CHERITON, Va. - Fourteen years old and barely 4-foot-6, Amelia Gomez spends her days stooped over, pulling weeds and picking red peppers, often complaining that the pesticides give her rashes.
Daniel Velasquez, 13, who picks cherry tomatoes nearly 12 hours a day, recently arrived on Virginia's Eastern Shore after a two-day bus ride from Florida's tomato-growing region.
Jose Arispe, 14, whose migrant family divides the year between Virginia and his native Texas, is so proud of the $160 he earns each week doing farm work that he says he wants to quit school to help his family make ends meet. Some days his 11-year-old brother joins in the picking.
Amelia, Jose and Daniel are among hundreds of child farm workers on Virginia's Eastern Shore, part of the estimated 150,000 children 16 years or younger who work on the nation's farms, picking fruit and vegetables. For the most part migrants, these children often work 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, facing dangers from pesticides and risking exhaustion and dehydration from toiling under the sun.
These children, many labor experts say, are among a steadily growing group of young field hands, constituting one of the least visible and most vulnerable groups of workers in the nation. Their plight is such that Democrats in Congress are planning to introduce legislation next month to make it harder to employ 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds.
"Sometimes my fingers start to bleed, and then they start to sting from the poison in the plants," said Herman Perez, a 14-year-old tomato picker who, with his older brother, arrived from Guatemala three weeks ago.
Child farm workers are often paid less than the $5.15 minimum wage. Growers often do not provide them with toilets and drinking water, and some child pickers say growers occasionally order them to resume picking even when the 24 hours required by law have not passed after pesticides are sprayed.
"When people think of agriculture, they think of the agrarian myth and what a wonderful, nurturing, safe, wholesome environment to raise a child," said Diane Mull, executive director of the Association of Farm Worker Opportunity Programs. "In some cases, that's true, but it's certainly not true for migrant farm worker kids."
Many farmers say children provide them with fake IDs stating that they are 18. And farmers deny exploiting these children, saying that they do not overwork them and train them in dealing with pesticides. In a report in June on child farm workers, Human Rights Watch criticized what it said was a double standard in labor laws, noting that children in nonagricultural jobs were not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week but there was no such limit for children doing agricultural work.
The report criticized laws that do not prohibit 14-year-old farmhands from working 70-hour weeks. Federal laws prohibit children younger than 18 from doing hazardous work in nonagricultural jobs, but the laws allow 16- and 17-year-olds to do hazardous work on farms.
"Agricultural employment for kids is bloody dangerous," said John Fraser, director of the U.S. Department of Labor's wage and hour division, the main agency overseeing child labor laws.
