“Florida’s wild inland region keeps secrets,” writes the photographer Samantha Appleton, who has been documenting migrant workers in the region since 2006. “It is the birthplace of the majority of America’s tomatoes (among other types of produce), and it is the lowest rung of the immigration ladder for thousands of migrant laborers from Mexico, Central America, and Haiti.” It is also, Appleton points out, where the dysfunction of America’s immigration policy lies.

As the immigration legislation introduced this month winds its way through the Senate, Appleton’s pictures bring our attention to a world mostly hidden from view:

As you drive west from the sparkling Gulf Coast of Florida, the three-lane highway, lined with Starbucks and strip malls, quickly empties, and thins into a country road thick with vegetation. Shiny rental cars disappear, and semis laden with mangoes and peppers speed past instead, passing school buses that carry a hundred laborers on their way to the fields. After an hour’s drive, the road improves slightly, and a small town suddenly appears. Homes no bigger or more sheltering than shacks dot a dusty landscape. Workers emerge from the shadows on foot or bike, carrying plastic bags—their belongings for the day.

Central Florida represents the immigration debate in its most vexing form: the scene is as old as America itself, yet should not still exist.

Here’s a look. (And read William Finnegan’s Annals of Immigration, “The Deportation Machine,” in the current issue.) http://nyr.kr/Zj2TwP

Photographs by Samantha Appleton.

Election Day is here. As voters hit the polls, we’ve sent photographers out to swing states across the country. Throughout the day we’ll be posting a series of slide shows with new photos, from Colorado to Maine. Here’s a peek at what’s happening in Florida and Virginia. Click-through for a slideshow.

Welcome, protester, and greetings from the Tampa Police! We’re extremely glad you’re here protesting, for reasons that have everything to do with our shared love of the Constitution and free speech and absolutely nothing to do with our eagerness to try out the new rubber bullets.

Now, we can already hear you asking, “But how can I know how to protest safely and effectively, given how undereducated and lazy I probably am?” Glad you asked! Here are some simple tips: http://nyr.kr/NCmYoj

TAMPA (The Borowitz Report)—With the threat of Hurricane Isaac hitting Florida next week, the Republican National Committee took the extraordinary step today of moving their 2012 National Convention to the seventeenth century: http://nyr.kr/RDLdtp

Michael Specter on the “striking developments on the genetically modified mosquito front in the past few days”: http://nyr.kr/L9mS6l

A Saturday morning cartoon. For more cartoons from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/HXpDtg

(Source: newyorker.com)

Cartoon of the day. For more cartoons from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/Isv7J4

(Source: newyorker.com)

Emmett Till in Sanford

With this breadth and level of public attention and outrage, it is becoming possible to imagine the death of Trayvon Martin taking its place alongside, say, the death of Emmett Till as a terrible marker of the ongoing peril of being young, black, and male in this country.

Can Rubio Control the Candidates?

A joint Univision, ABC News, and Latino Decisions survey released Wednesday drives home the point. Yes, the survey reports that jobs and the economy are the foremost concern for Hispanics. But electoral decisions are not made in laboratory settings where issues are dissected. Feelings enter the equation. When the survey probed beneath the surface, more than half of Hispanic voters said that they would be less likely to support a Republican candidate who pledged to veto the Dream Act, which would give college students who came to America illegally as children a path to citizenship. (And all of the remaining candidates have spoken against the Dream Act.) Only seventeen per cent of Hispanics said Republicans were doing a good job of reaching out to their community.

Every time Romney and Gingrich and Santorum and Paul thump on about “illegals” or about keeping them from invading America, many Hispanics don’t hear a law-and-order argument. They hear: You don’t like us. Senator Rubio, who says that his endorsement, which is highly coveted, will not be given before the Florida primary next Tuesday, knows this.