My grandparents were Portuguese laborers from Madeira who immigrated to Hawaii to cut cane and pick pineapples. We grew up with the ethos that all work is important and worthy of respect. I would like to see the people who do these jobs today treated with dignity and fairness. We need a guest worker program that guarantees decent pay, benefits, clean bathroom facilities, and union protections. So what if we pay more for fruits and vegetables - as it is now prices are artificially low because workers are paid so poorly.
24
Its true that there are a limited subset of jobs - primarily in agriculture and domestic service - that there aren't enough Americans to do. Its equally (if not moreso) true that the lax immigration policies of the last 50 or 60 years have allowed an influx that spills far beyond able-bodied farm laborers coming to do the things Americans won't. How many illegals arriving are under the age of 16, or over the age of 50? How many are women who would end up staying at home with their children? How many take jobs, not in agriculture, but in construction or custodial or landscaping - all roles that countless Americans fill?
As a US born, white, English-speaking, American citizen living thousands of miles from the Mexican border, I could introduce you to similar US born, white, English-speaking, American citizens who work or have worked in the last ten years in construction, landscaping, custodial, as cooks, as dishwashers, as painters, as drywallers, even as nannies.
I'm willing to support guest worker programs that bring in a controlled number of able-bodied adults for temporary periods to fill those jobs Americans don't want. But first you have to convince me that you're serious and capable of cracking down on all the ones who don't fit that bill.
12
I find it hard to have sympathy for people that voted for Trump, knowing what he was about. They deserve to lose their tax payer subsidized farms.
11
I still fail to figure out how the system works for the undocumented workers in America ? There must be plenty of people, who are helping them there. Otherwise how does it work ? How come undocumented workers are staying there for more than 30 years without being legalised ? If they are that important for farmers, why are not they legalised ?
How do they get accommodation without documents in the first place ? How do they manage to survive in Upstate New York with their meagre means ? They must be living in horrible conditions. Do two to three families stay together ?
How do their children get admitted in Schools ? I understand they are paid low wages and exploited too mainly because they are helpless. They surely must not be having any health insurance. It must have cost their lives since it’s extremely difficult to manage without any medical insurance for decades together.
The other day I read in this paper that many states give them driving license too, then why not regularise them.
If the government is not willing to legalise the illegal immigrants, why can’t it plug the loopholes completely. Why double standards ? It’s not that American citizens are not willing to do tough jobs. They are already doing tough jobs like house construction, erection of electric poles and lines, erection of all sorts of equipments etc, all outdoor tough jobs, but get paid very decently. Here in this case no citizen works mainly because of very low paid jobs that involve exploitation.
9
This article may have solved a mystery for me. I'm shocked when I go to the grocery to see the price of apples. Some varieties cost about 80 cents apiece-for an apple! I'm not paying that so I've stopped buying them. I don't know for certain if the cost of labor is the reason for such expensive apples but it makes sense.
[[“I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways, but I’m more on the fence about him now,” Ms. Raby said. “I don’t want to lose the immigrants who are working here and growing our food.”]]
I would love to hear in what ways Ms. Raby still agrees with the president. What does she think he's getting right? And isn't she at all troubled by the chaos in the White House, the self dealing, the inattention to the environment? I could go on....
Anyway, organize, register and vote, people.
18
“What we really want is some kind of method of getting foreign workers legally”
America needs workers. Other countries have spare workers. America imports workers from other countries. Problem solved. Please do explain, what’s wrong with that?
5
All of the white men in the south who have no jobs should be forced to move to NY to work on these farms, or they lose all benefits they may receive, including unemployment, other financial benefits as well as the right to drive.
9
You can't, without being a hypocrite, expect a minimum wage in our economy yet also advocate for illegal, below minimum wage labor. Am I the only one noticing the irony here?
20
What we once knew as farms make up a very small percentage of what has become agribusiness. When so called farmers complain they are not the families that once represented rural backbone of the country, they are high tech conglomerates using genetically modified seeds and high tech equipment.
Small family farms must be protected or they will disappear. ICE is wrecking the families of the owners and the seasonal foreign workers.
6
Please come to Texas and do the same here in ranching, oilfield drilling, equipment maintenance, housing construction, handyman services, restaurants. I beg you.
It will show how much of the self professed anti illegal state runs on this underground economy.
23
The country depends on labor from south of the border.
From nursing homes to the filthy belts in the recycling industry to the guys in construction and the food industry, and of coarse picking our fruits and vegetables.
Anyone who can’t see this has their eyes closed.
19
This is an issue of the corporatization of farming. Truck farms used to ring our cities and bring their produce to public and farmers markets, from where they would then be dispersed throughout the cities. This smaller, non-corporate scale of commerce benefited both the consumers and producers. Immigrant labor was not a necessity. We need to walk-back the corporatization of America. We need to stop subsidizing large scales of production, in favor of smaller scales of commercial AND governmental activity. A carbon tax will help discourage long-range transportation. Just having our first primaries in states with more sustainable economies (that are less carbon-dependent) than, say, with IOWA might be a good place to start.
7
Absolute insanity. The wealthy are allowed to invest their money anywhere in the world. I have investments here, but roughly 35 percent of my portfolio is invested overseas. And just like we should be able to move capital across national boundaries -- which after all are essentially all arbitrary -- labor should have the same ability.
If I am in higher demand in the UK than I am in America, why shouldn't I be able to sell my labor there? And by the same token, if I own a firm in the U.S. and I prefer to hire a worker from abroad, why should the government interfere with that contract? In the age of globalization, allowing the free movement of both labor and capital will, in the long run, allow the production of more goods and better prices for everyone.
6
73 percent of US milk producer returns are subsidized by the federal government. There are 1.4 billion pounds of government owned cheese setting in refrigerated warehouses around the country. The US taxpayer subsidizes dairy farmers for volumes we don't need and the illegal workers in which to produce even more. Let's think about this.
14
I am PA and it’s the same situation here. You can see them out working in humid 90plus weather, try to get one of the locals to do that.
10
same in Texas. number of farmers have personally used almost your exact words that they cannot get the local "boys"to work in 100 degree heat with 90% humidity as those "muchachos" can
13
Ah, this is why the US wants to dismantle Canada's enlightened milk quota system, which sustains family farms, and flood our country with heavily subsidized BGH milk. To keep its undocumented workers employed.
14
Shall we start taking bets on when the last of the privately owned dairy farms ceases to exist in the USA?
5
Farmers have relied on undocumented immigrants for generations. When I was a child in rural California (1940s & very early 1950s) it was an open secret. My grandfather employed "wetbacks" as a matter of course for fruit picking and other orchard work. I learned basic Spanish as a kid to talk to the workers & their children (who attended my school).
8
YOU know who works at Mar a Lago and other Trump properties. You can be sure that they are paid as little as possible and that many undocumented aliens still work there.
Farmers desperately need workers for stuff Americans will not do. They cannot survive without them. Trump is a moron and understands nothing about this, nor does his old white cabal of entitled multi-millionaires.
Our immigration policies need a sane, comprehensive overhaul, not a racist knee-jerk political con. Until that happens, farmers, restaurants, factories and all of America will suffer while Trump and his buddies get rich acquiring national assets and gaming the system.
11
It started as a backlash against low skilled black workers who won civil and labor rights. Suddenly black migrant farm workers descended from those who had toiled in American soil and performed menial jobs were denigrated as lazy. That's why Mexican President Vicente Fox felt comfortable making racist comments about Black American workers with cheering from his country. The irony of their indignation at having racism thrown back at them.
Cheap illegal or visa sham workers were generating huge profits and the method moved up the skill chain. Now all American workers are denigrated and as usual the seed was racism. America needs to change or it will be buried due to racism and greed.
8
Americans want cheap food. This requires cheap labor, because generally speaking for specialty crops such as fruit and vegetables, the biggest expense is labor. These jobs require skills learned over many years, and are also very grueling. The average American worker is simply not capable of doing these jobs. Migrant laborers were indeed exploited over many years. However, in many places the pay is decent and farmers want to keep year around employees in order to assure a steady supply of labor. That being said, most of these people also voted for Mr. Trump - who was very clear what his policy was regarding immigration. I'm not sure why people like Ms. Raby are surprised that Trump is cracking down on illegal immigrant labor. If the cost of labor goes up significantly, many smaller farming operations will go out of business. This impacts local areas, as population continues to decline, schools and other small businesses will close. Mega farms do not add to the community. However, let's be clear: immigrants working on farms by and large are not "taking our jobs". People from urban areas are not going to relocate to a rural setting to milk cows, work in orchards or pick lettuce. Either the cost of food will rise as farmers have to pay higher wages and participate in the costly visa program, or farms will go out of business, meaning that more of our food supply is imported.
16
I didn’t hear dairy farmers complaining when Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian dairy. Maybe the reason why they can’t get enough workers is that they can finally compete on price and there is now more demand for their products. That’s not enough for them, however, because the workers are demanding their fair share of the profits and better working conditions which these greedy farmers would deny them. The NYT, though, will side with the farmers because it fits their anti-Trump narrative.
5
The article neglects to mention that upstate Congressman Chris Collins (quoted here) bears significant responsibility for this pain. He was the very first member of Congress to endorse Trump for the Presidency. He lent his full-throated support to Trump's "throw them out" message all through the campaign and Trump's early time in office. The farmers in Collins's upstate district are paying a terrible price. Collins efforts to remedy the problem he helped create are far too little, far too late. As niece of a former dairy farmer in that region, I can only feel sadness for the struggles of those impacted.
12
Here's an idea: have processing centers at the border that has theaters that show detailed video footage of daily life and work responsibilities for your average dairy worker, fruit and vegetable picker, etc. Have able bodied men and women desiring entrance agree to a set amount of time as an indentured servant working in one of these jobs, say 5-7 years, and submit to some sort of chip monitoring system similar to what we do for our pets, get them in the system, and bus them to their job at a farm that provides shelter, food and basic medical. These farms will no longer get subsidy checks from the government..just workers. Leaving this job site would be equivalent to escaping prison and treated as such. At the end of their indentured servitude with good behavior they will earn citizenship. The farms will have workers, the people desiring to live in the US will earn their citizenship, and Americans will have their milk, cheese, fruit, and vegetables at a reasonable price. They come anyway..this way it works for us. They would be welcome to view the work required and conditions and be free to turn around and not get on the bus of course. Would this satisfy the people that are so worried about immigrants getting a free ride?
2
@Lisa Randles
So, effective enslavement for agricultural workers? Why not just take people out of prison and put them in your new system of convict labor camps? After all, those people are sitting in jail getting a free ride - better that they work for “us”, right? What about the undocumented workers who toil in the hospitality industry? You know, the ones who clean and cook and do groundskeeping for places like Mar-A-Lago? Will there be a video and the offer of “indentured servitude” for them as well? Or will convict labor be an option in these jobs as well? The inhumanity of this idea is appalling.
7
This article confirms my theory that exploitation is built into almost every industry - agriculture, textiles/apparel. I guess that is a feature and not a bug of capitalism.
13
I keep hearing that phrase "full employment". yet in 2018, 39.6 million were recieving foodstamps (12% of the US population. 73.9 million were receiving medical assistance/subsidies (23% of US population--almost 1 out of every 4 people). for 2018 approx $445 billion. will have been spent on welfare programs, representing 5.6% of all govt expenditures. that doesn't sound like full employment to me. I've been to NYC "welfare hotels" and seen multiple generations of families on welfare. they dont work because they dont have to. and the govt is basically paying them not to work. as to these "jobs that Americans dont want to do", maybe the answer is, just like during the depression if you dont have a job and theres no work where you live, you need to go to where the work is. the govt could subsidize your move but you get a job and off welfare. choose not to move or work, benefits reduced or eliminated. this will fill many of those jobs Americans dont want to do with...Americans. and reduce welfare spending. this wont work for everyone on welfare, disabled or elderly and some others, but it will work for many able bodied welfare recipients. and it provides a better solution to 2 issues than what we currently have with 2 broken systems
11
The majority of people receiving food stamps and Medicaid have low wage jobs. Our taxes subsidize billionaires who want cheap labor.
22
Contrary to what many commentators have asserted, the United States does not need unauthorized immigrants to sustain economic and population growth. We can attract all the legal immigrants we want anytime we want by raising legal immigration quotas.
We are often told America would starve without unauthorized immigrants who work on U.S. farms. Unauthorized immigrants make up 26 percent of U.S. farm workers, but according to the Pew Research Center, only 4 percent of unauthorized immigrants are farm workers, So we could deport 96 percent of the nation’s 11.5 million unauthorized immigrants without hurting farms. Many Americans who oppose illegal immigration would accept that solution.
17
“What we really want is some kind of method of getting foreign workers legally,” Mr. McMahon.
If this door cracks open slightly, just imagine all of the other businesses that will grab a pry bar to open it wider.
The government is not responsible for supplying you with workers at a price that makes your business case work.
13
Then get ready for $20 gallons of milk
5
Wake up America. You need immigration to supplement your workforce.
16
@Liz McDougall
You are a Canadian so I have to wonder if you know what you are talking about. Canada has hardly any illegal immigrants, and chooses most of its legal immigrants according to their education and the special skills they could contribute to the Canadian economy, to their fluency in English and/ or French, and to their overall ability to assimilate into Canadian culture.
In Canada, most immigrants are well-educated, have good paying jobs, and pay a lot of taxes. Canadians do not understand what it is like for taxpayers to have to subsidize the health care, education, social services, and so on of what Yale University’s School of Management estimates to be up to 29 million illegal immigrants.
When it comes to choosing legal immigrants, the U.S. does not use a merit-based system like Canada's. The U.S. awards most of its green cards to those with a relative already living here, regardless of their education and skills, fluency in English, or overall ability to assimilate. This system of “chain migration” allows in many people who supplements the poorly-educated work force at the same time that unskilled and low skilled jobs are being replaced by robots or being off-shored to countries with cheaper labor. Even farms are becoming mechanized with drones and robots.
Just like Canada, the U.S. does not need poorly educated migrants, either illegal or legal. We should adopt Canada’s merit based system.
4
This whole subject is filled with hyprocricy; Trump has demonized the workers, but not the American businesses that hire them. The Democrats, including Obama, want freer borders, but have kept the H2-A program ridiculously difficult. Ronald Regan (yes, the same) envisioned open borders between the US, Canada, and Mexico, but the elements of his vision were not shared by either party. Gary Johnson strongly advocated for a very easy guest worker program, to include a social security number and taxpaying by workers; no one was listening, as sex tapes and illegal emails carried the day posing as intelligent discourse.
5
@Greg - But are guest worker programs temporary? Germany had a guest worker program. In the 1960s, Turkish workers arrived in Germany to fill the demand for cheap labor in a booming post-war economy. Many of them never left. Canada had (still in effect?) TFP, Temporary Foreign Worker Program, but there was nothing temporary about it. The expectation of the temporary workers was that it would be a path to Canadian citizenship. They will not leave. Edmonton, Alberta now is a sanctuary city. Sep 12, 2018 - Committee backs new sanctuary city policy for undocumented residents in Edmonton. Edmonton is poised to join the ranks of hundreds of cities across North America in welcoming those with precarious or undocumented immigration status.
6
@S Sm There was something called the Bracero program in California when I was growing up there in the 60s. Farm workers would be bussed in (legally), work, get paid, and return to Mexico. It had issues, but worked well until canceled by Gov Brown under pressure from the Lettuce Growers union. Of course, the minute it was shut down, workers came across “illegally”, and still worked. I think it’s pretty well documented that most Mexican workers don’t want to live here as it’s too expensive, and besides most have larger, extended families back home. My point is, if they’re going to come here for work anyway, and our businesses need them, let’s make it easy and legal and let those workers have job protections and pay taxes.
6
This is not new. We have been relying on illegal labor for almost 50 years. The only thing new is the virulent racism against the migrant labor force.
16
If they're not good enough to live here, how can we trust them to come here and work? These workers would have no ties to the United States - would we even allow them to bring their families? - and no reason to abide by our laws beyond whatever low salary they can get. Bad idea.
6
@Kathleen - I hate to break it to you, but you’re already trusting them to come here and work: every time you go to the supermarket, you’re buying something that one of these workers has grown, raised (if it’s an animal product), or otherwise help get to market. The workers interviewed in this article have been living here, some for years and without running amok, doing low-wage work that most Americans wouldn’t be caught dead doing. Do you know anyone who wants to spend their lives inseminating cows, or trimming grapevines, or overseeing fields? I don’t. Until we make this sort of honest work something that people can truly make a living wage doing, and until we truly show young people and their families that an honorable job isn’t always the one that’s behind a desk, Americans aren’t going to do this sort of stuff, and they aren’t going to want their kids to do it either. So maybe you should redirect your focus on asking those in positions of power - including the agricultural industry, because they’re the ones turning a blind eye to these workers’ legal status - to correct that problem instead of worrying about whether or not someone who’s willing to pick vegetables for a pittance for years is good enough to live here.
21
@Kathleen - I'd trust them any day over the ignorant bigots who vote for Trump and expect me to pay for their health care etc.
20
@Kathleen
What makes "them" not good enough to live here? Is it the way they look? Is it because they are usually very poor? Does "them" include Canadians and Europeans who are here illegally also? Besides, "they" have very good reason to abide by our laws -- get caught or noticed in any way risks getting deported.
7
theres a flip side to the immigrant worker issue that never gets addressed. the standard line is, without the illegal immigrants there would be no one to do the work. Americans dont want to do this work. know why Americans dont want to do this work? in 2018, 39.6 million people received food stamps, 73.6 million received medical subsidies, and 9 million received housing benefits from the federal govt. for 2018, $445 billion will have been spent on welfare assistance, 5.6% of total govt spending. during the great depression, Americans moved to wherever there was work. but today the welfare system is broken and Americans dont move to the work because they dont have to. if the federal govt revamped the system to make it more attractive for people to move to where the work is, it would solve both problems. a reduction or elimination of benefits but perhaps some benefit to help move could help. but if you refuse to work, your benefits will be reduced or eliminated. this wont work for every person, but there are plenty of ablebodied people who should be working instead of being on welfare. but it's easier and just as much money to stay on welfare and not have to move. these 2 issues are intertwined and need to be resolved together.
12
@bored critic
Ah, the halcyon days of the Great Depression. Is this what MAGA means? Is this the America MAGA supporters are yearning for: the days of soup lines; mass migration to look for work; and no public safety net to fall back on? Don’t despair though - DJT is certainly working hard to bring back Jim Crow, economic collapse, and American isolationism. Just like the great era of the 1930s. Good times.
5
@aem--obviously, no that's not what anyone wants to see. what benefits everyone is a similar work ethic, a pride in doing a fair days work for a fair wage. pride in being able to put food on the table for your family, without feeling the need to take charity for it. what benefits everyone is reducing the need for so many people to be receiving govt subsidies by having them working jobs that pay more than minimum wage nor less, or in part time jobs. but ask yourself, if you could work part time or not at all and have the govt pay you, what would you do? and for many people on welfare right now, their parents were on it, their grandparents were on it and maybe even more. they no longer understand the idea of pride on their work, all they know is how to maximize their handout in the system. these two issues are intertwined and need to be solved together. "go back to bread lines and soup kitchens" how could you actually even think that's what I'm espousing?
2
I can not even imagine the fear that these people must endure daily. ICE showing up at any moment to lock you and your children up; no one to help you; no one to protect you. This is the Horror that Trump and the Right Wing take delight in inflicting. Stephen Miller is the Poster Boy of today's Nazi Party; the GOP. Ray Sipe
15
maybe they shouldn't break the law entering the country
14
Stephen Miller is Jewish. The Nazi references are beyond offensive. Immigration enforcement and deportation isn’t genocide. ICE and CBP are enforcing completely normal laws.
The US has programs for legal immigration and guest workers. There are over a million green cards issued annually. Hundreds of thousands of assorted work visas issued annually. There’s a legislative process if you want to expand it.
These illegal workers and their employers knowingly violate the law for their own financial benefit. They only live in fear because they did something wrong and worry about being held accountable.
9
@H It is the legislature of the United States that has to expand/reform the green card program. For 'some reason' the Congress has been unable to write laws that redress our immigration problems. It may have something to do with lack of support from the population of the US.
