By Elizabeth Tomlinson
Christ the King Parish, Missoula


“You shall love them as yourselves.” (Leviticus 19:34)

Father Herbert Pins, pastor of Dillon’s St. Rose of Lima parish, remembers a young Mexican man who came to a weekday Mass last summer with his little boy. “He was weeping throughout Mass, and I met with him afterwards. He knelt in front of me and was kissing my hand and told me how terrible things were,” Father Pins related.

The man’s wife had been working for some local people, and when she begged to be paid, they accused her of a crime. It was obvious to the rest of the community that the couple wanted to avoid paying her, and used to their advantage the fact that she was an undocumented immigrant.

The young mother was eventually sent to Boulder, where she was held for two months. During that time she was not able to see her husband and son, whom Father Pins had baptized. The priest and others tried to find help from an attorney, but the only one who knew immigration and naturalization law was too expensive. She was deported, and after her husband took their son to join her, he had to return in order to finish his work.

Under U.S. law, any person who is not a citizen is considered an “alien.” Most aliens have some form of legal status in the United States and some are undocumented. An undocumented immigrant is a person who is in a country without the permission of that country’s government. Such persons are called “undocumented” because they lack the required paperwork. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops explains why some come here: “...most hope to reunite with family members already here or to find work to provide support for their families back home.” The ranching area of Dillon and the cherry orchards near Polson illustrate the struggles of an estimated 10,400 migrant laborers in Montana, and those who help them.

Beaverhead and Madison counties produce a staggering 20 percent of our nation’s beef supply. Between April and October, over 200 seasonal workers, and 100 year-round migrant families, do back-breaking work at a low wage seven days a week. The year-round residents do the outside ranch work in below-zero-degree winter weather.

If they weren’t here to do it, it wouldn’t get done, as advertising for local people who want employment brings little interest.

Courtney Wosepka, who learned Catholic social justice at home, runs the Montana Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Council’s healthcare clinic in Dillon. The nonprofit organization also has full-time clinics in Billings and Fairview, as well as transitional clinics, where the staff and volunteers meet the needs of migrant families. They provide comprehensive primary and preventative health care, and other services, for migrant men, women and children, without charge.

For approximately two weeks between the end of July and the beginning of August, migrant families come to pick the cherries at Flathead Lake. They live in tent cities on the orchard grounds, where they’re paid not by the hour, but by the pound of fruit. The cherries have to be perfect, or they’re not counted in the weight.

The Council sets up a clinic at the cherry orchards. “We see literally hundreds of people during those two weeks,” Wosepka explained. “We’re the only provider they’ll see, because they can’t afford anything else.” It’s staffed in part by a volunteer dentist and her students, who earn class credit for their involvement. Patients sit in lawn chairs, or wait in rooms made from tarps. Rural Employment and Opportunities provides education for migrant children, as well as training and education for their parents, and they set up a mobile classroom at Finley Point during cherry season.

While segments of our economy rely on migrant families, their struggles involve much more than working constantly for low pay. Language is the greatest barrier, and wherever seasonal or settled migrants live, people who speak Spanish and teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) are desperately needed. Volunteers may contact the Montana Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers Council at 248-3149.

The workers are vulnerable and need advocates when someone takes advantage of their marginal status. The Catholic Church offers resources and ways to become aware and involved, through the Catholic Migrant Farmworker Network, based in Idaho. As immigration and migrant worker issues confront us in Montana, Father Pins charges us to remember who we are: “As a Catholic in the community, we have to stand with the little people and with the people without a real voice.”

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Justice Voices articles are coordinated by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development committee of the Diocese of Helena.


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 25, No. 1, January 23, 2009.