A migrant's 2,500-mile commute

Rosalino Santiago Garcia starts his commute to work in the usual way: He gives his wife Sabina a hug and a kiss on the cheek, says goodbye to his kids, and hops in a truck to head down the long gravel road that leads away from his home.

He'll be back in nine months.

(Nick Wagner/Alexia Foundation)

Santiago Garcia is a migrant worker. For more than a decade now, the father of three has spent the majority of the year — from May to February — harvesting tobacco on a farm in Fountain Run, Kentucky, some 2,500 miles from his home in Santa Ana, Oaxaca, Mexico.

His 70-hour commute to work allows him to earn a living wage for his family.

(Nick Wagner / Alexia Foundation)

Santiago Garcia tried to find work in Mexico, but nothing would pay enough to support his parents, and then wife and children. The first few times he went to work in the U.S. as a teenager, he traveled under the floorboards of a van with 13 other men.

Now, he works under the protection of an H-2A visa — a temporary work visa for foreign agricultural workers — along with about 20 other migrants on the farm.

While in Kentucky, Santiago Garcia shares a home with the other migrants and, as a veteran on the farm, assumes a fatherly role, driving the others grocery shopping and to transfer money back to their families in Mexico.

(Nick Wagner / Alexia Foundation)

In November 2014, photojournalist Nick Wagner joined Santiago Garcia on a rare trip home to Mexico to visit his then-pregnant wife. Wagner did the same in July 2016 when Santiago Garcia made a special trip back for a festival in his town.

"When he went home, it just clicked," Wagner said of the family's two-week reunions. "The kids were so happy to see their dad again. It's not like they were distant from him at all."

(Nick Wagner / Alexia Foundation)

But that doesn't make the time away from his family any easier.

"It's hard to leave my kids behind, " Santiago Garcia told Wagner. "It always makes me sad. But I believe that any human in any job will always put their family first."

(Nick Wagner / Alexia Foundation)

(Nick Wagner / Alexia Foundation)

(Nick Wagner / Alexia Foundation)

**To see more of Nick Wagner's photography, check out his website or follow him on Instagram.**