4
This was a great article about the part of NY I grew up in. Farming is incredibly hard work, and Americans have become less and less willing to put in the long, dirty, back-breaking hours of labor for the low pay that is earned by many agricultural workers. These jobs should pay a "living wage" and consumers will need to pay more for their food to make this a reality. However, even if this were miraculously to come about, we would probably still need foreign migrants to do much of the work, because with close to full employment there are just not enough workers. We need to find a fair and legal way to make this happen, so that the migrants who are hired can live their lives with a modicum of safety and security. These hard-working people certainly deserve to be treate fairly.
15
I keep hearing that phrase "full employment". yet in 2018, 39.6 million were recieving foodstamps (12% of the US population. 73.9 million were receiving medical assistance/subsidies (23% of US population--almost 1 out of every 4 people). for 2018 approx $445 billion. will have been spent on welfare programs, representing 5.6% of all govt expenditures. that doesn't sound like full employment to me. I've been to NYC "welfare hotels" and seen multiple generations of families on welfare. they dont work because they dont have to. and the govt is basically paying them not to work. as to these "jobs that Americans dont want to do", maybe the answer is, just like during the depression if you dont have a job and theres no work where you live, you need to go to where the work is. the govt could subsidize your move but you get a job and off welfare. choose not to move or work, benefits reduced or eliminated. this will fill many of those jobs Americans dont want to do with...Americans. and reduce welfare spending. this wont work for everyone on welfare, disabled or elderly and some others, but it will work for many able bodied welfare recipients. and it provides a better solution to 2 issues than what we currently have with 2 broken systems
3
interesting that the author of this article and the many commenters did not mention that the Center for Immigration Studies, an innocent sounding name, is designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Whats more, without mentioning this in the article, it gives a fringe group the air of respectability it does not deserve.
13
Of course the other costs are passed on the the taxpayer, schooling, housing, and medical.
9
@MiguelM - How? Undocumented immigrants don't get housing subsidies or medical care.
btw, the taxpayer is paying less for food because of these people.
14
@DR Please just do your research. Many of them stay indefinitely, put their kids in public schools, and receive public aid. Also, Trump just ended a tax benefit that allowed them a credit for kids in their home countries. Love them or not, they are expensive.
8
you're right that they're not being charged for housing subsidies, but we are paying for all the other things that were mentioned in the posters comments. Like Medical and schooling. If they need to go to a hospital, they don't get turned away.
6
Most people haven’t worked in field labor. Most farmers have relied on the labor of new migrants for generations.
Trump forgets who cleans and cuts and launders, who picks
and plants and brings him his food.
12
There is a 3/8/18 article titled "From strawberries to apples, a wave of agriculture robotics may ease the farm labor crunch” on the CNBC site which says machines are already in use or are being developed to pick field crops like luttuce, hard fruit like apples, and soft fruits like strawberries, tomatoes, and grapes. Machines can also plant and precision fertilize crops. Below are quotes from the article:
"Wishnatzki, who also is CEO of Plant City, Florida-based Wish Farms, said a single strawberry robot harvester has the potential to mechanically pick a 25-acre field in just three days and replace a crew of about 30 farm workers.”
"The work of one machine in large-scale vineyards can harvest 15 to 20 tons of grapes per hour using advanced guidance systems and replace work normally done by 30 or more human pickers.”
“ … a mechanical lettuce harvester with a water jet cutter is made by California-based Ramsay Highlander and costs around $750,000. Yet the investment can pay for itself within the first year for large farming operations”
Right now, taxpayers have to pay for the illegal migrants' health care, education, social services and so on. It would be cheaper if the agriculture department would make low interest loans to small farmers to buy machines that would do the work now being done by migrants.
1
This is an ethical issue - not just for farmers but for all of us who are consumers. Most civilized countries have a much better guest worker system than our H2A program. We need to be able to attract people who are willing and physically able to do the remaining, labor intensive work on farms. That should mean paying more for food and giving these workers the freedom to come and go from their home country at will. The farm industry is already investing a ton in work on further mechanization, for instance there are robotic milking systems which the cows actually like because they get milked only when they want to. Someday we might even have machines to pick strawberries, but it is really hard to get that to be functional. I'm often in fields and I see how hard the laborers work. They can make decent money when paid for "piece work", but these people deserve better from us and respect rather than the sort of nasty characterizations we hear from certain politicians who have never worked 1/100th as hard in their lives
13
@Steve Savage
Actually, it is American workers who deserve better from us and our politicians.
8
Workers are workers. The only thing that matters to the employer is how little can he pay them.
1
@Dr. John
Actually, it is both.
2
“But the good thing about it now,” he said, “is that we get paid more and this farmer is good to me.”
A sad, sad commentary on the treatment of farm workers when this is the silver lining.
14
Do Trump's policies worry those who staff Trump's properties?
Not even in the slightest. One rule for the Trumps, another for the rest of the country. The weird thing is that 40% of the country and one national new company totally supports this system, as well as 50% of the US Congress.
6
Not many (any) American will work to be paid 31 cents for picking a carton of grapes or 62 cents for a bucket of tomatoes. While paying $8 for a ride to the fields and $240 a month to stay in a boarding house with 100 other workers.
11
@Dr. John
Let's create a reality show about this and have a few Americans try it out.
7
@Dr. John
An 8/10/13 reuters article titled "In rural Maine, rise of the machines pushes out migrant pickers” said hard-working blueberry pickers could make as much as $20 an hour, 3 times the minimum wage of $7.50. Not wanting to pay such high wages, many farmers have found it cheaper to replace worker with mechanical harvesters. "The company [Maine’s 2nd largest blueberry grower] once hired as many as 1,500 handpickers, but has now turned entirely to a mechanized harvest"
4
Trump's complaint that undocumented workers take jobs from "real" Americans makes no sense when mechanized farming takes away the need for laborers. Also many jobs are shipped outside the country and a wall won't bring them back.
6
Trump complains about chain migration and hates immigrants except for his 2 wives and their families which now life in the US through the chain migration policy. Deplorable.
15
So many comments from the knee-jerk-simple-solution/complex-problem crowd of the sort:
"The market wage is the wage where people DO want that kind of work."
Will those people still buy milk for their lattes at $20/gal? Will they just accept it casually when their grocery bills quadruple? Will they just grumble a little and get "used to it"? I do not think so.
8
@MRM
You numbers and/or your math are totally in error.
2
I'm very liberal on immigration and support amnesty for most illegals under certain conditions. But I find the insistence on abusing labor just because your competition does it too, absurd. I can see this being a very hard problem in industries like construction but at least in food production you can simply start a certification program that guarantees that a product was made without abuse of human beings.
The Leftists who support this kind of abusive behavior are also against any form of legalization of these immigrants. That's because legal immigrants won't get hired in these industries, for the same reason the citizens won't - slave wages, wage theft, sexual abuse and extreme labor abuse can't be practiced on citizens/legal immigrants (for obvious reasons). It's very hard for black Americans to get hired in these industries while Hispanic/Latinx citizens or legal immigrants often hide their legal status in order to get the job. (A parallel problem of extreme labor abuse exists even in the IT industry.)
You can't call yourself a liberal if you support this kind of practice by certain industries.
5
Woody Guthrie wrote "Deportee" over SEVENTY years ago!
And we Americans STILL have not figured out how to treat our brothers and sisters to the South like humans.
One day we'll let America be America again, and perhaps we'll actually become a great nation.
But it can't happen with this so-called leadership, no matter how strong our economy seems to be.
8
Ironically the only one showing real leadership here is the president.
2
It is ironic that Republicans support the wall and tough enforcement but do not go after the employers who provide jobs to illegals. That is because most of Trump’s supporters are farmers who cause the immigration problem. No jobs no problem.
7
Actually, no jobs no milk and produce. Out of the frying pan and in to the fire.
3
Let them work. We are allowing a jingoistic President to hinder our businesses, our economy and our national wellbeing.
7
As a farmer myself who has worked alongside "illegal" migrant laborers I find these articles and the following comments both interesting and depressing. I don't know a single small scale farm that is subsidized by the government and while the idea of mechanizing is an easy call for someone who's never farmed in there life, it can be prohibitively expensive for a small farm. The fact is all these issues are cyclical...big conventional farms are subsidized by the government, driving down prices on most fruits and veggies and milk that the vast majority of people in this country buy and eat. Smaller farms rely on labor to get the work done, often bringing you a product that is healthier and more nutrient dense but also a little more expensive. Yet, most consumers balk at the idea of paying $4 for a bunch of carrots or $10 for a gallon of milk. To hear some commentors say "there isn't a job American workers won't do" makes me laugh. While there are plenty of small scale, organic farms staffed and owned by white Americans you would he hard pressed to find ANY white people, especially Americans, out in the fields picking those big red, conventionally grown strawberries that you all love. Most white American workers won't work hard manual labor jobs for minimum wage with no overtime, paid vacation and no guarantee of year round work. We are all reliant on migrants to feed us and until you're either growing all your own food or buying from a small organic farm, please, shut up.
25
@Erik Americans won't even work for $22.50 an hour plus $2,000 sign on bonus here in Iowa so we import people from all over the World including Mexico. Storm lake, Iowa speaks 18 languages and 80% of schools are immigrants who work in Big Ag. The immigrants are happy to make over 20 dollars an hour.
11
Well said. I’m a building contractor and carpenter in California and the problem, while not as dire as in farming, is becoming problematic. I’m white, born in California. I’m 49 and easily outwork the rare white 20 something that ends up on my jobs. Without workers from Mexico and Central America, who as a rule are reliable and hard working. nothing would get done here. In my experience, whites don’t want this work. It’s not the pay since a reliable, hard working carpenter can easily make $35 or more per hour in the Bay Area. Electricians and plumbers even more. I think young whites don’t want it partly because of the hard work but I think it’s also that the work is thought of as work for brown people.
15
Farms are subsidized by the government. Crop insurance is one program. I know about this because the FSA sends me a check every year.
2
To me, the farmers who voted for Trump are getting exactly what they deserve. Good for them!
15
Ignorance and lack of empathy and critical thinking is what Trump's entire anti-immigrant policy is based on. He gives simple answers for complex issues and his audience buys it even if it is infeasible and counter productive. The 2020 election cannot come soon enough.
7
Interesting. I do not see immigration enforcement in the oil fields of SE New Mexico and Texas.
12
..several instances in which the NYT (seemingly despairs) because farmers "...didn't really have a choice but to H-2A".
If the law is 'exploitive' (a very wide definition applied by progressives), then perhaps we can change the law.
4
Let's give Eladio Beltran the work he has always done and wants to keep doing. Migrant work is "stoop work", documented dramatically in the black and white photographs of Dorothea Lange, an exhibit of which we are privileged to see here locally at Lebanon Valley College, PA. My daughter once tried picking turnips and lasted one day (and got one dollar per bushel). Work dignifies. Farmers hold a powerful card here. There should be amnesty for the workers they have found to be reliable and faithful. Let them continue to contribute to our economy.
10
"Supporters of stricter immigration policies said they were sympathetic.."
Who is "they", Ms Goldbaum? Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors restricting immigration?
It's no coincidence that Krikorian favors mechanizing and growth in the equipment industry. Then, the farmers have to borrow from banks; small farms still lose; and farm land with ag-exemptions converts to fully taxed property.
Yeah, Red farmers should thank Saint Krikorian for a splendid lamp to light their way. Blue farmers can continue to tell Pope Trump where to store such a lamp.
5
You know, I can't quite work up much empathy for the rural agricultural communities that helped elect Donald Trump, and now complain that the practices and rhetoric he's pushing are putting them out of business.
These people are complaining about it because it affects THEM. Other than their own personal interests, they seem to be fine with everything else that Trump does to others.
19
Wow! Do any of you remember the pushback Caesar Chavez got with the grape boycott and his push to unionize farmworkers? Sometimes farmers have mistreated farmworkers, the bracero program was rife with corruption and mistreatment of farmworkers. "Grapes of Wrath" anyone?. We need comprehensive immigration reform. Ask Mitch McConnell why that hasn't happened. Even now with farmers trying to pay fairly it is backbreaking difficult work and those who are willing to do that work should be encouraged. Maybe this is part of a plan to destroy the small family farms so that "Big Ag" can acquire them at bankruptcy prices. I'm not sure that isn't so. Small farmers/ranchers, (while I often disagree with them politically), are an essential part of America and it's economy.
12
@6Catmamdo
"Maybe this is part of a plan to destroy the small family farms so that "Big Ag" can acquire them at bankruptcy prices."
Yep, "Trump turnips" has an appealing sound to it.
1
The problem here is that (citizen) dairy farm workers are not paid enough because the farmers are exploiting a captive undocumented population. They are not paid enough because dairy is too cheap.
Raise the prices, and start paying (documented) workers a living wage. Problem solved.
5
Except that raising prices is NOT a guarantee that workers will be paid better. Unscrupulous farmers and agricorporations could be pocketing that added revenue themselves.
5
What dairy farmers?
We've lost over a thousand dairy farms in Wisconsin the past two years under Trump, and the ones left are mostly getting by on family-only labor.
Trump's trade war might kill the industry before a dearth of cheap labor can.
12
I have incredible empathy and sympathy for the folks who come here to work very hard in order to support their families--particularly because the US destroyed jobs in their own countries by subsidizing our own agriculture and by not taxing carbon emissions.
However. Importing millions of desperately poor people to work CRUSHES wages. Period. It is immoral for business owners to hire people they know are not here legally and they know it.
The simplest and most moral way to handle this situation is to throw anyone who hires an undocumented person in jail. Those jobs would vanish overnight, and guess what, so would the illegal workers.
I personally would follow up with cutting all subsidies to our own farmers, and with a significant carbon tax (which is just another subsidy to farmers, drivers, and heavy industry), but really the most important thing is to harshly punish the American business owners that traitorously hire people they know are not citizens.
6
I’m not understanding you, you state that “it is immoral to hire people that are here illegally” and that the moral solution would be to “imprison farmers that hire illegal aliens”. Moral law is derived from natural law which states that for humans the achievement of happiness and living a flourishing life would supersede is natural and cannot be impeded unless they will be committing an immoral act.
Speaking along the lines of natural law, immigration law is derived from legal positivism where it is a law because it is written and not because it is moral. Therefore in the school of natural law since it would inhibit a humans achievement of happiness and living a flourishing life it would be considered an immoral law.
Also people seem to forget that immigration law is civil and not criminal unless you cross the border outside of a point of entry without inspection. So no you cannot throw “illegal immigrants” in jail because they’re here unless provide them with an attorney as is within the constitution.
5
This is going to continue as long as immigrants can be used as pawns by politicians on both sides. No politician really wants to fix the problem. Republicans and Democrats both need divisive issues lest we wake up and realize that they only care about themselves and their own power bases. Over the decades, both sides have had opportunities to pass immigration reform and both have declined to do so. Shame on all of us for not demanding more from the people who represent us.
7
'We didn’t really have a choice but to use H-2A'. No industry that currently uses undocumented workers is going to use legal workers until they are forced to. The dairy industry had a significant year in dairy exports in 2018. All this is about industries making more money and consumerism. When are we going to talk about the connection between consumerism and the destruction of our planet.
10
As it has been for many years, farmers/business owners are complicit and break the law just as the immigrants do. Consumers aid and abet by demanding low cost food and all sorts of products. It is clearly a systemic problem that requires reform of the law. Criminalizing people who want to work doesn't make any sense. Allowing businesses to break the law while demoniac get workers doesn't make sense either. Of course, "common sense" has been lacking in politics for a long time...
3
A nearby farm has used the same migrant workers for more than 25 years. The owner told me, right after the Trump inauguration, that she was petrified that the same five workers would not be able to return (summer 2017). The same five workers had become "family," she told me. They had started working with this farm when they were in their early twenties and were now in their late forties. The farmers had watched them grow, had built a place for them to live, had become acquainted with their families back in Mexico. They came at about this time every year and returned home after the harvest. The farmers sent them home with Christmas gifts for their kids. "They are such hard workers," she told me, "and good men. We love them." She was so concerned about what Trump would do. Up until that point, she said, they filled out the paperwork and everything worked out.
I haven't talked to her since that time, but I'm not sure whether or not those same five men were able to return. She had also mentioned that they tried to hire local people, but no one wanted to do the work. Last week, I drove by the place, and their sign said "HELP WANTED." I wonder if that means their five men couldn't get back in this year.
What a mess for our farmers. And yet, let's give huge subsidies to big corporate farming conglomerates, right?
11
Maybe she should not rely only on "Help Wanted" sign visible only to locals who happen to drive by her farm. Perhaps if she advertised in the various help-wanted venues/sites used by most people looking for jobs, and offered to help transport/relocate migrant workers from within the US, she would have better luck and simultaneously help not just her farm and our economy, but also the numerous American human beings suffering from un- and underemployment and the poverty and resulting ills that go with it.
2
Poverty also comes with low wage jobs.
@MSW She has done that as well, according to someone I know who talked to her about it (I have not). She has also, according to my friend, contacted the Department of Labor to hire unemployed New Yorkers. Please don't assume that because they run a farm that they're not in the 21st century.
3
There have been legal worker programs that made it easier to bring agricultural workers into the US. We should make it easier again for workers to get a legal document that workers can use to get ag jobs, so they and their employers can have some security and live without fear. It also would give immigrant workers some security of having some rights and not being taken advantage of in wages, housing etc.
Wouldn't it be better to have all these workers in the system?
The choice is simple. We import the workers or we import the food. Canada and Latin America can supply all our fruits, vegetables, nuts, meat, eggs, wine etc. Agriculture is going down the tubes under Trump. Should we save it?
2
It is hard to change an eatablished way of doing business, however corrupt it may be. If we pay living wages for picking fruits in the field, and provide health insurance and retirement plans, as any decent employer should, the prices for farm products would immediately doubled or tripled. It would have rippled effect throughout the economy.
3
This happens in a lot of places, including Florida which has relied on illegal workers to the point where the former state agriculture commissioner killed the e-verify bill some years ago. But this needs to stop. It leads to exploitation of the workers who come here and let's be honest, they are underpaid, live in fear and are exploited in so many ways. If Americans are unwilling to work for these wages, then farmers need to raise the pay and Americans must be ready to pay more for food as farmers will try to pass it on. If there are not enough workers, why can't these farms apply for guest workers, which is done in this country? The illegal part of all of this needs to stop -- and it should begin with the president and a federal law requiring all businesses to use the e-verify law with tough penalties for all violators.
15
Remember that much American produce comes from big corporations operating what are essentially plant or animal factories; and that want to see big paychecks and bonuses for their executives and attractive returns for their investors. They will charge what the market will bear in order to increase profits. The consumer does, therefore, have some role to play in the setting of prices.
4
This makes to much sense for the Times ...
2
@gmt Yes-and as we know now-there are some small businesses owned by multi-millionaires who employ young ladies- immigrants- to perform services for old rich men-who may not want to have those services performed by US citizens. Although some citizens do nevertheless.
The farmers "need" these workers only because the workers are exploitable (will work for less money and vastly fewer benefits, and for longer hours and under less safe conditions). It is shameful for the employers -- be they farmers, construction companies, restaurants, housecleaning and maintenance agencies, nail salons, etc. -- to shirk their legal responsibilities to and for the workers they hire.
It is also troubling and hypocritical for politicians and advocates (supposedly) for undocumented immigrants to defend or try to distract from the unlawful manner in which these workers entered and/or remain in the U.S. by claiming they do jobs American citizens won't do.
American citizens have done and would do those jobs if they weren't structured to exploit people. And by arguing that it's ok and even necessary to our economy to allow undocumented immigrants into/to stay in the country because they'll work in exploitative positions, those advocates and politicians are effectively condoning employers' flouting of important and hard-won employment and health & safety laws, as well as the abuse of vulnerable populations. In so doing, they also help to make those jobs unattractive or untenable to citizen workers and, in a vicious cycle, make transforming those jobs into non-law-breaking, non-exploitative employment -- and thus palatable to citizen workers -- very difficult, and effectively de-incentivize employers who would have followed the rules of law and ethics.
10
Farmer says "I like Trump, but now this is going too far." So putting kids in cages is ok but maybe let them out during the day to pick this farmer's grapes? Its hard to be sympathetic: pay the wage that attracts the legal worker. Price your product accordingly. To say "no one would pay $X for milk" is nonsense. People will pay what it costs and if all producers are forced to pay legal labor, then we will all get used to higher prices for milk and cheese. My guess is that for the farmer its not just about wages but about working conditions and the ability to bully and exploit workers.
14
The way this works is if you can't find workers you improve pay and benefits until you find workers. There are no jobs Americans won'd do, there are wages Americans won;t work for. If the farmers can't find workers I have no sympathy for them, because they're just looking for cheap labor to exploit. In fact they are making the exact same arguments plantation owners in the south in the 1850s made for supporting slavery. Their arguments weren't true then, and they're not true now. These farmers don't care one bit about their workers, they care only about exploiting desperate people to line their own pockets. They truly are deplorable.
15
Again -- this is ALL about the sociopathic billionaire corporate class.
Corporate and centralized industrialized agriculture. The Corporate model places profits over people. Our food is produced by using illegals at slave wages. They have bought politicians who in kind remove regulations, so our food is now disgusting, laden with chemicals, fillers, antibiotics and worse, and in such filthy unregulated conditions that contamination frequently cause public health outbreaks and crises.
We must go after the Corporatocracy!
11
Agreed. If any farmers should get subsidies it is the smaller family-owned and/or organic farms that still produce food under natural conditions, not giant agribusiness farms. Along with Universal Health Care and unionized farmworker jobs, I would be happy for subsidies to go to family farms to pay a living wage and benefits. We would probably then have a mix of American workers and legal guest workers. Of course then we might have to spend less on weapons to pay for it but why not? You can't eat a missile.
5
The ones from a few years ago still have families with many children who are collecting full social services ,medical, housing ,schooling ,everything ,hundreds of billions annually from the US taxpayer. This is not an innocent ,crying in your milk situation. The ones who now are illegally rushing the border are coming ,not presumably,for free everything ,well advertised in their home countries.They get ,immediately upon entering more benefits than any senior ,veteran or any american citizens have ever dreamed of,subsidized by the US voter. Who did the work a few years ago before the sunnami of immigrants Why do we need ,all of a sudden ,15 thousand cows ,producing 24/7? We now have suddenly ,in the east tens of millions of new ,undocumented residents having dozens of offspring each ,who undoubtedly need vast quantities of milk and every other product.
8
@Alan Einstoss
your rhetoric is completely false. You forgot to mention that immigrants buy groceries, pay rent and taxes, and generally return to their home countries.
They have made American rich and even your friend Trump employs them at his resorts because he knows he can pay less.
I have worked with immigrants from all over for 35 years in the food industry.
Never saw one sitting around collecting anything.
I saw then work hard for little money,
6
@Carla Of course ,I was a contractor years ago and worked with many undocumented ,several were close friends. they received housing funds ,rent ,food stamps and generally did not pay any taxes because they worked for cash ,often to stay under tax guide lines or for contractors who they were contractors to.Unfortunately you really don't have any factual information to contribute to this post.Thank you.
1
They are working. If they were not needed they would not be working.
This "undocumented immigrant" thing - is this someone that came to our country legally and can't find their passport and paper work or- are they what the United States government refers to as, illegal aliens?
Here's an idea, let's gain total control of who enters our country before we start doling out jobs. How's that for an idea?
12
"It has long been an open secret in upstate New York that the dairy industry has been able to survive only by relying on undocumented immigrants for its work force."
Remind me again, how d all those people in upstate New York vote?
Last time I looked, it was painted RED on the map, as in people there vote Republican.
Anybody else notice a logical disconnect?
14
Actually it was painted GREEN for Bernie. I’m with her only extended as far north as Westchester.
@Arugula Fan
You are talking primaries.
i am talking general elections.
2
Can't they give all their workers Green Cards so they can work legally?
4
@fritz Immigrants planning on working here apply for a green card from Immigration Agency. There are restrictions on who gets a card, for how long, etc. You can Google it or ask Melania.
@pat smith
Asking Melania will not help. She got her green card by virtue of marrying an American citizen - a wealthy, socially prominent American citizen. Gold digging (of the finding a rich spouse sort) is a fairly specialized way of obtaining a green card.
So is this article supporting NO minimum wage? Raising minimum wage may result in increased costs of goods, which is essentially the same arguments here for allowing illegal immigration. Very confusing. Especially when illegals would undercut minimum wage workers.
4
Finally a trickle of truth about the immigration fight!! The "illegal" immigration acceptance has gone on for years because the ag industry wants cheap labor. California is the worst offender. And these immigrants live and work in terrible conditions. They are, essentially, indentured servants! Politicians have partnered with the ag industry over the years, and turn a blind eye while touting the importance of immigration control. So many layers to this problem, and none of them good!
12
It baffles me how someone whose business relies on labor from illegal immigrants would vote for Trump. You think you could do anything more to completely vote against your own interests?
12
So let me get this straight - these farmers:
1. Voted for Republicans for state government
2. Voted for Republicans for the House
3. Voted for Trump
And they are now surprised that the Republican anti-immigration policies and Trump's wall rhetoric are affecting them? Were their neurons not firing when they caste their votes, or are their educational backgrounds so weak that they can't determine how a specific policy would affect them? It's really hard to have sympathy for a group of people like this.
Several people have stated that Americans would do the job if it paid enough. Let's conduct a thought exercise. The median family income is $59k in this country; would you do a dairy farm job that requires working 18 hours a day, 6 - 7 days a week for $59k? You can't say you are being underpaid since you are at the median income level, and this median income includes people who are working multiple jobs and putting in 16 hours a day. I'm guessing most people will not take the dairy job for $59k. What will you do it for? $100k? $150k? What's that going to do to food prices? How will people who live paycheck to paycheck afford the higher food prices? What will they skimp on to buy the same amount of food they do today?
The immigrant workers are not being underpaid today, and no American would do these jobs for a reasonable wage. Instead of whining about this, fix the immigration system so these workers can come and work here in peace.
5
“The more productive policy response would be subsidized loans to invest in machinery for small-scale farmers, rather than revising how we import foreign workers and perpetuating the labor-intensive old-fashioned way of doing business,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors restricting immigration.
What elitism. His idiotic comment shows that he has never been on a farm that is labor intensive. He wants farmers to buy robots to herd their cows in!?!
He also thinks that farmers are dumb. Farmers will always automize when it is feasible. They are as intelligent as other business owners. As an aside, subsidized loans are socialistic so I guess some forms of socialism are ok with him.
Yes, raised as a cheesehead I have been on many farms and my grandfather owned one.
6
@Independent Thinking The NY Times just had an article a couple of months back about how advances in AI like robotics were being introduced to address the agricultural labor shortages due to increased immigration enforcement. There have been a couple of articles in other publications that have noted that there are now robotic milking machines. Rather than continue to exploit illegal alien labor, what we need may be financial incentives to encourage farmers to invest in these technologically advanced machines that can replace these laborers.
@Les Smith, Thanks for the response. I have read those articles too and the farmers are taking advantage of them. My point, was that there are some things that robots cannot do, right now, like herding cows. But my point also was that farmers are not stupid. Thanks again.
1
"Without a legal alternative to informal migrant labor, the competition between dairy farms to retain migrant workers is so fierce that farm owners, once notorious for underpaying and mistreating workers, are now improving working conditions and wages to entice employees to stay on their farms, workers said."
Oh NO! Not that. Why, if the spigot of illegal workers were cut off completely, wages and working conditions might increase enough to attract legal workers! Who would want that?!
"Progressives" foam at the mouth about Wal-Mart, but they, at least, hire willing, legal workers. Illegal "immigration" is this "Wal-Mart issue" on steroids. Farmers get the benefit of the labor and the local schools, hospitals, and taxpayers pick up the tab for supporting the entire family.
We should cut off illegal "immigration" completely and let the market adjust. Different ag products, different approaches, whatever it takes to operate without illegal labor.
10
The elephant in the room is that all those crying 'injustice' when the illegal folks are being chased, rounded or something like that, stuff their pockets quite nicely with paying the illegals little ( very little?) and having no obligations whatsoever. And then they say it's not them hiring illegals, it's the necessity. Yeah, sure … how convenient ...
But I'll also say this - I do believe that the majority of the illegals are hard-working and honest people who just need to get some documents.
7
Is suspect that McMahon is collecting taxes and social security on his undocumented workers along with probably paying lower than average wages because they are flying under the radar. They have fake socials security numbers and will never collect SS, and he knows it.
The logic escapes me but then we are taking about liberals and Republicans alike who take advantage of illegal immigrants in the US.
Fix immigration by only allowing immigrants to come here legally...let them fly above the radar and take advantage of everything the United States has to offer them and their families. Really....who are the racists here.....It's not Trump.
3
Republicans have folded their arms and refused so far to deal with problems like this, sort of like their approach to health care in this country. They stick their fingers in their ears and only pull them out when being addressed by one of their corporate sponsors or PACs.
8
“We’ll have detractors on both sides,” said Representative Chris Collins, a Republican in western New York.
This is the same Chris Collins who has been indicted for conducting insider trading while standing on the White House grounds, and lying to the Feds about it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/11/nyregion/chris-collins-new-york.html?module=inline
But he got re-elected anyway.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/nyregion/chris-collins-mcmurray-election.html
Mr. Collins, who was the first member of Congress to endorse Donald J. Trump for president in 2016.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/nyregion/chris-collins-insider-trading.html?module=inline
Mr. Collins’s case has also raised ethical questions about the propriety of a member of Congress, sitting on the House committee with jurisdiction over health care companies, being not only the largest shareholder of an Australian drug maker, but also a member of its board, good-government advocates said.
5
Yup, The real reason for illegal immigration is their illegal employers. And this is why the jails are filled with illegal immigrant gangs. Because after the first decade of back breaking work, the second generation take to violence.
Punish the employers and it will stop. And pay more for your lettuces but less for the consequences of violent crime.
12
And how many of these same farmers, from NY dairy farms to WA cranberry bogs, voted for Trump? Enough to put him in office. They didn't think he meant "their" immigrant workers, just those "rapists and criminals." If you want reasonable immigration policy, vote in enough Dems to make it so.
6
Defend the farmers and the business owner while demonizing the immigrants, that's the narrative we have heard for years and helped Trump get elected. How convenient and how hypocritical.
5
"Trump Crackdown Unnerves Immigrants, and the Farmers Who Rely on Them"
"Trump Crackdown Unnerves Illegal Immigrants, And The Farmers Who Take Advantage Of The Illegal Cheap Labor They Provide"
There. Fixed it for you
7
Why would Kelly Raby have voted for Trump after he promised to deport her workforce? Typical of Trump supporters.
8
Not to worry - she's on the fence right now....
4
The American agricultural community has throughout its history relied on cheap temporary labor. The worst incarnation of this was slavery. Sharecropping came along as a replacement. Agriculture's temporary workforces were always drawn from the poor and powerless. There was no ethnic or race requirement. Poor, in need of work, the ability to follow the crops and live in tenuous conditions qualified you. The source for indigenous workers in the 48 states dried up and to a large extent Latinos filled the gap.
True, mechanization over time has replaced a lot of manual labor but there are many jobs machines can't yet do and probably never will. So who is going to pick our fine fruits, trim the orchards and milk the cows? It reminds me of a song by Woody Guthrie (circa 1940), "Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)". Give it a listen.
5
PEW Research says less than 5% of illegal migrants work in agriculture. Please do not think that it is necessary to protect all illegal migrants to keep farms and ranches in business.
7
What "rights" is ICE violating by bringing illegal immigrants to justice? Foreign nationals conspiring to subvert US law do not have any rights.
4
@Swaz Fincklestein I would agree with you if the farmers also go to prison. Why should they get a pass?
4
I grew up in a large agricultural community in south central WA state. Agriculture was the sole, major industry. For decades, the ranchers and farmers enjoyed the benefits of a low-wage, underground labor force that was mostly made up of undocumented Mexican immigrants entering the U.S. illegally. Those migrants worked long hours, and endured the hardships and indignities of living in the white man's world. The decades-long bounty of that community was built almost entirely on the backs of those undocumented migrant workers. The white folks "winked and nodded" all the way to the bank, and then always seemed to disparage those workers in the off-season.
8
The comprehensive immigration reform, on table for decades, has been eventually blocked by GOP multiple times. First, they thought that beating up on unresolved immigration, and blocking it at the same time, would be an excellent and effective campaign argument to win. And it workd. Second, it would become imposible to pass and still leave farmers with cheap labor for ever. Now the issue hit the wall and the scary but effective campaign argument of amnesty will need to become a reality. There is no way around it.
1
Maybe the dairy farms need to be closed and the owners offered training in another area where there is a huge demand, such as digital technology. Dairy is not healthy and if people did the reading and found out the hellish live of cows and their baby calfs, it would break their hearts. Don't delude yourself into thinking that these cattle farms are all light and pretty. Dairy milk is for baby cows - it's not meant for humans. The people working at the farms illegally would need to either return back to their native homes or figure something else out.
5
If you can't run a business legally, you can't run it. Pay more for the labor and there won't be shortages. Prices will increase but so will the money people can spend.
13
I believe we should welcome immigrants into the US, especially if they are coming looking for jobs. I'm not interested in spending 14 hours a day picking cherries at breakneck speeds, or slicing beef at breakneck speeds, or cleaning up hotel rooms after frat parties, or vacuuming my office building at 9PM. The only changes I believe we need are to make sure all those people are paid fairly.
7
If dairy products fetch so little at market that farmers can't afford to treat labor decently, then there is an obvious oversupply of milk. Farms should be going out of business, not being propped up by workers who are afraid to go to the grocery store.
8
@Andy Oversupply of milk is indeed causing dairy farmers to go out of business, and in large numbers. The first casualties tend to be the small producers most NYT readers would prefer to support. Some giant dairy operations in the western states milk 10,000 or more cattle, whereas in upstate NY a 5,000 cow dairy operation is still considered quite large -- and is quite big enough to be a significant odor and pollution problem for neighboring residents.
Organic dairy farms are smaller by necessity because the cows must have access to grass, but that market is becoming saturated, too. The grass-fed organic milk dairies are paid the highest per gallon, and they are struggling as well. It's both a financial and social crisis in our rural area, where dairy is historically a significant part of the economy.
4
When I was a teenager growing up in Oregon, every Summer school buses would pick up nearly every kid in town at 6:00 am and haul us out to the bean fields. It was hot. It was dusty. We worked hard all day and earned a whopping 3 cents per pound. Our backs and fingers hurt at the end of every day.
Is that kind of child labor even legal? No parent would let their kid do that now. Nor would they want to. I can't even say that it built character. It was just grunt labor. I hope that migrant laborers are treated better now than we were then. And I hope that we can find a way to let them do this kind of work because not one of us wants to go back to doing that.
At that was the pleasant work. Who wants to work in a slaughterhouse? Not many North Americans.
8
Agriculture should be treated as a national security asset. It needs to be protected and nurtured. If big ag needs workers we (through our government) should make sure they get them.
On the other hand - car washes, restaurants, hotels, custodial services, gardeners - those are NOT national security assets. Undocumented aliens working in those sectors of the economy should be arrested and repatriated.
3
“I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways, but I’m more on the fence about him now,” Ms. Raby said. “I don’t want to lose the immigrants who are working here and growing our food.”
-----
How many times have we seen this? Trump's great for American until . . . they're personally affected.
I struggle with sympathy, sorry to say.
14
@James Cameron
Exactly! Was not Kelly Raby listening to Trump when he ran for president? Did she not think about Victor Pacheco, a valued employee when she voted? Do you really think she thought he was here legally? I don't "struggle with sympathy" towards people like her. I have absolutely none!
4
For decades we have allowed farmers and food processors to exploit poor immigrants to work in these industries, to the point that we now have millions of undocumented people living here. This problem will not be solved until the government(us) demands that working conditions be safe, humane and fairly compensated. See the Edward R Morrow TV program "Harvest of Shame" from the early 60's.
Will this raise costs? Yes, but it will also increase the living conditions and wages of millions of people, who in turn will add to the overall economy.
What we have under the current condition is not unlike the benefits of cheaper prices for cotton that existed because of slavery.
By the way, this hands off the treatment of labor now has spread to many other jobs that used to have protection against exploitation.
4
Still, these areas generally supported Trump over Clinton in 2016, sometimes by a wide margin. I feel bad for the immigrants; the farmers, not so much.
10
Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors restricting immigration, is quoted suggesting mechanization and consolidation of farms, rather than the hiring of an alternative work force of Americans, as the end result of a more restrictive immigration policy. The policy is sold to us as beneficial to American workers. If not American workers, whom does it benefit other than big agribusiness?
2
Artificial "low" prices are there to keep wages artificially "low." Manufacturers & corporations have made a deal with the devils.
For 40 years, China's labor force (as well as other low-wage places) have supplied Americans with cheap goods. Those obsolescent low-priced goods gave Americans the illusion of buying power while their wages stagnated & froze. It was a cleverly calculated scheme: American workers became complacent about getting higher wages for their higher productivity. The only winners: corporations.
1
So many good points below related to the absolutely appalling position that our public policy as put our undocumented workers in. My sympathies are with these hard working people who toil away to keep our prices low. Where I have ABSOLUTELY NO SYMPATHY is with the farming community which is well known to have supported trump. If their businesses fail, let that be a morality tale for voting for a monster who promised to do what he's doing to your livelihood.
12
Undocumented workers don't toil away all day in order to keep prices low; they toil all day in hope of making enough money to feed and clothe and shelter and get medical treatment for themselves and their families (and, after that, to enjoy a nicer life style). The reason they work so hard and so long is because most of them work under exploitative conditions that include any manner of ways their employers use to compensate them less and demand more from them than they could get away with were the employees citizens or had lawful work permits. The fact that prices for end-users might be lower may be a (non-guaranteed!) consequence of these folks working longer and harder, but it is most definitely the reason these workers are doing so.
2
The pro-crackdown forces are apparently not aware that many of our larger food producers rely upon or are conglomerates of smaller farms. This isn't simply a matter of telling small farmers to buck up and buy more machinery. Labor will always be a vital component of producing quality food, and nothing surpasses food production in importance. I have talked to many farmers who cannot get enough labor to run their farms because many American citizens turn their noses up at the work. Even farmers who have doubled the hourly wage can't get the labor they need because underemployed people in cities don't have the transportation to get to the farms. ICE invasions are not a solution of anything.
8
Very good and important point about lack of transportation and other kinds of systems to make decently-compensated farm work accessible to un- and underemployed city-, and even suburb-dwellers.
2
To some extent, the farmers brought this on themselves. According to the linked article "Long Days in the Fields, Without Earning Overtime”, as recently as 2014, N.Y. farmers lobbied to keep laws which said it was not necessary for them to offer overtime pay or disability insurance. They treated their workers poorly. Now that they are finally improving working conditions and wages, they might be able to hire citizens and legal residents.
A Statista web page, titled "Percentage of unemployed who were jobless for 27 weeks or longer in the U.S. in 2018, by age group”, says over 20% of 25 to 34 year olds fall into this category, as do larger percentages of older age groups.
Our government could help dairy farmers find workers among our long-term unemployed citizens and legal residents, and help the new employees relocate to farming areas. In the long run, this would save our country money as we would not have to subsidize illegal migrants and their families.
6
Gee. I don’t know if I believe this story, since farmers of the Midwest and rural California voted in 2016 and still do vote solidly for Trump.
None of this supports the statistics of how Trump won or how people think. People say a lot of things that they don’t mean and that are just not true.
Even though Mr. McMahon seems worried about an audit, there will likely be none. This is not Trump’s style. It will be the immigrants that they come after. The farmers will be heroes. The farm-business will just keep humming along with the next set of illegal immigrants, like it ain’t nobody’s business.
5
The point is that with the right pay, any number of inner city unemployed people will likely work.
The argument that the employer wants to play less for the labor is a common one, and one that Cesar Chavez (if he was still alive) and all unions in america would have a huge problem with.
A recent example is the car wash industry around NYC. It's clear to everyone that many car was places were underpaying their employees and also using illegal workers to reduce their costs. Once enforcement actions for minimum wage was put in, the car washes either want for machines for automated exterior washes or went out of business.
Saying employers need cheaper workers is an old issue, and no doubt with the current low unemployment rate and record high in unfilled job postings it is difficult for farmers.
If this requires a policy change in today's extreme low unemployment rates, have congress implement a migrant worker visa program for farmers on top of H1B currently used for high-tech workers in Silicon Valley.
There is no excuse to have undocumented people who are paid under the table.
On the other hand, I seriously doubt that unions and congress will actually accept the premise that migrant workers should be brought in just to lower wages --- the unexpected consequence of doing this would be to drive wages down for other existing legal workers.
2
Then come up with a system that fills the labor needs in a legal way. I find it hard to believe that successful guest worker programs don't exist in other countries.
4
I'm bi-statel to the extent I hail from Oregon but reside in southern California.
From the produce growers here in the Imperial Valley to the Orchardists in the Pacific Northwest, fear is gripping the agricultural industry.
Climate-change induced drastic, erratic and unpredictable changes in the weather is a major existential threat but Trump induced drastic, erratic and unpredictable changes in America's trade and immigration policies will take them out before that can happen.
5
You do your readers a disservice by quoting Representative Chris Collins as if he's some sort of normal Republican congressman while failing to point out that Rep Collins is currently under federal indictment for insider trading.
Republican voters returned him to Congress in spite of the indictment so that he can continue to cast votes against New Yorkers' interests in immigration reform, abortion rights and gun safety.
9
Do the families of ICE buy and drink milk and other
dairy products? Soon food will become very expensive
and or not available at all.
4
Sounds a lot like pro-slavery arguments.
If people are expected to live and work in the US, they should expect to be paid a living wage.
If a living wage were paid for farm labor, I suspect US citizens would be willing to do the work. I personally know high school students who are willing to work collecting garbage. It is an otherwise unattractive job, but because of that it actually pays relatively well.
If the cost of milk or cotton or new construction goes up, so be it.
If US produce isn’t priced “competitively” then, start charging fairly for transportation and carbon emissions and unsafe conditions for laborers in China and elsewhere. Like a tariff.
7
@Katherine - Your suspicions are wrong. There are farmers who have offered double the minimum wage and they can't find U.S. born citizens who will do the work.
Scott Pelley did an interview with a strawberry farmer some time ago who had this problem and it's just one of many such stories I've seen and read.
7
@DR
Then if we are to eat strawberries we need a system where non citizens can work legally, and for a living wage.
Green cards?
Braceros?
A system that forces family farmers to be lawbreakers isn’t right.
5
In the '50's, there was the Bracero Program that brought workers up from Mexico to work the crops, and then took them home when the season was done. I think the farmers blew it with horrible working conditions and the program was stopped along about the mid-60's. I was too young to remember details. But, it was a system that helped the farmers, the workers and kept their families together. I don't know why that kind of program can't be put back into place.
7
“What we really want is some kind of method of getting foreign workers legally,” Mr. McMahon said from his farm in Homer, about 30 miles south of Syracuse.
The simple answer is to pay more, and you won't need to get "foreign workers" because more US workers will take the job.
Pass the cost on to the consumer, who pays more for gas than milk nationwide, on a weekly basis.
Milk producers (all farmers) need to form a producers union to take a hard pricing stand against processors/creameries who refuse pricing increases.
That's the real answer- unionize ag producers. It's the only way for small family farms to survive now. And, BTW, McMahon does not have a "small" farm.
Oh... and this guy Krikorian has obviously never worked on a small family farm. His firsthand knowledge of the operating economics is glarinly deficient -
“The more productive policy response would be subsidized loans to invest in machinery for small-scale farmers, rather than revising how we import foreign workers and perpetuating the labor-intensive old-fashioned way of doing business,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors restricting immigration.
Farmers REALLY don't want to take on cycles of family debt and allow banks to control their farms.
7
One of the things that I find fascinating about the current President is the fact that so much of what he does negatively impacts those who work for and support him. Former employees and associates have destroyed their reputations and careers attempting to defend the indefensible, farmers unable to stay in business because of they can no longer count on being able to use undocumented immigrants while others watch as a mountain of soybeans rots away on the back 40; workers losing their jobs because of tariffs that make it more expensive for their employers to operate. In the meantime all of those college educated latte-sipping urban dwellers who voted for Hilary seem to be doing just fine!
17
Dairy farmers spend millions of dollars every year lobbying congress. They may "rely" on illegal workers. If so that's a feature of the system they've built.
I understand that a few farmers can't buck the system and pay a living wage to legal workers. They would be undercut by their competitors.
But, farmers' organizations could have lobbied congress to get enough enforcement that new workers' documents would have been examined within, say, three months of hire. A farmer who wanted to break the law and hire illegal workers would be faced with constantly finding, hiring, and training new workers. Simpler to hire legal workers.
Yes, we'd be paying 10 cents* more for a gallon of milk. And, those legal workers would rely less on taxpayer support. I'll make that trade. I expect that total milk sales would hardly be impacted by that 10 cents.
-----
* 10 cents x 2,500 gallons per cow per year x 100 cows per worker = $25,000 per worker per year. Add that to the wages the farmers are already paying illegal workers, and we get a living wage in rural America.
8
Many comments here reveal a lack of understanding and total lack of empathy for dairy farmers. People who think that farmers would be fine if they stopped whining and invested in tech such as robot milking machines or paid a higher wage to lure workers are blind to the reality of life in rural areas.
The labor market for dairy farms is limited to family members, people who already live nearby, or people who are willing to live in on-farm housing. Almost no one wants to get up at 3 am to work with large, smelly animals. Even if wages were higher, there is no public transportation to help people from more densely populated areas who might be willing to give it a try. Even the undocumented workers mentioned in this story generally prefer to work on larger farms, so they can be near other non-English speakers.
Milk is sold by farmers in units of a "hundredweight," roughly equivalent to 12 gallons. Non-organic dairies were paid $27/hundredweight a couple of years ago but the price has fallen to $12/hundredweight, less than the cost of production for most small farms. Family farmers in my area are going out of business and cannot find buyers. You can blame President Trump's erratic and destructive trade war with China and/or the Obama era nutritional myopia that led school lunches to eliminate whole milk as an option. Our national farm policies encourage giant dairies that milk thousands of cows and generate more sewage than a modest-sized village.
13
@Susan Galbraith I used to live in your neck of the woods (Chateaugay) and agree that there is a total lack of understanding as to what goes on on a farm. I grew up in Trout River on the Canadian side with 125 head of beef cattle and horses. From the time I could stand on the clutch of the tractor and before I could lift 70lb bales of hay I was put to work helping during hay season. Even on a small farm when you just needed a couple of extra hands it was near impossible to find people to work. I just shake my head at people who talk about the politics with absolutely no knowledge of what it is actually like to live in remote rural areas just trying to make a living and raise a family.
1
The man who owns the stables where I keep my horse (the man is a long term Hispanic US resident) says that it is impossible to find help around the barn (cleaning stalls, feeding), and that Trump's actions will make it worse. I feel for him. It will affect his business, and everyone else connected including horse owners - getting good care for horses is tough. Trump is going to make it worse for my horse too!
6
I can remember when many Americans did this work and part of the civil rights movement was getting better working conditions for them. Many poor black and white Americans were migrant farm workers so it is a myth that Americans won't do this work. Improve the working conditions and labor.
I also continue to grow my own vegetables. The real question is why we don't have agricultural programs as part of the school curriculum. Inner city kids need to learn this skill also and I think many would enjoy it. Why isn't that part of the Green Plan ?
13
@Hellen - I'll bite. Find me some articles about U.S. born citizens who will do this work. I've come across several articles about farmers who pay well but still can't get U.S. born citizens to harvest their crops.
9
@DR
A simple basic. search of American history ,which would include civil and labor rights, will find all the articles you need.
The denigrating of American workers is not new. My grandparents who were Union organizers had to battle it and I saw it continue with Reagan.
The difference now is that no one fights for American workers. Democrats, unions, liberals , and even many conservatives are all advocating for
illegal immigrants. I have even seen civil rights organizations do,more for them.
It's a disgrace and all about money.
The disdain for American farmers and their employees always astounds me.
Where I sit, right this moment, it is lunch time. I hope those of you writing your negative posts about farmers aren't dropping to many crumbs in your keyboard.
9
Undocumented workers is modern day slavery.
13
No wonder the president is not in a good mooed these days.
6
"The fears weigh on Mike McMahon: If one of his undocumented workers gets a traffic ticket, it could prompt an immigration audit of his entire farm. If another gets detained by immigration agents at a roadside checkpoint or in a supermarket parking lot, the rest may flee. And if his undocumented work force disappears overnight, there is no one to replace them."
Mike McMahon should be contemplating those problems from a jail cell. Farms receiving Federal subsidies should be required to certify that their labor force is American or is alien, but working under one of the many programs permitting aliens to work in our country.
7
So get documented. What's the problem?
Is there any good argument which supports allowing people to illegally sneak into the country?
9
@MIKEinNYC
Do you really think it's easy to get documented ? Immigrants who enter this country illegally have no path to legalization - none. Not even if they were brought here when they were babies.
3
@SI Girl
They can hire a lawyer and get this done legally. Otherwise, bye bye. That's what lawbreakers get for illegally sneaking into the country.
1
Trump's crackdown is destroying family owned dairy farms, family owned seafood operations (crab industry in the mid-Atlantic), and family owned vineyards. This by a man whose rich elite class resorts and golf courses have depended on migrants to make him richer.
I worked fruit farms during summers when I went to college. Really, really hard work, even at 20 years of age. Those were also the days when 12-15 year olds delivered newspapers. Those days are long gone.
Immigration crackdowns on agricultural and seafood businesses aren't the end of Trump's policy damage. Do you need landscaping? Roofing? Your car washed. Do you want those days to also be long gone?
Wake up America. Wake up Trump voters.
12
Most businesses in the US would financially benefit from undocumented labor. You can cheat and abuse them with impunity, you can threaten to turn them in for not obeying your wishes and commands. This is what I would expect from a Trump supporter who owns a farm and uses immigrant labor. So I am sorry but I cannot sympathize with their plight.
11
Undocumented workers (people) have been at the foundation of US agriculture for 100s of years (remember slavery?). Neither Democrats nor the GROP have been able to properly engage these people. But, today, they continue to provide a vital component in NY, WI, IA, CA, WA and in many other states.
Most Americans truly have no idea these people exist.
6
Americans will take on these jobs, but not at the slave wages enabled by the hiring of illegal immigrants.
And to support this work being done by Americans — if American shoppers are not willing to pay an extra 25 cents for their tomato or an extra $1 for their chicken - well shame on them.
9
@Dr. John, it's not the consumers who are at fault. It's the producers seeking to maximize their profits.
3
@mark
What business does not maximize profits — but legally?
1
@mark
Except that it is partly our fault. We want things cheap. We also elect unscrupulous morons who serve the interests of large corporations and foolishly rich people instead of creating laws for the benefit of all individuals and society as a whole. And we’re too lazy to hold them accountable.
At some point we have to look in the mirror and shoulder some of the responsibility for the mess we helped create.
2
I live in Trump/Conservative Dairy country in Northern Michigan. Three years ago my son-in-law walked away from the family farm he was groomed to run. He's been shunned ever since. Many young men here are walking away from the stress, the low income and the 24/7 schedule of the family farms. Children were a reliable labor source for farmers for decades. That's no longer a viable option. Farmers have increasingly relied on immigrant labor. My daughter is an English professor and the head of the local literacy counsel. They used to teach English to the local migrant farmhands. Then ICE swept through. Those that weren't apprehended left too.
Yesterday in our local paper's want ads was a huge ad for the dairy farm around the corner. They said they needed 70 (70!) new hires. That is unheard of in this area and I promise you that farmer will never find 70 local white folks to fill those positions. Are you wondering if my farming neighbors still support Trump? Yes they do. And they'll tell why. Hillary murdered unborn babies and ripped away their body parts.
19
@Julie R
Like the bumper sticker says:
"Critical Thinking - The Other National Deficit."
6
Why is this so complex?
I don't know what to say to Mr. McMahon but that you are facilitating a criminal act... and by extension you are committing a criminal act.
4
During World War 2, able bodied workers were transported to these farms to provide labor to help farmers, during a time when food production was of critical importance. Photos of these workers have appeared often on Shorpy.com .
This is the true emergency—not building a barrier on our border with Mexico.
5
It is 101 miles from Homer to Watertown NY. Watertown is still well below the Canadian Border. So, if ICE can operate only within 100 miles of the border, what are they doing in Homer, NY
7
This is not about being a racist and hating people of color although that is what the media wants us to believe. It is about the powers that be exploiting workers and creating a permanent disenfranchised underclass. They don't want a solution. They want us little people fighting each other for the scraps.
5
This article perfectly encapsulates the hipocrissy of the American immigration problem, that's why comprehensive reform will never happen. Let's not forgfet in 2013, under Obama the House passed a Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill which would have been a good start to dealing with this devisive issue. Mitch Mcconnell refused to bring it to the floor of the Senate for debate, ammendments and a vote.
While demonizing illegal immigrants for political gain (Trump and the GOP) they block any attempt to possible solutions. The truth is that they want the continuation of the status quo which provides a large force of cheap labor, without benefits, or job protections working as indentured servants for the construction, service industries of the border states and the dairy industries of further North. disgusting!
9
Hey members of Congress, eat any fruit or vegetables lately? If so, I'm assuming you are prepared to go out to America's farms and pick produce from sun up to sun down and milk a lot of cows to make your immigration dreams come true. This country's immigrants perform the hard back breaking work no white people would do. What, no takers?
10
They could hire Americans, but the young ones would rather go off and study Gender Studies than work in a farm.
Since they are off at NYU discovering their gender, you need Mexicans to do the hard work.
If they would be willing to do these jobs, you would not even hear this is an issue.
5
Never, ever have Americans been hired by farmers to harvest American produce nor to work the heavy labor on farms! Look it up! Mexico has been providing workers, American farmers paying slave wages for over a century!
1
It’s long been an open secret that exploiting cheap foreign labor is how Americans maintain their comfortable standard of living.
8
@God exactly. And that was how in the 19th century, the US was able to corner the worldwide cotton market - slave labor. Americans have never really paid for what they have.
3
"I voted for Trump but I don't want my cheap labor taken away." Face...palm.
15
Without undocumented workers, Iowa's dairy industry would also fold. Anti-immigrant zealot Steve King has been turning a blind eye to this issue, especially since Devin Nunes' family relocated their California dairy operation to Iowa a decade ago.
11
Ms Raby in the story said she voted for Trump but he could destroy her business. Why did she respond to Trump and support his racist rhetoric about terrible people from Mexico stealing American jobs, when she had personal knowledge that this wasn't based in reality? She needs to look inside herself and consider why his ideas resonated with her so well. "I made a mistake" would be a nice thing for her to admit, and to work against the damage her support of trump costs her own life, workers, and business.
11
Seems Trump Supporter and Apologist #1, Devin Nunes, has some answering to do about employment on his family's farm as well.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23471864/devin-nunes-family-farm-iowa-california/
Oh the hypocrisy!
10
The hypocrisy of American business. This farmer is in violation of law. The feds need to arrest this guy this week. American employers cause the undocumented worker ‘problem’ and then you and I have to pay for this reckless Trump immigration policy and stupid wall. American employers and our neighbors caught hiring at the Home Depot should pay the immigration costs. A fine of $500,000.00 per undocumented employed would solve and stop the employer created magnet that every poor person in world knows about. If you make it to America, there’s an American employer or American citizen who’ll hire you. Let’s solve the root of the problem. Our own fellow American companies stabbing us in the back.
6
These "illegals" are doing this nation a tremendous service, working jobs that few American citizens would accept at salaries that even fewer would tolerate. They contribute towards the economy and in most cases towards the tax base. For gosh sakes, let them come out of the shadows and apply for legal immigrant status! Those who compain about "amnesty" have obviously never exceeded the speed limit or crossed a street when the traffic light wasn't with them. Those who haven't committed violent crimes shouldn't be hounded out of society by useless bigots and nativists.
12
@stu freeman
"working jobs that few American citizens would accept at salaries that even fewer would tolerate."
I am assuming that the migrant labor are being paid the legal minimum hourly wage.
It's the same wage that many Americans are working for in other industries so what is the difference in regard to this form of employment ?
@Glork: In many cases they are NOT paid minimum salaries. Inasmuch as they're undocumented who could they possibly complain to?
1
This is such hypocrisy on Trump's part. His businesses hired undocumented workers and kept them employed for years. His businesses knew their status because the workers claimed they were told to get better fake documents. His businesses also apply for H1-B because they claim they can't find Americans to work in positions like front desk clerk or food services, yet never advertise for the jobs. He keeps railing against immigrants when his golf courses and hotels are dependent on them. It is all right for his businesses to use undocumented workers, but other businesses which actually need them are barred. This is a cover for his promise stated over and over again that Mexico will pay for the wall. Now, he has to declare a fake emergency so we, the taxpayers, will pay for it. When will his followers realize he is an unethical liar and cheat and stop following him blindly?
9
The "Center For Immigration Studies" wants to make farming "more competitive globally" by getting rid of small farms! Their sole agenda is reducing immigration and making ANY justification , no matter how specious.
3
Americans are too lazy to do hard labor for menial wages and no benefits so that’s why we need to exploit foreign labor.
5
Americans want their cheese but are absolutely not interested in the work involved on a diary farm. Add to this the animal CRUELTY involved in an industrial dairy farm = we should all switch to nut milks and nut milk products.
Of course, being human, we will never make the intelligent choice here
@Zenster - I like almond milk but it's not perfect, it takes a lot of water to grow almonds and someone still has to harvest them.
3
Still waiting to see all the anti-immigrant fellows who support their fearless leader's call to "Build the Wall" lining-up to take the back breaking jobs in agriculture and food processing that are going away, since this hysteria over illegals was first trumped-up. And just curious if the Red State voters who enabling this hysteria to continue are ready to start paying substantially more for their grocery bills if they finally get their wish?
4
People like Ms. Raby are the problem. They vote for trump and Republicans against their own best interests and think that the only negative results of that poor decision is that others and not themselves will suffer the negative consequences. What did they think building a wall was all about.
9
The hypocrisy of Ms Raby is amusing to me. Elections have consequences. I hope she gets everything that’s coming to her for the vote she cast.
9
Upstate New York has no shortage of unemployed workers - at least that's my experience with recent visits to Buffalo. So why do dairy farmers depend on imigrant labor. Beating a long dead horse, but still failing to get the point across to many Americans, the answer is simple: Not only are unemployed Americans largely unwilling to do the work, most simply don't have the skills. Working a herd in a modern dairy, besides being hard work also requires knowledge of animal care, husbandry, stable management, FDA approved handling practices and more. Likewise in other parts of the country, equivalent skills are needed to successfully produce crops. People just don't jump on a combine the first time and are instantly useful.
Migrant farm workers do work hard, often for meager wages and carry a skill set that, depending on the job, may take years to learn.
No doubt these are valuable workers that aren't easily replaced.
14
Both my parents were born and raised on farms. Every summer we visited our grandparents farm. I also had a grand aunt and uncle who owned a well known successful landscape service.
The real issue here is that farmers would have to pay higher wages in order to attract people who are in the country legally, whereas illegal immigrants will accept low wages.
Higher prices to workers would mean higher prices for all of us at the market.
Bottom line .. the real debate should be over whether or not we think it is appropriate to pay wages no legal workers will accept because we want cheap groceries
7
There are whole industries and sectors of our economy that thrive on illegal immigration besides agriculture: home and building construction, food processing, accommodation/hospitality, and landscaping/maids. It is unfair to provide these jobs to illegal immigrants, to benefit from their vulnerable and undocumented status, and then to demonize them for coming here. Illegal immigration also hurts the low-skilled workers that are already here.
Fixing illegal immigration means Democrats need to accept the higher costs for services and goods from the above while Republican business owners need to pay higher wages to legal workers.
6
Whatever happened to green cards that enable those looking for work to come to the US, and if in southern CA, go home at night to be with family? Oh, right, it's still in place and called the H-2A process.
What has changed with this temporary Visa process is the regulations around it, or should I say 'cost and bureaucracy.' Sadly, with the government's hand in all, the process is 1000 times more expensive and bureaucratic since the 70s. Shame on Congress. We had a good system that helped all sides until they stepped in with red tape and requirements for money that is so difficult, you need to hire a company to help.
Is there anything that Congress can improve or will they just continue to spend and charge for inefficiencies that astound the average person?
2
You reap what you sow - or who you vote for, as evidenced in this story. I have no sympathy at all for these farmers who have been long been subsidized by the government. Wonder how well they pay their workers - certainly not American wages, I'm betting.
8
The irony is Trump sought concessions from Canada for access to the Dairy market, and now we see that the American Dairy industry is built upon low-cost immigrant labor; and Canada is supposed to compete fairly with that. Grumble, grumble.
6
"This has left her uncertain about the future of their family farm and the president she helped vote into office.
“I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways, but I’m more on the fence about him now,” Ms. Raby said. “I don’t want to lose the immigrants who are working here and growing our food.”"
Oh - I didn't realize his policies would affect me! I thought they would only affect other people.
18
Prosecute employers? Employers will go belly up and their businesses will move abroad one way or another. The former undocumented workers will remain in their own countries working for those businesses. Great plan.
4
"competition between dairy farms to retain migrant workers is so fierce that farm owners, once notorious for underpaying and mistreating workers, are now improving working conditions and wages to entice employees to stay on their farms, workers said."
In other words, they exploited the workers, and by implication, Americans wouldn't take those jobs due to poor conditions. So, how about if they improve wages and conditions so Americans will take those jobs? Are they just clinging to the supposed necessity of foreign workers in the hope of continuing to some degree in their exploitative ways?
9
@CarolT I agree. Can these farms survive and pay a legal wage? It doesn't look as though they have ever tried.
5
This article shows why we have illegal immigration and how to easily stop it: prosecute the employers.
Our illegal immigration policy attacks the supply of illegal labor. The problem is that the supply is desparate people that feel they have nothing to lose. They aren't susceptible to the pressure.
The employers ARE susceptible to pressure. Lock up farmers, landscape business owners, slaughterhouse owners ... illegal immigration would be decimated.
But politicians aren't going to do that. Instead they will villify and persecute the half of the equation that is powerless and is red meat for the anti-immigrant crowd that is a good chunk of the base.
Republicans treat this just like the drug war. Rather than focus on programs to lower demand in the US, they will instead focus on the foreign supply which is easy to demonize. They don't want to end illegal immigration, which would be easy if they went after employers en masse.
We need to do one of two things (I hope we do the first):
1. make it easy to hire laborers legally for these jobs;
or (2) go after the cause of illegal immigration that is actually susceptible to pressure: the demand.
11
Farm jobs are held by H2A workers and undocumented immigrants because there is very few US citizens willing to take those jobs. If wages were the reason, US citizens would already be taking those jobs for the wages. I've visited farms that pay a base wage significantly (5 to 6 dollars) over the state minimum wage. If wages are at piecemeal rate, it can reach $20/hour. But instead, I see US citizens working jobs at minimum wages at McDonalds and a gas stations. Why? Because picking vegetables, pruning grapes vines, and taking care of cattle are physically demanding, and often season jobs. Yet we all depend on the care and hard work these migrant and undocumented workers do to create our food.
10
@Farm Auditor Thank you. It’s not just the wages, it’s the work. People are dreaming if they think that there’s a ready and sufficient supply of competent, reliable, hard-working Americans that could meet the needs of Our nation’s farms “if only” the wages were higher. $15/hr.? Nope, wouldn’t work. Offer people $25/hr. and they’d still wilt in the sun their first day in the fields or quit when they got their first blister.
I hope the next Democratic administration reigns in ICE or disbands it, since threatening families or harassing and jailing hardworking immigrants is not what I want my tax dollars wasted on. I'd also like to see a sensible immigration policy that enables agricultural and other seasonal workers be given seasonal worker Visas. This would help support American consumers as well as immigrant families.
5
“I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways, but I’m more on the fence about him now,” Ms. Raby said. “I don’t want to lose the immigrants who are working here and growing our food.”
TFW you realize that Trump is NOT the answer. I guess each Trumpster will have to figure that out for themselves. Medicare, taxes, factory closed, no cheap immigrant labor, etc etc etc.
16
If laws have been broken, when will we see business managers taken to jail?
17
Two policies would increase dramatically the chances of generous regularization of illegal immigrants in the US. Better border control (add in visa overstays) and a significant period of time before considering ultimate citizenship. Illegal immigrants are not delusional about why their status is illegal. They did not elect to enter illegally or overstay their visas as a logical manner to become US citizens. Twenty or thirty years is not going to be seen as a burden if they can work and live legally in the meantime.
2
Why hasn't the guest worker program evolved to help meet this kind of labor demand here? The wages farmers pay do go a long way for immigrants who *return or eventually return to their countries of origin, but not sustainable for long-term living or raising a family here. How do we not have a better system to connect immigrants to these jobs, without them paying thousands to be smuggled across the border, without them being exploited if it's a more formal contractal agreement, and without them overstaying when the work assignment is done?
5
Whatever happened to the Dems and their desire to stand up for labor? Instead, we get constant calls to invite people to push down wages, overcrowd local schools and only survive by working off the books and using welfare. What on earth is that? Since when did Dems get comfortable telling the working class we aren't working hard enough?
And before you tell me they don't get welfare they do. Look at sanctuary cities where the red carpet is rolled out for them while the real costs are passed on legal, law abiding Americans.
Stop with the identity politics. It is killing the Dems. Unless you're here legally you should have no right to access our labor markets.
6
The Dems? Really?
I hope that when the chicken comes home to roost - and t will - that it will all the folks who flame conflict between Americans that feel the effect first.
Instead of uniting us, these people who. Any see past their noses keep escalating the divide. I guess we won’t be happy until everywhere is a war zone.
The farmer is breaking the law. The farmer is using cheap illegal workers to make more money. There are people that can work his farm that live here legally.
I am sick of hearing the illegals take the jobs that nobody wants. They take the jobs nobody wants at the wage offered. Raise the wage and you will get workers. And then maybe we won’t have the flight out of the rural communities.
I am fine paying more for milk and farm products in exchange for legal labor. The farmers that hire the illegals should be thrown in jail. His actions and the actions of many like him put the honest farmer out of business. And here in this article we portray this farmer crook as some kind of humanitarian. They are law breakers to a higher degree then the illegals they hire.
27
If you're not here legally, you are not an immigrant. No one has the right to simply decide our immigration laws do not apply to them personally.
15
Good Lord, you voted for him. Enjoy the suffering. You wanted it- you got it.
32
You never have to look very hard to find hypocrisy and irony in the debates about illegal immigration. This article was replete.
11
So what is America’s new immigration law going to look like once Democrats take over again? Just walk in, head to the nearest post office and fill out a postcard sized form and you’re a citizen?
5
@God You are not god. And no one is talking about citizenship. Many people live in the United States without becoming citizens. There are many kinds of visas allowing people to live, study and work here for long periods of time. These arrangements need better oversight and regulation. The economy of the United States (and the rest of the world) depends on the work and education of people from many areas around the world.
6
The collective memory of our Hispanic arborists up here is irreplaceable. They know each of thousands of trees, have pruned them for generations. Unlike DJT et al they work for a living.
16
@northlander You knew this and yet you have not nurtured their legally entitled successors.
1
if your company can not provide jobs for americans than maybe you should not be in business at all
3
Love to see you shopping for products made by only American citizens.
3
I find it supremely ironic that the morons who advocate a wall and deportation of those already here and working, wouldn't EVER be seen stooped in a field on a 100 degree humid day, picking lettuce or onions or fruits....
Nope.....MOST white "Real Americans"...the ones who clamor the most for the "wall"... are too interested in staring at or diddling thier phones all day, finding out who won on "the Voice" last night,or listening to hate radio and TeeVee for hours on end until thier brains are so pickled with hatred they can't see straight.
NO white teenager is going to work at the gut factory, clean out underground manure tanks, pluck chickens, slit cattle's throats, or do the dozens of other disgusting jobs that "illegals" do.
They do it because no one else will, they want to earn money more than anything else to send home to make thier families better lives too.
And the businesses that use them, they who do ALL the dirty behind the scenes work, need them because....well read the first two paragraphs above.
Sure. Send them all back or jail them. Put up a wall. But don't think there'll be too many designer foods available for lunch. And don think YOUR kid will be next in line to change the sheets in the housekeeping department of the local one- hour hotel, that have been well used the night before.
I guess people assume the other brown people already here or born here will pick up that slack.
17
@Ignatz There are people my age, still in the workforce, who did farm labor in the summers during their high school and college years long ago. We know it can be done.
What has happened is the labor rates have not changed significantly while tuition and other costs have increased.
8
@Margo "Long ago". We had 10+ percent unemployment rates, rapidly expanding labor force cohorts, large families with too many mouths to feed, and low wages in the good old days. And these dairy farmers don't need summertime students, they need year-round employees. If you think it's so wonderful, btw, why did you quit?
2
So The NY Times stands behind “slave-type” labor with low wages over an increase in food costs. Seriously, we would all be better off if we automated our farms and quit relying on desperate people living illegally working for low wages and subject (by law) to deportation from the country. Oh, and quit worrying about food prices. Americans are not going to starve. The majority are overweight for heavens sake.
11
I'm old enough to remember the field behind our house in the Finger Lakes being ploughed by old Bill Crowley shouting "Gee!" and "Haw!" behind a single-share plough and two draft horses--Jenny and 'Lizer. The small, self-sustaining family farms of my childhood are long gone.
The work is still back-breaking, and the larger farms that resulted from the buyouts of the smaller ones need more people to do the work than the family alone can provide. The automation required to obviate the need for more people puts all but the largest farms deep in long-term debt.
Many commenters have pointed out that we have always depended on cheap labor, which was true of small farmers even then. Neighbor kids loaded wagons with straw and hay baled from that same field; I also remember black migrant workers coming to harvest crops such as beans. But just as small businesses could not compete with big-box stores, so those small farms were swallowed by bigger ones, and now the bigger ones are not big enough to survive.
The answer seems to be agribusiness--automated production of our food in the hands of fewer and fewer corporate entities--unless we consider the Canadian model presented here by several commenters.
2
How much are these farmers paying per hour? Nowhere in this article does it mention the hourly rate. I worked on farms in upstate Michigan and the pay was good. The farmers I worked for weren’t greedy and still got a good deal for there crops. I certainly don’t agree with Trump and ICE and I have little sympathy for the farmers that voted for Trump
( as if they didn’t know his anti-immigration plans) but we need to have a full and open discussion on how many workers in “every occupation” is needed and the wages offered. The US Chamber of Commerce has fought this discussion and releasing this data for decades, as has the GOP. By the way
I also know how to inseminate cows and clean their hooves but I have my own business now so I don’t need the job. Folks, there is an answer.
8
If Americans started paying a living wage for farm labor, restaurant work, landscaping, and construction work they’d be in the poor house themselves.
2
Do you have any idea how much a Journeyman Union carpenter makes? $35-$45/hour, plus benefits. More if it is prevailing wage. They used to, but now, an illegal alien will do it for $12 with no benefits, it pretty much makes that Union carpenter unemployable. Unless he takes a 50-70% Pay cut.
3
I guess I don't understand why farmers can't get legal immigrants. If there's objection to seasonal immigration permits to work farms I don't understand what it could be. The only objection I've heard to immigration is people overstaying their visas or sneaking into the country, where we don't know who they are, where they are or what they're doing. To me the whole thing is controlling the borders not blocking immigration.
3
@THOMAS WILLIAMS
Have you ever applied to get H2a visas approved? Very limited, not easy. By the time you get people yr crops and business up the creek. The visa system and limits are broken. NY alone probably has 50,000 plus illegal laborers, with visa limits of around 15,000
1. Yes , it is easier to ignore for the farmer,
2. Yes we need to invest in an updated streamlined visa system, make sure legal wages paid, taxes withheld, while getting labor in as needed.
Prices will go up a bit, Citizens should be assured a fair market, immigrant laborers should be assured fair treatment. Silly me, this use of cheap labor has been ongoing for hundreds of years.
5
@THOMAS WILLIAMS Except that the administration you elected believes in blocking all immigration (other than Ivanka and Melania), apparently because they don't want more minorities in the U.S. Trump (and his minion Stephen Miller) would be happy to have Norwegian immigrants, but Norwegians are not interested in moving to a country with a lower GDP per person and no national health care. Meanwhile, we are close to full employment and the young working-age population is starting to decrease.
2
@THOMAS WILLIAMS
A farmer friend tells me it’s because of skills. The same knowledgeable “illegal” Mexican individuals who come seasonally year after year. Vs some “legal” African people she employed one year who did not know what they were doing.
We need to recognize farm jobs as important and not unskilled, pay employees a living wage, and accept higher prices at the grocery store.
“This has left her uncertain about the future of their family farm and the president she helped vote into office.
“I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways, but I’m more on the fence about him now,” Ms. Raby said.
the same people that voted a mentally unstable white nationalist into office are now losing everything they’ve worked for their whole lives for. Evil has an ironic sense of humor. Delicious.
21
The "farmers who need" the illegal aliens? Farmers? They're farming corporations! Not farmers. Meanwhile, these corporations are demanding subsidies drawn from our taxes. This is nothing more than corporate welfare. If this was occurring anyplace else other than the midwest, that is what it would be called.
8
I believe this article is about illegal "immigrants"? I believe this is about farmers who are -- wink, wink -- unknowingly hired illegal "immigrants"?
There should be no job in this country that can only be filled by an illegal worker. That goes for child labor. It goes for illegal labor.
10
Over the past couple years I have traveled the US on business and in discussions with contractors I ALWAYS ask the manpower question. ALL say they could do more if they had qualified help. I spoke with a home improvement company in Portland who said that if he lost his immigrant help to ICE he would be out of business. They have been steady, reliable, productive for as much as 15 years for him. The white kids don't show up and don't want to work. The PG&E Tree crew in front of my house right now is all Mexican and they work hard. I like hard working people. I don't care what color they are or what language they speak. Immigrants are the backbone of this country and there it has always been so, regardless of how they are demonized. It is the old Melting Pot!
9
@Jack Frederick Are you suggesting that PG&E is using undocumented workers?
Not everyone of Hispanic origin is an undocumented/illegal immigrant.
@Jack Frederick well said, Jack, thank you.
@Margo, No!
Are there any milk producers who are not using undocumented workers? I would gladly pay extra to buy their product!
6
Commercial exploitation of underpaid, uninsured foreign workers borders on human trafficking.
12
Farmers have said they can’t find “Americans” willing to do the backbreaking work that immigrants do.
2
I live along the California coast. Every time I drive by the Hispanic pickers on the strawberry farms, I feel flung back a hundred and fifty years to the South. And cotton farms. Is this how it was? You cantered past in your buggy with no thought to the workers in those hot fields? These men are hunched over, picking furiously, many with bandannas tied around their faces to protect them from the dust. Not really human; just part of the landscape. One huge difference - these workers are laboring willingly. They are actively seeking out the chance to work these body crushing jobs. They deserve to be treated with kindness and a decent wage.
8
I don't know if our dairy workers are "undocumented" here in Vermont but we treasure them and could not do without them.
6
America needs to decide if they want their grocery store shelves full of plentiful food? If so, we need immigrant labor. Trump would have no cream or eggs for that ice cream he so dearly loves.
7
if employers of undocumented workers need their workers they should file immigration papers as the employer/sponsor. its that simple. Filing requires time & paperwork, but a lawyer is NOT needed. It may require fair labor practices - oops!
2
This new "crackdown" on illegal immigration may fly well with the Trump core, but has never been desired by the "powers that be". By keeping these people in the shadow with the threat of possible deportation, they have been a major workforce for agriculture and other labor-intensive industries for a long time. The workers understand that if they cause any kind of trouble, it is back they go, so they keep a low profile and work hard for less wages than most citizens will accept. It keeps the price of food and other products low, and keeps the system intact. This is well understood but seldom discussed openly in California and other western agricultural states, the move to New York and the east is relatively new. Republicans talk the talk about stopping immigration, but haven't made many actual moves to stop it. Is Trump actually bucking this tradition to impress his base? Time will tell if it is real or window-dressing.
2
2300 acres. 800 dairy cattle. Yet this article seems to deal with the plight of small and/or family farms, dairies, vineyards. 2300 acres may be “small” in arid parts of the West, but....New York?
Though I agree with the comments saying a system, model, dependent on illegal labor is unsustainable, in the short term, it would seem fair to include dairy in with the favored “seasonal” laws, regulations.
And where are all the Farm Bureaus- form a program, advertise, make lists, for high school and college kids to do these jobs. Yes, actually work with sports programs, bus companies, state teen labor laws....
If conservatives are going to make fun of ‘free college’ demands, ante up some capitalistic solutions to summer jobs, saving for college, etc. Or is creative capitalism...just another phony slogan?
3
@Jo Williams -- Just what farmers need for sustaining their livelihood -- kids who work only in the summers and occasionally after school. Perhaps you are confusing real work hours, and farming are even longer, with those that congress and billionaires on executive time keep.
3
The law of unintended consequences remains in eternal effect regardless of what the wall-builders don't think about.
Congress could alleviate lots of the problems were it to back off politics of fear and loathing. Of course, Trump would have to agree. Read pork in the tree tops.
2
This article looks at only one aspect of the picture in order to focus on immigration. Totally ignored is the boost given American dairy farmers by Trump’s tariff on Canadian dairy products which has leveled the playing field for American dairy farmers who used to get killed by the Canadian competition which not only undersold them in this country but imposed tariffs and other restrictions on American dairy products in their own country claiming that Canadian dairy products were safer because of expensive health safeguards used in Canada but not in America. The cost differential was so great that American farmers could not compete but closed their farms and many even committed suicide. Trump’s tariff on Canadian products changed the picture literally overnight. Of course, as this article mentions only as an afterthought, American farmers have always exploited their immigrant laborers by paying them low wages and forcing them to put up with poor living and working conditions. Now that picture has changed because of the greater competition for labor. New Yorkers in the NYC region, however, want to pay less for their dairy and apples, but at the same time they also like to portray themselves as somehow concerned about the welfare of the illegals who, thanks to Trump, are now being treated better than ever. The euphemism “undocumented” doesn’t help either, but only makes liberal New Yorkers feel better about the cream they put in their coffee as they read the morning edition.
4
@Edward Perhaps you would care to explain how the US enjoyed a 300 to 400 million surplus in dairy trade with Canada before the new NAFTA.
Some want to restrict immigration to reduce the agricultural labor pool and force "farms to consolidate and mechanize," to make "the industry more competitive globally." Globally? Have they forgotten that most people in this country eat at least once a day? Dairy farms are literally vital to our wellbeing. They provide daily nutrition, without which our national security would be at risk. Chobani and Siggi's do very well by delivering an essential domestic service. As such, farm workers should be treated with the rights and privileges accorded other service workers.
But no, the refrain is that 24/7, backbreaking farm work will only be undertaken by foreigners, whose presence must be rigorously restricted to H-2A, a program that allows abusive mistreatment of workers and grants no path to citizenship.
Moreover, H-2A further advances an elite class in America. We'll see law firms seeking foreign paralegals to reduce costs and boost partners' earnings. Hollywood will reach out to Mexico and beyond--not for more Cuarons, del Toros & Inarritus (directors will come from UCLA, NYU, Columbia & Wesleyan)--but for underpaid production assistants of all kinds.
Those who died on Lexington green were farmers. They worked the land. They were not agri-business CEO's or executive vineyard owners. In 1775 George Washington reflected that "the once peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched in blood or inhabited by slaves." Foreign slaves are the Saudi way. RFK: We can do better.
2
@Peter Myette
How right you are.
In eastern New Mexico’s booming oil country, public schools already rely on teachers from the Philippines, who have special visas and are indentured servants in a way.
Have you ever noticed that articles like this are always about Hispanic illegal "immigrants"? Have you ever wondered whether they do this kind of work because they are (A) Hispanic, or (B) illegal "immigrants"?
The answer is they are doing the work because they are illegal. There are plenty of legal Hispanics but they won't do this work for the pay being offered any more than any other legal worker.
In the past, when Reagan passed his mistaken Amnesty of 1986, newly legalized farmworkers fled the fields for easier, better paying, jobs. They were replaced by the next wave of illegal "immigrants".
Do we want to protect the ability of farmers to continue to employ workers that are invariably illegal?
9
The fun part is if you don’t want to be a US citizen any longer it costs $2,400 now to give up you passport. Once Democrats take over it will probably cost less to become a US citizen than it costs to stop being one.
So it goes.
3
One of the commenters below notes Ontario Canada has a quota for milk producers limiting dairy farms so supposedly all can earn a living.
Here in the US the big issue years ago was famers being paid to put land to fallow. As most 'farms' are actually contract labor tied to a corporate, any government action to limit production has to be supported by the corporates and when under heaven do you think that will happen?
4
Nobody has mentioned that the level of physical fitness required for much farm work for full days/weeks of work cannot be met by many Americans.
10
@linden tree islander Lotsa people mentioned that in the comments already... Others dispute that our Americans cannot be retrained and relocated to work. Another argument is: automate, automate, automate... Europe can teach us how to have a successful (and more healthy!) food production system that does not rely on pseudo-slave labor and the importation of a permanent, unseen, worker-class in America that shares none of teh workers rights afforded to American system Change! We were promised it, and we've come to collect on those promises.
2
@linden tree islander
Is there no insult left that people will not stoop to, in order to criticize Americans at the bottom of the labor ladder? By all means, let's heap contempt and scorn on American citizens who have gotten the short end of corporate globalization's stick. After all, if they were better, deserving people, they would have good jobs on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley.
4
Follow the money, farmers broke the law for years but they vote GOP. They are running illegal businesses and they know it. They took advantage of low wages and working conditions...now they are paying the price and so will the general economy. If farmers fail so too will banks and related businesses...yet they still vote for Trump... how much sympathy should we have? And then there are those legitimate people who would rather collect unemployment than work....! What programs are there for developing other legitimate forms of agricultural labor.... what is the government doing other than destroying farms and the lives of people... Vote Vote Vote for better people in government.
5
On the eve of the vote, I ran into an acquaintance at the grocery store. She's an intelligent, moderate Republican. She mentioned that she had voted for Trump. I asked why. She said she ran a small farm implement business (it's a large business) and Trump would get them de-regulation and tax cuts. I asked, "What about your workers? They'll be deported." She laughed and said, "He'll never do that."
I feel for the undocumented people who've been an exploited, invisible backbone of economic America but a part of me hopes that greedy woman and her business get exactly what they deserve as their businesses suffer and cost go up.
22
Well, if all of those farmers decide it is just too much hassle, they can always sell their farms to some rich corporation that will either turn the land into a housing development or a factory farm.
7
Maybe all those people living in nyc housing shelters and deplorable public housing can relocate to livable wage jobs and nice subsidized housing in upstate dairy country? The metrics would definitely work in favor of both the city and the state
10
The largest milk exporters in the world are New Zealand, Germany, and the Netherlands. The US is #6. The top exporters manage to compete without undocumented workers. There is clearly something wrong with the US business model in the dairy industry.
10
@andrew The average dairy worker in Germany makes over 22000 euros a year.
https://www.salaryexpert.com/salary/job/dairy-farm-worker/germany
There are plenty of migrant workers in Europe and the need for them is growing.
1
Ironically the top buyer for USA dairy exports is Mexico.
3
It is more likely "most" farms. And it was the accepted norm that farming was supplemented by the migrant workers who came to do the work that others here chose not to do. But our country farmed and produced. And we manufactured also. Not now. If we keep changing the rules for political expediency we will become totally dependent on other countries for all our needs. That is what Trump calls trade imbalance. In trying to make things more perfect on one issue, another arises more complicated and often worse.
2
And one more Trump voting farmer finding out that elections have consequences.
Texas here is loaded with them. And now they are sitting on their crops because of Trump tariff issues.
No, I don't have any sympathy for people who can't make a rational decision when the choice was stark and simple. MAGA or keep making a living?
17
This issue represents the epitomy of hypocrisy among some supporters of forty-five. They decry illegal immigration, and yet virtually every farm in the U.S. relies on undocumented workers. Ditto for food processing plants. This article states the obvious--though it has to be stated, over and over again: Our grocery shelves would be all but bare without this workforce. The food we might have would be all but unaffordable. An entire industry would go under. Drive up and down 101 in California, or highway 99, which cuts through farm country to see the evidence. To those who say the workers are taking American jobs, try to get your kids and their friends to plant and harvest crops.
19
@kathleen cairns Food costs would, no doubt, go up if illegal immigrants were to be replaced with those workers in the country legally. It is not that Americans will not do the jobs immigrants do, the correct formulation is that Americans will not do those jobs at that rate of pay.
What this means is that your $5.00 latte may well cost $7.50, not that it will no longer be available.
3
You're post is spot on..people in this country need to figure out you can't have it both ways.
@mikecody No, they actually won’t do the jobs, largely because they can’t.
We’re not talking about some kids working on a farm for a couple of months during the summer. Employers need a steady, committed workforce.
We need to hear from more employers on this issue, particularly those who hire skilled and semi-skilled labor.
Seems everyone needs to and has to compromise.
This is an ongoing issue that needs viable solutions.
Blame. Judgment. Good guy vs Bad guy is not an approach. Democrat vs Republican not an approach. They vs Us is not an approach.
“WE” must be the approach.
Hold town hall meetings across the nation. Many voices. Hash it out. Vote. Share concerns and challenges. Consider the gains and successfully that may result.
Listen to everyone....true democracy.
We want to always work to be better than we were. Grow from our mistakes. Take risks to improve our future. Be proactive and solutions based.
WE CAN DO THIS!
8
@Kelly Clark
That's exactly right, Kelly. We elect supposedly smart people and send them to Washington to debate and tackle thorny problems and come up with sensible compromise solutions. We pay them with tax dollars to work hard and come up with innovative ideas. We DON'T pay them to posture and have press conferences, and bicker in public and tweet, and have tv hearings. Solve America's problems!!
2
So why aren't Republican politicians demanding Federal authorities fan out across America and raid all this country's countless farms and round up illegals ? Oh oops, but of course. It's one thing for a demagogue to stroke the braying anti-Mexican MAGA crowd with talk of "the Wall". It's entirely another to alienate GOP donor /wealthy businessmen who take advantage of and exploit all that oh-so-delightfully cheap labor.
17
Cheap, illegal labor that the Trump Corp was happy to employ (and to assist in evading the law) -- until they became high profile enough to get outed!
1. Deport the illegals.
2. Allow some aliens in legally to do work. Don't let their families come.
3. Pay higher wages to attract American workers.
4. Accept higher prices for dairy products.
5. Prosecute and/or fine farmers who hire illegal aliens.
Harsh? You bet. But do you want to keep your country or don't you?
16
@vbering Hello, no. 2 has already been happening for decades! Non-US citizens CAN work in America LEGALLY, but there is a process that they have to go through, called applying for a visa before you actually start working in the US. This is not an easy process and only those who are highly skilled can succeed. The employer who hires them then will PETITION the US govt to grant them visas. This IS in place already. I don't know why people don't know. Illegal immigrants are law violators and should be deported.
4
@vbering Americans won't do the jobs even at $22.50 an hour and a $2,000 sign on bonus. We have several jobs in Big Ag in Iowa and only immigrants will fill them.
2
@Jacquie
Then pay them $30 or $40 per hour or $50 per hour, whatever it takes, and raise prices on the farm products. If all producers have to do that, none will be disadvantaged.
Do people like higher prices? Heck no, but do you want to keep your country or not?
2
Why if only the country could be shed of Obamacare, then scores of real 100% murkins would flood these farms, ready for work. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2
@Cap’n Dan Mathews - I think it's spelled "merkins"
;o)
2
"....more productive policy of subsidized loans." That's China's strategy, especially in Africa, as they seek world dominance.
Here's a heart healthy plan: Train fat lazy Americans to inseminate the cows.
Then again if they got too healthy big Pharm and the medical folks might see a danger in falling income.
5
So we have dairy farmers openly admitting they have used illegal immigrants for years, that they need them because no one else will do the work. So they have been breaking the law.
Then we have them voting for Trump who ran on a platform to keep those immigants out of the US.
Now the farmers are crying that they don't have the illegal labor they need but the voted for a person who denies them the labor.
What's a guy to do?
Talk about being played. These farmers have been played big time by a New York city slicker and they don't even know it.
Suckers.
21
The jig is up. Ag employers can no longer profit from human trafficking. So what? Adapt. Pay a market wage or automate? Who cares? You weren't paying a US citizen in the first place. In fact, you were intentionally avoiding it.
Illegal aliens can no longer escape the consequences of their actions as easily. So what? You weren't here trying to become a legal citizen in the first place. In fact, you were intentionally avoiding it.
10
It would be good idea walk the walk... not just talking. Historically the so-called-real-Americans are unable to put the hours, and stand the labor conditions that undocumented workers do.
@RBR
So, it is ok to expect desperate foreigners to do work that is too dangerous or onerous for Americans? (I assume that's what you mean by "so called real" Americans.) What does that say about us? Not anything good.
2
We are playing political football with powerless people's lives while powerful people game the system. Immigration is one case where both-side-ism seems somewhat justified.
Mandatory E-Verify, stiff penalties for illegal employers and strict enforcement would satisfy the 'no amnesty' side. In return, Democrats get comprehensive immigration reform, DACA and TPS.
In late February, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reintroduced the "Accountability Through Electronic Verification Act", S. 556. This bill would require mandatory E-Verify usage. Maybe Grassley's bill could be the bases for a grand compromise. I hope so. This issue has gone on too long.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/556
6
AI will bring this to an end soon enough. Then the problem will be, what to do with immigrants without skills for the future--more Cortez 1959 Cuba socialism?
2
Where are all those laid-off auto workers and coal miners who want jobs? Do they have less gumption than immigrants do to get their butts up to these dairy farms and ask for a job?
18
@Kris: Those guys were unionized. That means: good wages, health benefits, safe working conditions. Farms provide none of those things. They can wake up and smell the coffee, and start offering competitive wages and benefits, or they can go out of business, or they can continue to hire undocumented workers on the sly and hope that ICE is eventually dismantled in the name of small government. But none of those things are likely to occur. They will lobby to persuade the government to make an exception to the seasonal work laws for dairy workers, because maintaining the status quo is what they really want.
4
Those laid off workers were making a wage that enabled them to support themselves and their families before they lost their jobs. Farm work does not pay nearly a wage that is liveable in the US. You're asking those workers to uproot and dislocate themselves and their families for poverty-level wages. THAT'S your solution? Perhaps YOU should set an example, leave YOUR job, and try living on farm worker wages?
4
An asparagus farmer near here in MI told me presciently a decade ago, “You either import your labor or you import your food.”
11
What happens when they’re worn out and need medical and other assistance? If they’re here illegally it means scamming the system, if not, they’re entitled to the benefits to which all taxpayers are entitled. Most illegals I have worked with either try to find a sponsor or squirrel away as much money as they can and return to their home countries. I have no ill will toward either group, what they do is logical. The employers, on the other hand, see nothing but the bottom line and break the law rather than admit that their business model is a failure. Creative destruction, one of the hallmarks of capitalism, is not a solution to those who get away with cheating. Open-eyed debate on the future of the unskilled working class, irrespective of race and national origin, is a taboo. Drudgery and it’s consequent physical impairment is a solvable problem. Robots, earlier retirement age, basic income, new immigration laws, sustainable agriculture, and a whole host of policies could be implemented but when it comes to helping low income people, the country has lost its way.
10
"The more productive policy response would be subsidized loans to invest in machinery for small-scale farmers." So... more subsidies to enable U.S. agriculture to unfairly compete at the international level, so that agricultural workers in Latin America cannot subsist, and then have to come here to work illegally in order to make a living? Sounds a bit shortsighted.
2
Yes, and in one of the more bizarre ironies in life, those upstate farmers, who mostly support and voted for Trump, want undocumented immigrants to pick their fruit, but they also want to build a wall to keep out the illegals. When will Trumpublicans see the contradictions and hypocrisy of their beliefs and positions?
30
Trump promises to crack down on illegal immigration, farmers vote for Trump, who then proceeds to crack down on illegal immigration. Farmers are now angry that the man they voted for is upholding a key part of his campaign promises. Do I have that correct? So rural Trump voters only want immigration when it benefits them, and puts money in their pocket? Not sure if it's possible to sympathize without having any actual sympathy..but if it is then I sympathize with them.
4
This article fascinated me because of the cognitive dissonance I saw in the run up to the 2016 election. I delivered feed to many dairy farms that had a giant TRUMP sign in their front yard while the whole farm was staffed largely with young Mexican men ! Our dairy industry in Wisconsin is over 40% Mexican labor. It would collapse in a minute if all the undocumented labor went away.
14
So, Ms. Raby is unable to find a single qualified foreman from among the hundreds of millions of Americans and legal immigrants in this country? The story should be updated to reflect that she is unable to find one at the wages she is willing to pay.
How about this? We all, as a country, agree to pay more for food and farmers agree to pay a living wage. I don't feel good about seeing inexpensive produce in the store, knowing that the price is artificially low because of the exploitation of the workers that pick and process it.
Not everyone that wants immigration reform is a racist bigot. Some of us care that our fellow humans, no matter their citizenship, are being abused and exploited for our benefit.
23
Donald Trump's crackdown and attacks on immigrants shouldn't just concern undocumented immigrants, farmers and immigrants in general, it should concern all Americans in this country, period.
This crass hate, racism, bigotry is not something American's have ever been openly proud of, it is the mindset and beliefs of an extreme minority of degenerates in our society that were typically shunned from getting attention, not celebrate by a President.
2
To all the "Americans don't want these jobs" crowd. Here's some proof you're wrong.
Amazon warehouse jobs around the holidays are GRUELING! It is seasonal work. Workers often are migratory. Develop repetitive motion injuries from scanners and walking miles through the aisles. 80 hour work weeks.
Sounds like illegal migrants would only take them right?
SO WRONG. It is mostly retired senior citizens!!! They depend on these jobs. There is a whole elderly sector culture that has sprung up around them and Amazon caters to them. They are extremely dependable and don't have school schedules to interfere.
Why? Because Amazon can't hire undocumented workers.
10
@Ignatius J. Reilly Thanks for posting- your user name reminded me it's time for my annual re-read of my favorite book!
1
They can but apparently choose not to do so. Big corporations hire illegal immigrants all the time, they just use contractors.
1
“I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways, but I’m more on the fence about him now,” Ms. Raby said. “I don’t want to lose the immigrants who are working here and growing our food.”
Code: "I didn't think he was gonna deport MY illegals!"
Now let's feel bad for her lot and the wealthy property owners who voted for this now crying about their SALT deductions. Tough, these people voted for this so she can deal with the consequences of her actions.
Digging for my tiny violin now...
17
Yeah, illegal immigrants are so unnerved a recent Yale survey could only find 22 million of them in the United States.
I don't know if this story is intentional propaganda or just the product of naive activist journalism, but in my home county in the DC suburbs of Maryland you could go to the DMV office or a local mall or any of the county social services outlets and find enough illegal immigrants to milk every cow in New York, were they so inclined.
We need an economic system that pays legal workers a fair wage, and passes those costs on to consumers.
I'd rather pay more for goods and services that live in a country where the rule of law was being mocked, national borders were ignored, my health care costs were being driven up as were my social services costs and my county schools were being eroded as the largest expenditure for two decades has been English as a Second language.
9
This story features several workers who have been in the US illegally for 10 to 35 years. What has prevented them from seeking legal status?
Perhaps employers should be required to provide assistance to their valued employees so they become legal citizens. The government could start a fast track program for those who have jobs, have a business sponsor and provide needed skills. This keeps a stable workforce in place for employers and allows immigrants to come into the states only if they have a job waiting with a business sponsor who is willing to be responsible for them.
Requiring this would help deter, for instance, the slaughterhouse industry so well known to exploit undocumented workers. If you have to account for them and know that once they are legal citizens they can leave your employ or turn you in for abuses, you might just be a bit more conscious of how you treat them.
Other countries allow outsiders to move in only if they can prove their skills are needed and cannot be provided by a current citizen. In the case of US farmers, it shouldn't be hard to prove there aren't enough citizens to fill the jobs.
9
California is essentially the nation's salad bowl, nut basket, milk and wine bottle thanks to it being a sanctuary state. It is also a tremendously huge home to Big-Agra. I hardly see any connection.
1
In California, small family farms have largely disappeared because large operations brought in illegal workers willing to work for low wages. Small family farms could not compete. Used to be a dairy of 50 milk cows could support a family very well. Now a minimum of 1000 cows along with a crew of cheap labor is necessary just to break even. The cheaters have won.
15
So, the dairy farm a mile from here (in Canada) has about 50 cows, on about 50 acres from what I can see. The farmer can manage his own production. Eight hundred cows is a normal sized farm in New York state I'm guessing. With a form of supply management for dairy production, farms in Canada are smaller with fewer or no foreign workers. In the U.S., economies of scale require dairy farms to be bigger, forcing out the little guys. I've read that in Texas there are dairy farms with several thousand cattle, operated with the help of a small army of undocumented Mexican workers. If the industry keeps the same production model, small farms can't compete and the need for a large (low cost) labor force will always be necessary.
15
Does Canada still protect their dairy industry with very high tariffs?
@M Davis
Yes because the relatively small industry would be wiped out by surplus supply shipped from US. Check out US tariffs on imported peanuts. Protected by very high tariffs. What's the difference?
@Henry's boy
Canadians pay approximately twice as much for a 'litre' of milk compared to their American counterparts.
So the magic of 'supply management' relies on gouging Canadian consumers.
"It has long been an open secret that some farms survive by relying on an undocumented labor force."
Well then, it seems what we need is a crackdown on farmers who hire undocumented workers.
They shouldn't be allowed to subsidize their profits at public expense by using undocumented workers, who are underpaid, don't receive proper benefits and are more likely to be put at physical risk. They should be required to pay the same wages and benefits as any other employer. And if that means passing along the higher food cost to us consumers, then so be it.
Undocumented workers live in fear partly because they have no means to protect themselves against abusive employers. By supporting undocumented workers in an undocumented status we foster that abuse.
11
@J Jencks - If immigration and employment laws are being broken, then the government needs to step in and reassert law and order.
And we need to be prepared more for our groceries.
Farmers need to charge distributors for their costs plus a competitive profit. Grocers need to price in their markets accordingly.
If there is a breakdown in the functioning of a free market, because of illegal activities and market manipulation, the role of government is to reassert order through regulation.
2
As I drove through the Central Valley in California in 2016, I wondered at the Farmers for Trump signs. The chickens have come home to roost for those who have historically relied on undocumented labor and who supported Trump. Farmers and other businesses that rely on migrant workers should be front and center in the debate about our southern border. They are, after all, providing the jobs that so many crossing the border seek.
9
Why would a farmer hire illegal immigrants in a county (Cortland) where the unemployment rate is over 6%? Because the well meaning liberals in Albany set the minimum wage at $13.50 per hour for businesses with 10 or fewer employees and $15 per hour otherwise, which I guarantee the farmers aren’t paying the illegals. The illegals provide a demand based labor pool (and the economic benefit that comes with it) that American workers are excluded from. Who says they aren’t taking American jobs?
8
if you would look beyond the Fox talking lints you will see that farmers all over the country can’t get Americans to do this work at any price.
2
@Victor, that’s a false narrative. It’s too expensive to hire Americans, especially when you have exploitable options. Supply and demand always works.
Please point out the flaws in my understanding – These jobs are not taken by citizens largely because the jobs do not pay a living wage. Paying a living wage (by US standards) would force a significant rise in the cost of the product. US consumers do not (or perhaps cannot) support higher priced goods on their grocery shelves. How do we break this vicious cycle?
11
It seems the vicious cycle is being broken at this very moment. But broken probably means breaking up huge operations into less industrialized family farms. It seems though the owners of these farms have started to encounter slick silicon Rick the sells them robots to do the milking. So “the jobs aren’t coming back” mantra of slick silicon Rick might hold true.
That this article ends with the message from the undocumented worker whose wages and work environment is improving seems like a feel good ending. But if the owner now lets them leave the farm but they must fend for themselves with ICE agents seems little consolidation.
So will they listen to slick silicon Rick and subject the cattle to mechanized industrial production or perhaps farm owners caught exploiting lower wage undocumented workers could suffer forfeiture of their farm and and parceling off into smaller farms.
If you ever drive around upstate you will see miles and miles of cash crop corn. A high energy nutritionally poor cash crop that needs lots of gasoline and other fertilizer energy to be grown. Perhaps weed will replace it and we can finally get rid of the 10% ethanol additive boondoggle these corn cash crop farmers are subsidized with.
There are plenty of young people that would love to grow nutritional food on a small scale instead making phone apps or staring at screens all day.
Breaking the vicious cycle means BREAKING. Watch closely on who the politicians chose to let suffer most and vote.
1
@Arugula Fan
Mechanized farming in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, replacing the tractor with the horse-drawn plow would employ more humans and horses, but on the current scale of global food production, the effect on environmental resources would likely be negative.
A cow is stuck being a cow. Technology (with the right incentive) has the potential to improve its treatment. The humans replaced by robots are free to pursue other jobs. However, I do support small, local dairies. I’m fortunate enough to be able to afford the necessary upcharge for organic / sustainable product and the human labor that entails. To be clear, I’m not in favor of cheap food - more of us should pay more for food. Of course, some of us can’t – and that is a different discussion. Vote for less income disparity and livable wages.
According to this article that is exactly what is happening - see final quote.
Someone here mentioned Mexico is the largest importer of US dairy. Mexican small scale agriculture has been decimated by US low cost dumping. So previous policy of employing migrant labor has gone hand in hand in destroying small scale local farming everywhere.
Not ironic. Profitable.
Maybe if the grocery shelves were bare and/or the prices much higher there would be some actual effort put forth, by the federal government, to solve the immigrant labor challenges.
We all need to feel it, it seems, to get any kind of action by Washington, DC.
6
I want to throw an idea onto the table and see what other readers think. Specifically the government starts a new type of visa which is a seasonal or farm labor visa that can only be used for certain types of farm related jobs. Thus a laborer can legally enter the US to pick seasonally or move from one area to the other as the different crops ripen.
The US farming business heavily relies on immigrant labor, why not find a way to make it legal?
The US is not the only one who has problems finding labor for the farming industry. The NYTimes posted an article about the asparagus farming industry. In that case the UK farmers rely on EU workers who come seasonally and legally for the work. (Now with Brexit, they have uncertainty on where they will find workers, since their normal source is reluctant to come)
reference:
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/03/18/business/18reuters-britain-eu-farming-labour.html
9
@Peter
They had this during the 40's when there were labor shortages.
it makes too much sense. Now they like playing cat and mouse at the border, using it as a political wedge while big business reaps the rewards of low wages and a subservient workforce.
9
You will need to get rid of birthright citizenship and chain migration If this is to work. Immigrants, legal or otherwise, now know that once they get here, a legal kid is the jackpot that allows access to benefits and bringing in the relatives. It needs to be a system for a legal job at decent pay, not a backdoor immigrantion program.
2
I wonder how many of these farmers voted for Trump?
We have conveniently outsourced much of our manual labor while turning a blind eye to the needs of those who toil, as well as farmers and other business owners who break the law by hiring undocumented workers. We have a failed immigration policy and the consequences of this administration's barbaric handling of the issue just makes matters worse.
When undocumented workers went on day long strike in 2016, the service industry in NYC was devastated. Although it's not feasible, I would love to see every undocumented worker leave the US for a country that would welcome them. When the US economy grinds to a halt, that might produce some sensible, moral and ethical compromise.
11
When I was a kid I work on the tobacco farms in CT. I truly believe I was in the last group of native born American to do so. All the work is now done by immigrants. The bottom line is this: without immigrants the farms in America are going to take a very hard hit. Some will go out of business; others will raise prices higher than we have ever seen. There could be programs like the guest workers programs, but not with trump in the White House. I wonder how many farmers who voted for trump are regretting it.
9
theres a flip side to the immigrant worker issue that never gets addressed. the standard line is, without the illegal immigrants there would be no one to do the work. Americans dont want to do this work. know why Americans dont want to do this work? in 2018, 39.6 million people received food stamps, 73.6 million received medical subsidies, and 9 million received housing benefits from the federal govt. in 2018, $445 billion will be spent on welfare assistance, 5.6% of total govt spending. during the great depression, Americans moved to wherever there was work. but today the welfare system is broken and Americans dont move to the work because they dont have to. if the federal govt revamped the system to make it more attractive for people to move to where the work is, it would solve both problems. a reduction or elimination of benefits but perhaps some benefit to help move could help. but if you refuse to work, reduce or eliminate that person's benefits. this wont work for every person, but there are plenty of ablebodied people who should be working instead of being on welfare. these 2 issues are intertwined and need to be resolved together.
4
@sjs
I am good with the cost of tobacco going sky high, and tobacco farms closing. The owners and their families can retrain for other jobs. Learn to code! Tobacco farming is not the future, and we should stop subsidizing those farms with illegal labor. Newsflash? We produce more milk than the markets require too. Dairy farms can close, like newspapers and so many other small business have shut shop in recent years. Coal mines too. Nobody is entitled to prop up their business at the nation's expense, and it is a slippery slope to a lawless society when we let employers decide which laws they want to follow or break.
4
I’m tired of the “can’t do” attitude expressed here by defenders of illegal workers. Teenagers can once again care for their family’s yard. People can have smaller yards that are less maintenance intensive. Farmers can invest in capital equipment and Americans can pay the true cost of things.
Cars would be cheaper if we could find volunteers to build them.
10
@Djt - Yes, teenagers can care for their families' yards. People can buy smaller homes with property that requires less maintenance. Yet even if everyone in America did this, it still wouldn't erase the problem of certain industries in this country that rely on illegal labor to build up their workforce.
Farmers can only invest in "capital equipment" if they have the funds to do so and, as this article demonstrates, they are struggling to stay afloat, never mind invest in capital equipment. And please find me the voter, specifically the Trump voter, who is going to happily vote for the candidate who wants Americans to "pay the true cost of things".
As for finding volunteers to build cars, get a volunteer to build your car. I want mine built by a reputable company that employs workers who know what in God's name they're doing, and I'm willing to pay for it. You want to drive some tin can cobbled together by volunteers, go for it.
8
It an open secret that farmers, meat processing plants, builders, cleaning services and other companies use undocumented workers. Another open secret, enforcement is lagging due to lack of resources or others looking the other way to companies illegal activity and the exploitation of these people. That is why you have leaders yelling for a border wall when what is need is enforcement of what we already have. Everyone wants legal immigration, not the joke that has been going on for years.
6
The more I think about it and the more I learn, it seems completely insane that in the "information era" we refuse to create a system to de-undocument people by allowing them to register, obtain papers, and have background checks and in exchange be allowed to work in jobs they already hold. What a waste of energy to not allow human beings to obtain identification papers and to have an underground economy.
5
This battle has been going on for decades. I agree, just get them papers and let them work. Many of these people have lived here a generation or more and have families and children educated in the US.
The old battle was that Republicans have long supported illegal labor for business, especially farming. Democrats wanted to legalize but every time they try there is massive blowback. Though right now it’s on a whole new scale with Trump in office.
Not good.
5
@SarahB That would be a huge disservice and unfairness to millions of LEGAL immigrants who wait in line, pay their fees, spend many years in uncertainty all because they choose to honor US immigration laws and play by its rules.
3
No worries Cindy.. as soon as this documentation proposed would happen, wages for these workers would rise to what citizens would want. Everyone here is asking why these farmers would vote for Trump. None of these farmers want documented workers otherwise they would have hired them already. They want absolute control over cheap labor. Documenting them would cut into their profits. Watch closely what kind of dystopian system these farmer owners end up lobbying for.
Even vultures have better ethics than some in the press that feed on the murders of innocent worshipers in New Zealand by putting out headlines in NY times yesterday that Trump encourages violence and today this article that Trump crack down is unnerving a few of the farmers addicted to exploitation of cheap unskilled labor. Let me explain why vultures have better ethics.
Yesterday my spouse sitting on a couch by the window saw a vulture in the middle of the road and noticed it was pecking at what looked like a dead squirrel. I got my camera to capture the sight of a fairly large vulture and the vulture surprised us both when it moved the dead squirrel from the middle of the road to our front yard and after dragging the dead squirrel it left under the tree for the squirrel which was alive and probably running around with the only other squirrel which was dead to mourn the loss and pay its last respect to its dead companion. Next I saw the squirrel that was alive stopped running around had stopped pacing and was starring at the the dead squirrel in silence and solitude. We thought the vulture would return after a while to finish scavenging the dead squirrel but it did not so I conclude that the vulture was being ethical and had no conflict of interest in dragging the remains of the dead squirrel from being running over many more times and placing it under our tree for the viewing of the only other lonely squirrel. I was certainly touched by the noble gesture of the vulture.
4
Having lived in Upstate for over 30 years you soon realize the disconnect of the voters there.
In my old district many of my rural voters always voted Red even though they needed undocumented on their farms and construction crews.
I know many who voted for Mr Collins even with his views and criminal behavior.
They want it both ways.
I call that being a phony.
13
It was all fine when illegal immigrants kept to farm work. But now that they have been here for generations, been educated in the public school system and moving up economically into other jobs we have become scared they are taking away our jobs.
3
America once tried to import free slave labor and that didn't work. So instead it came up with as equally a convoluted and immoral way to lure and facilitate a ready supply of illegal immigrants who will do the same dirty work for almost free. Lincoln put and end to the former system, with regard to the latter maybe Trump is more like him than he's willing to give himself credit for.
4
So Ms Raby voted for Trump and is now worried that she won't be able to keep her farm going? That's not a problem, she can file for bankruptcy and then become an ICE agent.
She reminds me of the British florist who voted for Brexit and is now aghast at the prospect of losing his business.
The left-wingers who want unchecked immigration are as crazy as the right-wingers who want to send all illegal immigrants packing.
6
I believe the NYTimes reported that unskilled or minimally skilled or trained on the job people working for the MTA get paid around 100K a year? Maybe it's time that many publicly paid jobs pay less … and maybe summer vacations should again be devoted to brining in the wheat. The immigrant Mexican children I taught in Chicago in the 60s looked forward to their summers on the farm!
So interesting to me that certain jobs are ONLY suitable for migrants NOT for Americans. (I hate SNOB.) Time to get over it IMO.
Dairy products have protected pricing. We throw away 214 billion in food annually. Some people are badly nourished or starving. Illegal immigrants are well illegal. Stock prices continue to soar.. and the American dollar is way up in value!
We need to broaden the discussion.
7
arm workers unite. Union. Demand Minimum Wage.
Corporations have taken over what was once called the "family" farm. All the farm workers are not illegals. This is just another ploy of the corporation take over.
Do you really want to solve these problems?
Vote. Vote Sanders/Warren
Vote Immigration Reform
No more billionaires!
3
Many of these farmers voted for Trump. They got what they voted for.
4
"If one of his undocumented workers gets a traffic ticket,...."
How can a undocumented worker get Driver's license in NY state?
3
@Gerardo The ticket might be for driving without a license.
“If you don’t like a law just flout it.”
— Democratic Party platform
5
I'm pretty sure we had milk before the arrival of illegal immigrants. So they are not "needed".
12
The 70,000 immigrants at the border are probably encouraged by these state farmers who need slave labor. Florida farmers also need them. They need to pay Americans 15.00 an hour and health care. Being out in the sun for hours causes skin cancers and high costs to cure it.
2
Anyone who thinks Americans will do these jobs if farmers just paid more is a person who has never set foot on a dairy farm.
These back-breaking jobs are atrociously difficult and, in many cases, dangerous. You’re working outside in blistering heat and freezing cold, NO snow days for you, ever. If you’re a milker, you might be working at 2 pm for a few hours and then again at 2 am. These jobs are the definition of “dead-end” — no chance of advancement, no way out. It’s no wonder the only people who can be recruited to do these jobs are illegal immigrants.
8
@FlipFlop Absolutely right; there’s a lot of ignorance on display here about the realities of manual labor, and the specific conditions of agricultural work.
Much of it is 6-7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Even for the seasonal row crops that still need human hands, it’s sunrise to sunset, not 9-5. And who exactly are all these willing and able native-born Americans to take these jobs, and do as good a job at it as recent immigrants, if only the price was right? Prisoners? Oh, great. Students? Ha! Farm work ain’t Nintendo. The currently un- or under-employed? Did they grow up doing hard physical labor and thus be able to bring the same work ethic as the immigrants to the job? Again, ha!
I know farmers who’ve had zero luck hiring local workers and have turned to immigrants because they know they’ll get people who work hard all day, are 100% reliable, don’t whine because there was never a reward for doing so when and where they grew up. And these farmers pay them well, treat them well, and give them benefits.
2
It is well known Trump hired illegal immigrants to many of his constructions sites. I bet he wouldn't hesitate to hire them once more as long as he can avoid paying the ongoing prices. The many jobs the illegal immigrants are preforming are more often ejected by locals who are reluctant to do such work. Why such uproar? This country benefited exponentially by welcoming immigrants legal or none.
5
@nf You mean contractors on certain job sites used illegal immigrants? If you've kept up with the news, various Trump facilities recently fired any illegal immigrants/people with falsified documents in their employ.
If you have driven through that part of New York State and seen the economic want and need, the dysfunction, the roads and towns that look like vestiges of the 1930s, you have to wonder why only these earnest immigrants are willing to do the work on the farms.
In desolate parts of New York State like the southern tier -- and I have recently driven through it and it's bad -- where we are told again and again that investment and jobs are needed, that a left-behind population needs economic development and opportunity, why is that only immigrants are willing to do this work?
7
Dairy Farms in Europe use less than half the labor on average that a US Farmer uses. Automated Dairy Farms cuts labor by 80%.
We have to do the same..
8
@Overburdened Taxpayer
Then you have more hatred ideologies form when there are no jobs for these people. A charming leader in their eyes like Trump stirs more hatred in speeches and before you know it our GOP are getting us in another war. We need more livable wage jobs not less. You are out of touch.
Finally this critical piece of the immigration discussion has been brought to the surface. Not only agriculture but the hospitality and restaurant sectors depend on immigrant labor. To not have this basic reality on the table is disingenuous and doesn't frame the debate accurately. The boon to the U.S. economy of people doing this work that we all benefit from and to one extent or another rely on is huge: the majority of these immigrants are paying in to a system from which they will never collect (at least in terms of social security). This is not just a crisis in NY state dairies but many industries across the spectrum, across the nation.
8
The caption should read like this: "Mr. Beltran, originally from Mexico, has worked on farms in the United States for over a decade (without valid legal paperwork)."
Employers of undocumented workers like Mr. McMahon should be prosecuted or heftily fined.
Special treatment to undocumented workers is unfairness and a disservice to documented international workers who play by the US rules and honors its immigration laws. Why can't all Americans understand that?
3
@Cindy...President Obama tried cracking down on meat packers and other businesses that (knowingly) employed undocumented workers and he was vilified for it.
4
Then give them papers! You closed border folks act as if breaking up families that have been here for decades and contributed to our economy is the most heinous of crimes. Do you speed when you drive? To me it’s like a speeding ticket except in this case you want to round up the speeders at gun point in their very homes!
Punish everyone for what? Owning a business and working?!?! Are you serious? You will decimate these industries before they can recover if this keeps going! They won’t recover for a generation or more, if ever.
2
@Misterbianco... Oh! Good for him! I'm for whoever is brave enough to crackdown illegal immigrants and employers who voluntarily employ illegals.
1
No sympathy here. If you have to break the law to run your business, then you should not be in business. The crack down is a good thing as pay and working conditions have improved due to labor scarcity as the article points out. Taking away illegal labor will force farmers to modernize, consolidate and become more efficient.
5
It's been 30 years that the government, and both sides are involved in this, has promised us that they were going to fix the immigration issue. 30 years, going into the next generation, are we going to wait until another generation comes into power? From what I can see, read or find out online, there is nothing that has changed. We have a complete underclass of people, estimated at 22 million , that live a shadow life, paying no state or income taxes, over crowding the schools, supposedly we need them for farm labor, whatever happened to the bracero program? Maybe not a high enough profit margin for the farmers, it's got to be cheaper to hire someone with no insurance etc., and cheaper is what they want. Housing.......we have a housing shortage/issue. We have people in my city, living 25-30/house, at $125/week/person, that's up to $15,000/month. Someone is making a lot of money off them. That is why they haven't changed a thing.
7
I lived in Australia for 6 months. Their minimum wage is much higher and is currently over $18 AUD.
They also grew a lot of their own food. Their farm fields weren't full of illegals and while things were more expensive it wasn't like carrots were $8.
Most US farms these days are corporately owned and the owners are more concerned about generating money for their shareholders than about labor violations and human rights abuses. It can be better but closing the spigot of desperate 3rd world labor is a way to improve.
Plenty of high school and college students in the US would do these jobs if they paid a little more and actually hired Americans.
7
Americans need to be grown-ups and face up to to what this problem actually is. The reason we require undocumented workers (illegal immigrants) for these jobs is because we do not pay these workers fairly and offer decent working conditions and protections. If we did, Americans would be willing to work there.
This is no different than companies who off-shore jobs to third world countries. We are simply running our own version of off-shoring from inside our country. I have nothing against these foreign workers; they are good people just trying to improve their lives, but they are taking jobs that could be going to Americans. It is racist to say Americans won't do these jobs because the labor is too hard. Are we saying that Mexicans are insensate beings that aren't bothered as much by rough conditions? No, they are human beings who are desperate for work. We exploit them for our benefit, while taking potential jobs from our own workers.
The employers are afraid to pay higher wages because that would raise prices of their products, which would encourage consumers to buy from other countries and hurt their business--other countries which pay their workers less. And thus the circle goes completely around to the beginning.
As hard as it is to do, we need to repair the situation at its root, which should not include exploiting foreign workers and depriving Americans of jobs.
13
@Madeline Conant I was born and raised and lived smack dab in the middle of dairy country in Upstate NY for 4 decades so I have seen this firsthand.
"Americans need to be grown-ups and face up to what this problem actually is. The reason we require undocumented workers (illegal immigrants) for these jobs is because we do not pay these workers fairly and offer decent working conditions and protections. If we did, Americans would be willing to work there."
You couldn't be more wrong about this. Ask any farmer nationwide and they'll tell you that pretty much no American will do this work at ANY price. Higher wages leads to higher costs at the grocery store. One single pepper or apple can cost $2.00 each these days. Are you willing to pay $5 each? How about $10 for a gallon of milk? Can the vast majority of people in the US pay this amount?
"As hard as it is to do, we need to repair the situation at its root". The root is that Americans are addicted to low prices out of both wants and needs and that means cheap labor and transportation costs to give them this.
4
First the dairy farmers were crying that Canada was limiting milk from the USA, now they say they can’t make a profit without illegal immigrant labor. Can’t have it both ways guys.
We need a complete, sincere on both sides, remake of our immigration laws. That won’t happen in today’s political climate with one side saying all those wishing to immigrate are refugees and temporary means forever, and the other side saying they are all criminals and should be deported.
The farmers payroll records should be investigated so we know what wages are being paid before we start feeling sorry for them.
We should all be ashamed of ourselves because if given the chance we would happily buy cheaper dairy products produced with slave labor in China.
In that case, since the majority of the welfare budget goes to the white underclass, how about putting the opioid addicts and high school dropouts from Appalachia and the Ohio valley to work in these jobs? Could do them some good to learn how to work as hard and as well as a Mexican.
2
What I find disturbing among all the other disturbing elements of this story is the casual assumption that farmers can just automate their way out of needing these workers. Give them loans for machinery so they can go into debt - even more. Workers are disposable - get rid of them wherever you can.
Nothing about farmers getting more money for the incredibly hard work they do, nothing about being able to pay enough to attract people who don’t have to worry about being hauled away by ICE. Nothing about appreciating people who work hard and just want to be able to live their lives.
Lives are being destroyed by people who Do Not Care because destruction serves their ends and they do not feel the consequences - and the rest of us lose while they gain. Trump is the face of an America turned against its own better nature.
The person who still supports Trump but is having doubts only because this is touching them personally shows how deeply entrenched the disconnection/dysfunction in our social order has become.
