Child Labor in the US: Despite Laws, Kids Work in Agriculture, Fast Food, Industry
While most kids looked forward to summer break, José Velázquez Castellano did not.
An undocumented immigrant and the son of a single mother who had immigrated to the US from Mexico at age 17, Castellano spent his summers working in the scorching-hot fields of North Carolina. When he was eight, he took a job picking blueberries. By his teens, Castellano had moved on to picking tobacco to pay for new school supplies.
On the farm, workers were paid by the bucket, which Castellano and his fellow child farmworkers struggled to carry. The days were long and, he tells Teen Vogue, when he got home from the tobacco fields his body was so weary he couldn’t bring himself to go outside and play. His feet, he recalls, felt like “concrete bricks.”
As is the case for many tobacco pickers, Castellano felt the effects of nicotine poisoning, which can cause vomiting, dizziness, and breathing problems. But even his meager $7/hour salary helped his mom, also a farmworker, pay the bills.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/child-labor-us-how-common
Article is a week old but still worth a read.
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