DUNN, N.C. (AP) – Seasonal agricultural workers were just finishing a meal after a long day of planting sweet potato seeds when Julie Pittman pulled up to their camp.
Pittman, a paralegal with the Farmworker Unit of Legal Aid of North Carolina, worked to get their attention.
The health care law that passed in 2010 requires you to have health insurance, she said, speaking in Spanish. If you don’t get it, she said, you could be fined.
“Cuánto cuesta?” asked a worker, wanting to know the cost.
In the United States legally through the H-2A visa program, these farmworkers, like most American citizens and legal residents, must be insured. But reaching them is an uphill battle.