Melissa, we recognize the devastating impact it had on Jamaica and its people, with widespread damage to homes across the island,\u201d they added. \u201cIn the aftermath of the storm, Wafler Farms made donations to several reputable humanitarian organizations actively involved in housing recovery and community support.<\/p>\n \u201cWe also shared information about these organizations with our workers so they could access support if they or their families were affected. We understand that some workers created a GoFundMe campaign upon returning to Jamaica to further assist with rebuilding efforts. We encourage anyone who wishes to contribute to do so through the avenue they feel will best support the recovery process.\u201d<\/p>\n Cahoon Farms did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Farm worker Owen Salmon has picked apples in upstate New York for almost a decade, some 1,500 miles (2,400km) from home. In the midst of harvest season this year, Hurricane Melissa, a record-breaking category 5 hurricane, made landfall in Jamaica. \u201cIt was terrifying,\u201d said Salmon, whose wife and two children were at home near Black<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[2915,1518,6085,769,2081,8966,2622,3546,14922],"class_list":{"0":"post-37516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-destroyed","9":"tag-fear","10":"tag-homes","11":"tag-hurricane","12":"tag-immigration","13":"tag-jamaica","14":"tag-jobs","15":"tag-losing","16":"tag-rely"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}