Reading Time: < 1 minute

This letter was written in response to the Center’s Oct. 16, 2018 collaborative report with HuffPost titled: As Trump disparages immigrants, Midwest dairy farmers build bridges to Mexico

Thank you for a wonderful story that lifted my spirits today.

As a Returned Peace Corp Volunteer (Honduras ’69-’72) I am always humbled by the hard work immigrants do on a daily basis, usually at low paying, physically demanding jobs. I am a volunteer nurse at a walk in free medical clinic and the vast majority of my patients are from Central America. The conditions they live under in their countries are Un imaginable to most Americans.

This article gave me some hope and I intend to pass it on to friends in Vermont: a state dealing with the same dairy issues of immigrant workers as your showed in your piece. Without the immigrants in Vermont, most of the dairy industry there would vanish because there are very few Americans left willing to work the long hours, hard labor and poor overall financial reward for that work.
Again, thank you for writing this piece.

Jody Gemmel, RN
New Fairfield, Connecticut

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Creative Commons License

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Popular stories from Wisconsin Watch