By Will Kerry
LONDON, June 28 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – U.S. courts should remain open minded about migrants found working with false identity papers in the agricultural sector as employers were often to blame, a researcher who spent 10 years studying migrant farm work said on Tuesday.
Sarah Horton, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado Denver, found undocumented or underage farm workers in California were being given stolen, borrowed or forged identity documents by employers in what is termed “identity masking”.
Published in the Anthropology of Work Review, the study found that farm workers described themselves as “working as ghosts” with employers disguising their employment from state and federal governments and hiding the use of child labour.
The study follows a federal appeals court ruling in May that undocumented immigrants could be prosecuted for working under forged, loaned or stolen documents. Horton said this did not take into account employers exploiting the largely foreign workers.
