THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Some of the small farms have found a way to deal with rising expenses, exploiting undocumented immigrants.

Álvarez, 39, lived in Mexico City until April 2013. He was laid off from his job as a manager at a warehouse run by pharmaceutical giant Boehringer Ingelheim after the company switched to a mechanical system to manage inventory, and he couldn’t find any work in his hometown.

Álvarez left his wife and two kids behind for the U.S., spending eight days crossing the desert — including three without food or water. He made his way to Tucson, Arizona, and over the next few weeks to upstate New York, where a friend helped him find a job corralling cows on a dairy farm in Chenango County.

In September, Álvarez was charged by a bull. The animal pushed him up against a metal railing, injuring his shoulder and ribs and giving him a deep cut just below his right eye. His boss, the owner of the farm, pulled the cow away from Álvarez but wouldn’t take him to the hospital for two hours, until after the owner finished milking his cows.

When Rebecca Fuentes, an organizer from the Workers’ Center of Central New York called the hospital to check on Álvarez, the owner’s sister answered the phone and pretended to be a nurse, according to Fuentes and Álvarez. Because his medical team did not speak Spanish and because his employers waited by the phone at the hospital, he wasn’t aware until weeks later that his employers had told authorities that he was just visiting the farm, not working on it, when the accident happened. His workers’ compensation case is now a lot more complicated.

About 15 days after the incident, when it became clear that Álvarez’s ability to perform strenuous manual labor was still impaired, his employer fired him. He searched for work for two months.

“I tried to get out of my head that I had this accident, because it meant I couldn’t provide for my family,” Álvarez said. “It took me three months to tell them because I was ashamed.”

He eventually found work on another dairy farm. He now lives with two other workers in a dilapidated farmhouse at the edge of his employer’s property. He makes $500 a week and sends home 80 percent of that to his wife and kids in Mexico. His son is still finishing college, and his daughter recently landed a job as a lawyer in the Mexican government.

He is not afraid of hard work and can deal with the exploitation, his main worry is La Migra.