ABSTRACT
One summer evening, I waited with a team of public interest lawyers for our final client of the evening. José, a seasonal farm laborer, finally arrived, visibly suffering from the pain of an injured shoulder, and frustrated by his inability to access his workers' compensation benefits. 1 José had been fighting for over a year. He was initially told that his pain was due to arthritis, but was eventually diagnosed with separated tendon. This, coupled with his chronic back pain from two decades of working in the fields, meant that he would likely never return to work. Unemployed, uninsured, illiterate, and undocumented, José had few alternatives.
