Cornell Study Says Upstate Mexicans Largely Invisible
ALBANY, N.Y.
A new study by Cornell University finds more Mexican farmworkers are settling in rural upstate New York, but they remain almost invisible because of language and education barriers.
About two-thirds of those surveyed said they could not speak English well. Ninety percent said their top need was learning English. About 95 percent of seasonal farmworkers upstate are now Hispanic.
The report surveyed more than 1,300 farmworkers and former farmworkers and 1,250 non-farm residents — both sides of what researchers called a “cultural gulf.”
“It’s kind of tragic, to be honest,” says the report’s co-author, Dr. Max Pfeffer, a professor of rural sociology at Cornell. “We asked about friendships. The incidence of that was very low. There were few instances of direct contact.”
Less than 20 percent of farmworkers who could not speak English said they had close American friends.
The survey found schools do the best job in pulling the two communities together, and it recommended more English-language training to help increase interaction.
Pfeffer says the study will be turned into a book.
