In pictures: Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program a bastion for Mexican migrants seeking refuge from hardships at home
Seasonal jobs at a cherry-packing plant near Kelowna, B.C., are highly prized by Mexican mothers seeking to get ahead in their poverty-stricken hometowns. For sorting and packaging fruit over a couple of months, the women make as much as they would working at home over an entire year. ‘To save anything,’ one worker says, ‘I have to come to work in Canada.’
The all-female labour force of temporary foreign workers from Mexico sort and grade cherries at the Jealous Fruits facility near Kelowna, B.C., on Aug. 19, which is kept cool to keep the cherries fresh.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
A group of temporary foreign workers wait to board a bus for the short ride to work before a 13-hour shift at the Jealous Fruit sorting and packing plant in Kelowna, in August.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
Maria Jesus Carmona Degante talks with her mother Maria Petra Degante Lopez who is suffering from a tumour in her abdomen at her home in town of Neuvo, Mexico August 29, 2014.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
Maria Jesus Carmona Degante's daughter Eliana (C) reacts to a mount of tenderness by her mom at her grandmothers home in the town of Neuvo, Mexico August 29, 2014.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
Irma Gutierrez's son Raziel, 9, watches TV at his grandparents home in the town of Vera Cruz, Mexico, August 31. Ms. Gutierrez earned enough money to buy a small parcel of land working as temporary foreign worker at Jealous Fruits, a Canadian cherry farm in B.C.'s Okanagan Valley.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
Irma Gutierrez with her son Raziel, Age 9, August 31, 2014 in the town of Vera Cruz, Mexico, on the land she bought with money by working as temporary foreign worker at Jealous Fruit a Canadian cherry farm in B.C.'s Okanagan Valley.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail