Dick Durbin: “I rise today to talk about the important issue of child labor in tobacco fields. I want to tell you about Calvin, a…”

“I rise today to talk about the important issue of child labor in tobacco fields. I want to tell you about Calvin, a 17-year-old boy just over five feet tall, who migrated to the United States by himself at age 13, leaving his family behind in Mexico. Calvin never enrolled in school. Instead, he joined a migrant crew that travels between several states to work in different crops. He migrates to Kentucky in August to work in the tobacco fields. Calvin has worked in tobacco farms since he was 16, and he experiences headaches and nausea from nicotine poisoning. Calvin said he got sick while working in a curing barn. ``I got a headache and nausea. I was vomiting,'' he said. ``It happened when I was hanging the tobacco in the barn.'' I wish that Calvin's experience was unusual. But in May of last year, the Human Rights Watch published a report based on interviews with over 140 children who worked on U.S. tobacco farms in 2012 or 2013. The majority of those children were working for hire, and not on a family farm. Some of the findings are staggering and show that Calvin is not along. Human Rights Watch found that child tobacco workers began working on tobacco farms at age 11 or 12. During peak harvest periods, children can work as many as 50-60 hours a week. The majority of these children experience symptoms like nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, dizziness, lightheadedness, headaches, and sleeplessness while working on tobacco farms.…”