Many children are forced to leave for the fields as early as April. Often, they don't return to school until October or even November. Even when they return to school, migrant farmworker children struggle to catch up with their classmates.

While most parents want a better life for their children, a typical farmworker earns $7,500 a year or less—hardly enough money to support a family. As a result, parents are faced with a difficult dilemma: keep their kids in school or send them out into the fields. Year after year, faced with the prospect of falling further and further behind, many children become discouraged and stop attending school altogether. In fact, experts estimate as many as 65 percent of migrant children end up dropping out of school.

For migrant children, the workday begins at 6 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m. For this backbreaking work they are paid as little as a penny a pound. There is little time or opportunity for the usual summertime activities that most American kids take for granted. After returning home from work, they eat dinner, take a shower, and go to bed to rest up for yet another 12-hour workday. Rarely do they get a day off.

In many cases, child farmworkers must endure sweltering temperatures, as there is little shade to shelter them. Among the many dangers children face on the job are pesticides. Migrant children regularly labor in fields that are sprayed with these toxic chemicals, which can cause skin irritations and breathing difficulties, and their small, undeveloped bodies are especially vulnerable.