Blurred Borders - International Community Foundation

options have put increased pressure on the region’s migrant working class. This is confirmed
by recent research of North County’s farm workers which found that 87% of Mexican farmer
workers surveyed shared their dwelling with two or more households/families. 304 The average
number of persons per dwelling was 7.8 and 16% did not have a telephone. 305 According to Dr.
Bade, the study’s author, there are currently between 10,000 to 15,000 Mexican migrant
workers residing in migrant worker camps across San Diego County, with most living in substandard
and unhealthy conditions.
In an effort to improve the housing conditions of Mexican migrant workers, a Carlsbad-based
non-profit, Las Casitas, has been involved in the construction of adobe domed homes made of
soil, strands of barbed wire for support, sandbags and a small amount of lime for support. At a
cost of $400 per “casita”, the goal of Las Casitas is to convince skeptical San Diego area
growers and local officials that there is a relatively easy, low-cost way to provide housing for
hundreds of workers currently hidden in the area's canyons and vacant lots. 306
In San Diego, the average wage for a hospitality/tourism worker is minimum wage, and most
laborers make about $10 per hour while the average entry level wage for those workers in the
construction trades was $10.48 in 2002. 307 As an entry-level salary would not constitute a living
wage in San Diego, it is easy to understand the driving force for some workers that are legally
able to travel southward for alternative housing south of the border. Those unable to cross
(due to their migration status) are increasingly becoming part of the growing number of
working poor across the County.
Housing and the inability to maintain a living wage is not the only challenge facing San Diego’s
working poor. Delivery of critical services including food provisions is also an issue.
Paradoxically, many of the food programs available to poor families and children are vastly
under-utilized in San Diego. Sixty-two percent of those who qualify for food stamp programs
do not use the service, and 72% of children who are eligible for school breakfast program, and
59% of children eligible for summer food service program, do not use the services. The
California Food Policy Advocates attributes the under-utilization of these services to
bureaucratic red tape and the stigma of receiving assistance, but another possible cause is lack
of information, especially on the part of parents, who might not speak and read English well
enough to either obtain information about these programs, or to apply for them.
As in Tijuana, the economic pressures of maintaining a family and a household in San Diego,
coupled by the challenge of linguistic isolation and fear of deportation, is likely to lead to a
growing incidence among many Mexican migrant families of child abuse and neglect, domestic
violence, and drug and alcohol abuse.
304 See Dr. Bonnie Bade, “Farmworkers and Farmworker Health in Vista, Ca.” (preliminary findings). Center for
Border and Regional Affairs, California State University, San Marcos, November 2003.
305 See Bade (2003).
306 th
Ben Fox, “Volunteers offer new solution to migrant housing shortage,” North County Times, Feb. 4 , 2002
307
Occupational Employment Survey, State of California, 2002.
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