Guest Workers As Bellwether

"By the time Martha Uvalle's boss threatened to have her children assaulted, she'd already lowered her expectations. Uvalle, a forty-year-old from Tamalipas, Mexico, has come to Louisiana as a guest worker every year since 2006. "I came to fulfill the American Dream," Uvalle told me with a laugh in November. Her choice to become a guest worker was "difficult, because you know you're leaving your children." But given "the chance to make a little money . . . you decide the sacrifice is worth it." Each year, Uvalle worked for two to fi ve months for CJ's Seafood in Louisiana, supplying shrimp to companies including the retail giant Wal-Mart. "You have the costs here, the costs there, the costs to come here, so you really can't save any money." She also took out high-interest loans to pay for the costs of the travel. Still, "it's more than you can make in Mexico. But it's not what I was expecting." (Interviews with Uvalle and other guest workers were conducted in Spanish.)"