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Rumble Strip

Your Neighbor

Rumble Strip

Erica Heilman / Rumble Strip

Places & Travel, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.91.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2017

⏱️ 17 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Victor is an undocumented Mexican farm worker whose future is increasingly uncertain. What is it like to never feel safe?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is Rumbull Strip America Heilen.

0:05.0

Sometimes you are happy but sometimes hold sad.

0:10.0

What are you doing here? But you think how is Mexico? You just keep working. Because you need it.

0:26.0

You really need it.

0:28.0

You are working, but you are not with your family.

0:32.0

You are not seeing how they are getting old.

0:35.0

You're not going to get back this year, these years. Four and a half years Victor's been working on dairy farms in the northeast and like

0:54.5

11 million other people in this country he's undocumented. I'm embarrassed to say

0:59.8

that I've always assumed I knew this story already,

1:03.7

as if it were some kind of composite story

1:06.2

about the Mexican migrant farm worker experience.

1:09.6

And the worst part is, I didn't even know I was assuming this. I guess I didn't really have to think

1:14.8

about it. The story didn't have a lot to do with me. But President Trump has started making

1:21.0

good on his promises to ramp up deportations of undocumented people

1:25.3

in this country, people who pay 12 billion dollars in US taxes every year.

1:31.3

Victor's a friend of a friend of mine and I won't say where he works, but these friends of friends are my neighbors and yours.

1:39.0

Another friend will call her T, agreed to do some translating for me,

1:43.6

along with her brand new baby,

1:45.1

who you'll hear from now and then in this interview.

1:47.8

We visited Victor at his apartment

1:49.7

on the dairy farm where he works.

1:51.6

Here's Victor's story.

...

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