Compassion Compels Lawyer to Aid Migrant Workers

Like many lawyers, John Menditto went to law school filled with idealism, pursuing his profession because he wanted to help disadvantaged people. And, like many lawyers, he instead ended up choosing a lucrative practice with a prestigious law firm when he graduated from the University of Virginia's law school. But five years ago, Menditto returned to what drew him into law in the first place and took a job helping migrant farmworkers and their families.

"You'd be challenged to find a more disadvantaged group," the 42-year-old Washington resident says of the thousands of seasonal farmworkers who travel up and down the East Coast, harvesting crops from May until mid-November. As the general counsel and director of risk management of the East Coast Migrant Head Start Project in Arlington, Menditto helps operate a $57 million federally funded program that provides day care and nutrition services for approximately 8,600 young children of migrant workers.

What made this job so appealing to you?

Many lawyers want to feel they're contributing to a cause. And in our country, migrant farmworkers are still an invisible population -- they're the poorest of the poor. They work extremely long hours for very little money. The opportunity to help that population was the primary motivation for me to make that professional transition.

What exactly do you do?

The most compelling experience is to ride the morning bus. It's 5:30 a.m. and pitch black outside, and you're on a lonely country road, and you make your first stop by the side of the road at a house or a trailer that you don't think is inhabitable at all. Out comes the mom, maybe 18 or 19, with a bundle snuggled to her chest, and she comes over and hands the bundle to the bus monitor, and we take care of the baby for the day. That's what we do.

You bring them back in the evening?

Yes. Head Start is a program that depends on the active involvement of our parents in deciding how we will operate the program, and if they tell us they need the center to open at 6 a.m. and run until 6 p.m., providing we have the funding, that's what we'll do.

Do you work predominantly with illegal immigrants?

We do not ask families whether they are documented to work and reside in the U.S., although it is commonly known that most of the migrant farmworkers are not documented to work and reside here.

Many people do not think tax money should be spent on illegal immigrants. How do you respond to them?

Most of the young children we serve were born in the U.S. and on that basis are citizens of our country. So I respond first and foremost that our program helps American children living in poverty.

How has the immigration debate affected the farmworkers in this area?

The biggest impact is fear of conducting their daily business, fear of moving from state to state. As Congress has debated the issue, it has created a situation where rumors are started in migrant communities, and migrant workers depend on rumors, information by word of mouth, to find work. . . . Typically the mother and father are undocumented, and their child is an American citizen. They live in fear of being detained and deported. All of this has had a chilling effect on migrant families willing to migrate to work.

How has that affected the harvest?

There have been stories of farmers in California that have been unable to find enough workers to pick their crops. . . . Over many, many years we have not figured out a better way to harvest our field crops than to have very, very skilled workers go into the field, climb a tree and look at an apple and say, "This apple today, pluck, and that one tomorrow." And we're very dependent on this labor to harvest our crops.

When you say "skilled," do you mean knowledgeable?

Yes, to have the knowledge and ability of when to pick, what to pick, how to climb a ladder with a 20-pound bag on one shoulder and keep their balance while picking apples with one hand. They are very, very skilled.

Both men and women?

Yes. By providing child-care services, we make it possible for moms to work in the fields and provide for their families.

What is the most challenging part of your job?

We are almost exclusively federally funded, and there are so many bureaucratic layers to overcome in order to implement services. We could move so much quicker and deliver services more efficiently and better if we didn't have quite so many regulations.

Do you feel you have made a difference?

Absolutely. I know I have. You can't equate it to things in private practice involving millions of millions of dollars for a corporation. It's on a much smaller scale. Not just making sure we do everything we're supposed to do as an organization, but there are times when a grower may be trying to stiff a migrant farmworker family on pay or take advantage of them in other ways, and I can call up and say, "Hello, I'm their lawyer." You make a difference in incremental ways. That has a tremendous impact for these families.