By STAN MADDUX

Indiana Correspondent

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. — It’s not uncommon for migrant farm workers to receive nowhere near the level of pay and living conditions they were promised. Even if they know their legal rights, many stay in dire situations because their life here is still better than at home, or they’re threatened with harm or deportation.

That’s according to Kristin Hoffman, an attorney with Indiana Legal Services, Inc. (ILSI) out of Indianapolis. “You’d be surprised how often that does happen,” she explained during an Oct. 20 presentation at the Politics Art Roots Culture center in Michigan City.

ILSI and its Migrant Farm Worker Law Center provide free legal services to low-income Indiana citizens and documented laborers in the state from outside the United States.

She said immigrant workers on farms earn as much as $20,000 or more for eight months of work, but at 120 hours a week. In some cases, though, similar pay offered for them to cross the border turns out to be just pennies on the dollar.

Currently, Hoffman said she’s working a case where $700 a week pledged from a job recruiter amounted to just $1,500 total for seven weeks of grueling labor. She also said free rent extended to migrant workers is often for trailers and other rundown structures lacking essentials like heat, a bed and kitchen.

But she noted such conditions are still an improvement over the $20-$50 a week they would earn in their native countries, including Mexico and Guatemala. “People are willing to sacrifice a lot to have that income opportunity,” she pointed out.

Under the law, Hoffman said foreign residents with work visas must be paid $12.93 an hour on farms in Indiana and Illinois. She said workers must also be given check stubs, but some employers pay less in cash to skirt the regulations and threaten the safety of workers and their families to keep them quiet and working.

Threats to contact U.S immigration authorities are other methods for controlling exploited workers. She said the $1,000 or more workers spent to get here and language barriers heightening their sense of isolation are other reasons they go along with these circumstances.

She said employers must also provide Workman’s Compensation Insurance to their foreign laborers, but some don’t and have workers needing medical attention returned to their countries for treatment. “This is happening all over.”

To reduce exploitation, she said coalition-building among supporters of migrant workers is key for bringing positive change. Another solution is increasing the amount of documented immigrant workers eligible for protection under U.S labor laws.

Currently, Hoffman said half of the foreign workers in the U.S. are undocumented. Most immigrant laborers, at 37 percent, are here performing domestic-related duties, followed by agriculture at 19 percent. The rest of the foreign labor pool work in construction, restaurants, hospitality, carnivals and fairs, factories and assisted living.

Her organization reaches out to inform migrant workers about their rights and the legal help available to them at no cost. From 2005-15, she said at least 800 employers of more than 23,000 guest workers in the United States were found in violation of federal migrant labor laws.

“It’s probably a small fraction of the workers out there that this is happening to,” Hoffman said.