Last week the NY Times published a very interesting news-feature on sheepherders in Colorado and Wyoming, most of whom are immigrants who work under a federal termporary worker visa.

These sheepherders earn $750 a month for working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Further, they live in "5-foot-by-10-foot [spaces] with no running water, toilet or electricity."

Sheepherding has long occupied the bottom rung of migrant labor. Most borregueros speak no English; many have only a vague idea of where they are and no knowledge of their legal rights as documented immigrants. The herders enter the country under the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program, which allows companies to hire foreigners if no Americans want their jobs.

The harsh, solitary lives of foreign sheepherders in the American West have remained virtually unchanged for more than a century. And government oversight of their circumstances remains piecemeal.

Ranchers say that paying the workers more would crush an industry long in decline. But over the past year, legal and immigrant rights groups have begun a campaign to improve the treatment of borregueros in Colorado and Wyoming, states where their plight is particularly unforgiving.

“It’s like going back in time,” said Thomas Acker, a Spanish professor at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colo., who hopes to persuade the state legislature to raise herders’ wages and to require ranchers to improve their standard of living. “That these men are required to live under these conditions for such long periods is inhumane.”

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