Chef José Andrés issued a reminder to members of Congress during a Senate Democratic Latino Summit in Washington, D.C., this week: whether or not you want to acknowledge it, undocumented immigrants feed you. "’Our senators and our congressmen today are eating because more than 11 million undocumented are able to bring the food,’ Andrés said to applause.”
The humanitarian stepped up to assist government workers who were furloughed during the Trump shutdown earlier this year, serving tens of thousands of meals in D.C. But behind the scenes he was also filming a documentary that actually traced where vegetables, poultry, and other items in the Senate cafeteria kitchen came from. That path, he said, always led back to undocumented immigrants and their labor.
"We went into the kitchen, and we began filming every single box of vegetables," he said. “We followed those vegetables all the way to the farms, the fish all the way to the fishing boats, the chickens all the way to the chicken factories. And we found that from the Senate, from the Hill all the way to the place they began, everyone involved in the process from the workers in the field, to the distribution truck drivers, was undocumented in every path."
Of course this is also true outside of Washington, D.C. cafeterias, because immigrant hands feed America. Farmworker Justice estimates that 50% of the nation’s farm workers lack legal status. Some estimates say 60%, and some even go as high as 70%. But overall, it means that a huge amount of workers continue to remain at ongoing risk of exploitation, injury, and deportation due to their immigration status, and despite being the backbone of a mammoth industry. They deserve better.
While Andrés has long stressed the need for comprehensive immigration reform—finally passing legislation would be the "right, decent thing to do,” he said during this week’s summit—he said he hopes that documentary can shift the way people talk about the need to pass legislation, remembering first and foremost that it’s always about people. “We need to start bringing empathy to the conversation of immigration reform,” he said.