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Pay day at a migrant labor camp-for each farm bucket of vegetables harvested from the fields, the workers receive a poker chip, worth one dollar.
Over a thousand miles away from the U.S.-Mexico border, rural Sampson County in central North Carolina is filled with undocumented migrant workers. During the summer months, when the vegetable and tobacco crops need to be harvested, thousands of "illegal" farm workers from Mexico and Central America arrive to labor in the fields. They live in primitive and isolated work camps, and if the weather allows, work six days a week, often 14 hours a day, for very little pay, picking beans, eggplants, and peppers.
It is estimated that there are between 15 and 20 million illegal immigrants working in America. While Sampson County is a Republican Party stronghold, the local growers know the reality-if immigration laws are actually enforced, the crops will rot in the fields.