5
And once the pay and conditions go up, as I've always said, you just might see good ol' legal Americans (of any stripe) taking these jobs again.
These farmers (and employers in many other fields - meat packing, garbage collecting, construction) and the undocumented immigrants themselves undercut the labor force that once was mostly legal American citizens - over two generations now.
Surprise- now these illegal immigrants have a monopoly on the skills that are required in these feilds. This leads the "arm chair ivory tower liberal" to say - "No Americans want these jobs."
Well they do. They just got undercut out of them and watched conditions deteriorate in the respective fields. (I work in construction- I know first hand) .Now we have a whole generation 0f 20-30 year olds who no doubt used to work on these farms on opioids.
I don't care what anyone says- I'm extremely libera, but the unfair competition of illegal immigration and the conditions it brings have caused this situation. A loss of skill sets that legal Americans used to have.
I've always said once they don't have their cheap labor that will say "yes" to anything then they will have top start drawing legal people back in with better wages and conditions. I'll pay an extra quarter for the milk if it means avoiding an opioid crisis or the like.
Too bad for them and any other sector that had it good under the porous immigration system.
22
Absolutely Ignatius. The construction industry in central California has been taken over by ubder the table workers, the Unions are just about history here , a whole bunch of legal workers, either having their pay cut in half or going into something else . It's pretty hard to competitive bid against someone that pays no taxes or worker's comp or anything else. Everybody wants to help them. Right up until they invade their respective fields of work. "But what about the children?"
2
@Ignatius J. Reilly
I love the phrase "...illegal immigrants have a monopoly on the skills required in the fields." In my mind's eye I can just picture these brown skinned Mr. Moneybags' picking vegetables and just laughing at the foolish Americans whom they tricked into letting them do this hard, back breaking work for very long hours for very little pay.
I believe that there are many farmers willing to teach American citizens how to do these jobs to replace the workers Trump is throwing out of the country. I don't think lack of skill is the problem.
1
The US government must stop their socialist policies for farmers. Farmers receive subsidies for what they produce. Milk prices are artificially set in favor of US milk producers. Why would Trump voters and true conservatives support socialism for farmers? If the argument is we must match socialist countries production models to compete, than why not make this the model for all industries? Unfettered markets are the bread and butter of true capitalism, true for all aspects of production, including labor.
3
@YIOTTA
"Unfettered markets are the bread and butter of true capitalism," Except in producing bread and butter.
1
You can bet the problem is just as acute in Wisconsin’s dairy and cheese industry. I hear this argument that Americans don’t want to do the work which is nonsense. Our work for e is aging, these jobs require skills, and in general the younger workers are leaving rural America for urban areas. Iut rural
School districts here have declining populations except the district wheee there is a Mexican cheese mfg plant and their school pop. Stays up and their housing stock is utilized. Towns in the area without an Hispanic population have empty houses, simetimEs as much as a quarter of the houses are vacant. This business of saying we can go back to an earlier era when everyone you know was white and connected to an ag economy is unrealistic. I know change is tough but the future of our part of the world is at stake. Is this the legacy we want for our children: yes I’m selfish enough to sacrifice your future for my present discomfort.
6
I think it comes down to veiled racism.. these workers are contributors to the country. People just don't want them in their country. I think it would be different if these workers were illegals from Canada
6
The State of New York does not revolve around New York City. I started the article but you lost me right away when you termed “south of Syracuse” upstate.
Let’s just call the paper what it is: the New York City Times.
1
So rather than find a path to citizenship and the "good" life for these workers we place them and their families (and the farmers) in constant jeopardy. Reminds me of South Africa's quasi slave/guest workers in their mines. Is this the new America?
8
Take a look at Steve King's district for hypocrisy. Republicans look other way when they use "legal" immigrant labor.
5
if Reagan hadnt allowed immigrants in for cheap labor, innovation would be in place and Trump wouldnt have been fooling anyone, let alone the Pense crowd.
1
These Farmers voted for Trump.
Deal with it
5
Oh Ms. Raby, boo hoo. You voted for Trump and now you’re “on the fence” about him because he is affecting YOU. think about all the others he is negatively impacting...students, people who need health care, industries touched by tariffs, Dreamers. I could carry on, but the point is made. You should be over the fence and running to the voting booth to vote for anyone but Trump.
18
We have a legal system for farmers to employ temporary agricultural workers, the H-2A program. Farmers are required to show that employing a temporary worker will not take jobs from Americans, nor lower their wages. It also establishes (minimal) protections for the temporary workers.
Farmers don’t want to use this legal system, because it’s cheaper to have illegal aliens with low wages and no protections.
Nobody is above the law. Not illegal aliens. Not farmers.
If any business cannot operate profitably within the law, then it should cease operations.
10
How many visas have farmers applied for? How many were given and to which farmers? Is there special treatment going on to award certain farmers labor and not others?
I may be naive, but I really don’t understand why the constant target seems to be the illegal immigrant workers and not the illegal hiring practices of the business and individuals that are employing them.
27
@Mdargan
No doubt. Mandatory prison time for anyone hiring illegals along with available, free everify would be far more effective than a wall.
2
‘The more productive policy response would be subsidized loans to invest in machinery for small-scale farmers, rather than revising how we import foreign workers and perpetuating the labor-intensive old-fashioned way of doing business,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors restricting immigration.’
Isn’t this the evil ‘socialism’ such people rail against? I thought they prefer the competition of free market capitalism. Why should taxpayers subsidize their rural lifestyle, when corporations can simply take over the industry to make it more efficient?
In reality, I don’t mind the subsidies that farmers receive, as I don’t want the entire food chain corporatized. But why don’t they recognize that government has an obligation to plan for the public good, and that they cannot survive without the type of support that they criticize others for?
3
2 thoughts:
1. Trump is probably pleased with the idea of taking milk away from babies. Only wealthy people deserve good nutrition, along with health care and education.
2. Get ready for $10.00/gallon milk. And yogurt, cheese, etc. Produce will also double or triple in price over the next 2 years. This should completely break America’s love of dairy products.
4
@Laurie
Sorry but in countries in Europe or Australia with a higher minimum wage milk doesn't cost $10.00.
The USA has some of the highest amounts going to shareholders of anywhere.
We also subsidize the corn industry. Reapply some of those subsidies to healthier products.
5
@Laurie, so you're OK with the exploitation of workers in exchange for cheap dairy?
1
Some people (particularly Trump supporters) want their food on the cheap but they don't want to do the jobs that these immigrants do and/or they don't want these immigrants to come here at all. They can't have it both ways. This is not rocket science.
16
The need for low wage workers in many industries is self-evident. NY Congressman Collins seems only interested in helping industries that are prominent in his district.
We need foreign workers who come here for the opportunities America offers. Those workers, and the children they bring with them, deserve the right to a pathway to citizenship. These workers will not be coming from Northern Europe.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Americans, who want to stop employers from employing illegals (including those in the Trump organization), need to push for prosecution of the employers.
The Selective Service registration program should be required for allAmericans. Then a phased in one-year service to America program for all Americans between the ages of 18 and 21, who do not join the military, should be implemented with no 4/5 year education exemption.
A program like the Civilian Conservation Program would assign young people to cover low income jobs Americans won't do including crop picking. These young people would gain an appreciation of acquiring skills for future employment.
4
I have been listening to the immigration debate for what seems like decades. I have known illegal immigrant workers for years and their anxiety is never far from the surface. I think it is time to admit to ourselves that the reason we don't pass immigration reform is that we want a permanent underclass with no rights.
25
The big scam in what passes for statesmanship in U.S.politics is making america great by supporting industry and commerce with authorized exploitation and hypocrisy, justified by blaming the victims.
Maybe that's why "America the Beautiful" is so seldom heard anymore. It now sounds too much like a national requiem when compared to the national anthem.
1
There are 3 months of the year, immigration turns it back to allow workers to come over the boarder to work the fields in Yuma and other places. Congress has a "turn your back" policy when it is harvest time. Most of the farm workers are women and single moms. They go home every night back to Mexico and return the next day for another day of work in the fields. I have yet to meet a field worker who did not return home. The issues is not the field workers.
I argue that if we cooked more at home, and not eat out all the time we would see a decrease in illegal immigrants. It comes down to one thing, we are spoiled and many Americans live somewhat to quite well.
Sadly, there are these groups of people and attorneys such as the ACLU and others, who cry foul with our treatment against illegal immigrants, are parasites who thrive on making money of these people to stay in business. However, for us legally here, they are rarely here to help us.
Please let us know who Ms. Raby supplies so that we can stop buying their products. I don't want to support Trump voters who belatedly realize just how harmful he and his policies are but still support him. Did Ms. Raby not realize just how horrific this would be? Does she still not? What Trump policies is she on the fence about?
9
If these people are here illegally then it should be illegal to hire them. I don't see where this is such a quandary.
To be able to "use" these workers and then send them away seem like a modified form of slavery.
8
@Fred Except that slaves were taken away from their homeland against their will and by force. Undocumented workers voluntarily break US immigration laws to come here and work without visas.
Oh, the irony. During the NAFTA negotiations dairy farmers, and the president, crowed about the increased access to dairy in Canada. Now they're whining that they might not be able to supply their own domestic market without illegal workers. Looks good on you.
5
@RNS
One thing for sure, without illegal workers there's no way they could compete with Canadian subsidized dairy cooperatives. In globalized capitalism, EVERY nation manages to participate in market activities - all with different degrees of hypocrisy. Sustainability, ultimately, has to occur country by country.
IMO, we need to provide living wages to our own farm workers (i.e. increase legal immigration and do more of the hard work) and consume our own farm products (i.e. protect our industries with tariffs, etc.). Prices for consumer goods will go up. But this can be offset by greater social services, including healthcare, education and public transportation (and, of course, redirecting military resources). Major economic reforms and work culture changes are desperately needed - and the public's desire for this has never been greater. The people want it, but most voters are neither democrat nor republican. We just need to continue breaking through the corporate/political/media establishment. It's happening.
1
@carl bumba You kind of jumped to that old red herring of Canada subsidizing dairy. Try googling 'how does canada's supply management work'. It bears a strong resemblance to the system you propose for the States.
@RNS
We both subsidize. (I lived many years in VT.) Who subsidizes more is hard to say. Indirect subsidizing by countries who publicly fund healthcare and many other social services is hard to quantify.
So farmers for years have violated the law and now they are paying a price. If it was some big business progressives would be happy that their abuse of the system is being corrected. Don't hire illegals, use your political power to get legal immigrants where needed.
@vulcanalex
I think you mean agribusinessmen and women - not "farmers".
If the labor of these undocumented migrants is needed and not available in the existing labor force of the U.S. and if what the migrants want is simply to be able to earn a living to support families either with them or back home, why not simply set up a system with work visas for temporary employment that doesn't have to be a road to citizenship. Make it legal and regulated on demonstrated need. This could be one solution to problems with the current immigration system. It could allow non-skilled workers to send their earning home to support families and maybe even act as a form of foreign aid to central American countries to help support their failed economies. El Migra could then devote their resources to keeping out the really bad hombres who are smuggling drugs and trafficking in humans.
4
I recently gave up eating dairy products, but sometimes it is hard to say no. After reading this article, I have a moral reason that includes people and cows.
I hope more people give up dairy. I won't feel bad for the farmers going out of business.
2
Those farmers exploit the precarious situation of illegal immigrants. If they had to pay fair wages and health insurance premiums for their workers, they would no longer prefer employing illegal immigrants.
6
Here in Mid-Michigan we have quite a few dairy farms, which are generally staffed with non-documented immigrants from Mexico and Central America, some of whom I have gotten to know. The work is super hard, but I am so amazed by the workers' persistence in the face of all of their challenges and the familial community they have developed. Generally, they make around $12-14 per hour - which is many times what they make at home - and get free housing (though it can be quite substandard).They get almost no time off. The pay allows them to have a decent material life here, support extended families back home and save to start a business one day. The current setup isn't elegant, but it gives many poor people access to resources. Seems to me like a better worker visa program would make things better for all.
4
I find it interesting that ICE is targeting small family farms (whose owners still seem to be unwilling to admit they were taken in by Trump's con game), small business owners (turned in by competition?), and individuals who are service personnel (low-hanging fruit?) in their enforcement of Trump's anti-immigrant policies. So far, I've not heard of an ICE raid on a large meatpacker, a big cattle ranch, or an agribusiness conglomerate. Maybe those people don't hire any illegals? I can't possibly think of a political reason why they are given a free pass.
8
No sympathy here except for the undocumented workers.
The dairy farmers can sell their cows and land. They can't make enough money to stay open if they pay workers a competitive wage with benefits. That $37B and all those jobs (how many are real vs. off the books) that impact the NY economy may settle out at about 20% of current numbers if E-Verify is enforced.
I am confident that eliminating the ability for companies to hire undocumented workers will immediately increase the amount of legal immigration, and all these immigrants will have work visas, SS benefits, etc. We will need to do this just to get the workers back, given that we have more jobs than legal workers already.
6
To me this rings as a horrific double standard. In negotiating the USMCA, it was said that Canada's quota system for milk prevented cheap American exports. If a lot of these exports are being produced with what amounts to slave labour, maybe a better question is whether they should be accepted at all?
I have friends with family dairy farms where they can maintain operations with 1 or 2 people. The milking and feeding are automated, and the farmer's job is to make sure their cows are happy and healthy. The only reason they can make these investments and keep the family farm is because they are guaranteed marginally higher prices for their milk.
4
If the agricultural industry was required to provide healthcare to all workers they would not be so dependent on foreign help. There might even be a line at the gate.
3
Farmers need to pay a livable wage just like everyone else. The Dems complain about Amazon not paying a livable wage and yet completely ignore all these businesses that hire off the books trying to avoid taxes, healthcare cost and decent wages.
Of course Americans won’t do grueling work for a few dollars and no healthcare/401k/workers comp. nor should we still accept migrants to do the same. These farmers benefited from Slave labor and want to continue getting cheap labor. Who cares if we have to pay more for fruits and vegetables. In the long run, it’s better for us to take that hit in order to stop just small farm owners to benefit.
11
@J I agree farmers need to pay a living wage. The US also needs to relax visas to allow farm workers to enter the US legally. What is your idea to help those who will not be able to afford the higher food prices? Expanding SNAP? What other ideas do you have?
1
Is this, perhaps, a reflection of the fact that too many Americans don’t want to pay much money for food?
Let’s be honest with ourselves. Americans expect food to be cheap. If it isn’t, most people won’t buy it. People will happily shell out lots of money for ridiculously expensive cell phone plans so they can be on the internet all day long, but food? No. They won’t buy it and will eat cheap garbage instead.
If we want to fix this, we need to put up money for food that is ethically produced and has decent wages for farm workers. There are, it is true, people who are so poor they cannot afford anything but cheap food. That is part of the same problem. Americans need to start caring about paying for the important things in society, like fair, truly livable wages for our fellow citizens and those who work for our system. If we need these farm workers let’s make them legal and pay them properly. And yes, that means higher food prices, more taxes, or proper subsidies. You would think being able to feed ourselves would be worth that.
13
@SkL agree on many points. How do you recommend we help those who cannot afford the higher food prices? Increase SNAP? Other ideas?
@SkL
Wiping out poverty in US must come first, or---
Until we revise our economy so the poor can afford expensive healthy food---let them eat cake!
@jeffk
I’m no expert on this, but I am sure if we look to other countries who succeed and get some ideas from them our policy makers could come up with something that will be much improved from what we have now. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Other countries do this better than we do. Not perfect, but better.
But that would mean people caring enough to help their fellow citizen have a decent life. It would involve, of course, good wage laws, higher taxes for those that can afford it, and redistributing what our tax dollars pay for. We are starting to suffer heavily for the ludicrously rich upperclass we have allowed to exist in our country.
2
Most hotels, farms and businesses that use labor from under the border vote republican. They didn’t realize they were voting against their self-interests. Realization sometimes can be a cruel awakening.
11
@Mishomis I am 70 and grew up in the area discussed in this article. The working-class people in my home county did and continue to vote staunchly Republican. Even as a teenager I could see that the adults were voting against our best interests. So in my experience, people in the areas covered by this article have not been "awakened" over the past 70 years.
9
@Mishomis
Yes, establishment Republican AND Democrats have been cozy bedfellows with this issue - that's why it has gotten so bad! Remember, Trump supporters did NOT originally include establishment Republicans. (They didn't get on board until after the nomination and, really, after the election, when Democrats vilified and even tried to impeach Trump... and this back-fired.) If immigrants tended to vote Republican, rather Democrat (and didn't have large families), I suspect Democrats would be singing a different tune.
1
If the undocumented workers are here illegally why is it legal to hire them? Seems like the farmers should be hauled off in cuffs as well. It’s a disgrace.
6
@Julie there needs to be a better plan that just arresting farmers unless we want very expensive food and empty shelves, plus more people in poverty after farms shut down. What other ideas do you have to fix the situation? How about making it easier to obtain visas for farm workers? Any other ideas?
2
@Julie Well isn't THAT a brilliant idea - strong coffee today Julie? Yea, lock up the farmers - genius!
1
What percentage of these farmers in upstate New York voted to put our Fake President in office, despite his demonizing of immigrants during his racist, bigoted campaign? Did they not engage their brains to realize that they were voting against their very own business interests? Like the farmers in the Midwest who cannot sell their soybeans and other agricultural products as the direct result of Trump's damaging, irrational trade war with China, and who also were put on notice of his governing intentions, didn't these intelligent farmers pay attention to the emotionally-based con job that the manipulative F.P. was subjecting them to? They have all "reaped" what they've sown.
25
In New York State if you vote Republican in Senate and Presidential races, you are wasting your vote.
The reality of this gargantuan problem is finally becoming addressed. It took about a half century and a charachter named Donald Trump to do it, it seems. This is not an issue of upstate NY. ALL dairies and nearly ALL agricultural enterprises rely on an illegal workforce. Nearly everything we put in our mouths and on our bodies has been handled by an exploited, typically illegal worker.
The real issue here is how can our society be SUSTAINABLE. A country that relies on exploiting workers from impoverished countries is far from being sustainable. Half of the country that supports the idea of "a wall" is at least addressing the issue, whether naively, with limited awareness, under questionable motives, etc. - but they are addressing the problem! The credibility of their critics remains low as long as they enjoy the benefits of the products of this clandestine system of exploitation.
No, technology and mechanization is not going to save our lazy behinds. The reality is that hard work, much of it physical, is inherent to agriculture AND TO LIFE - and has been over the course of our evolution. We can (and should) increase legal immigration of workers from impoverished countries for the TRANSITION to a more closed and sustainable country (as they too will become less exploitable with time). Perhaps, this can be the transitition to an open and sustainable world. In the meantime, try your hand at milking a cow... and try some of THAT milk foam on your coffee.
6
maybe we should stop subsidizing farmers and allow other countries to supply more of our foodstuffs with their own labor forces. A classic example is sugar.
@Jack P
We don't subsidize farmers. We subsidize agribusinesses. Farmers, as you and I know them (and I am one), compete with these agribusinesses and suffer under the conditions they create for the trade. And is it really better if the workers providing us are exploited in other countries (by others or our own multinationals)?
1
@Jack P
... and then there's the question of whether we should 'farm out' all are farming.
At least Jefferson thought it's important for our character as a nation to have its earth under our fingernails and to be self-reliant.
It's time to recognize that many industries throughout the US need and rely on immigrant help, legal and illegal. It's time to import more taxpayers and workers, skilled and unskilled, from outside the country from all parts of the world.
2
Another possibility is to import the finished product from these countries and allow their industries to build a better life in their home countries.
4
@Jack P
So we'll just be the world's consumers then? If history gives any indication, these overseas workers would be heavily exploited, bringing benefits mostly to management.
1
@Farrel Or, acknowledge that businesses have manufactured the so-called shortage of American workers by discarding them in favor of cheap foreign workers. There are unemployed people who have given up looking for work - they need opportunity, too.
Farmers don’t want to pay a decent wage, with benefits and safe working conditions. Will those things drive up the price of milk? Yes. That’s called capitalism.
“ . . . competition between dairy farms to retain migrant workers is so fierce that farm owners, once notorious for underpaying and mistreating workers, are now improving working conditions and wages to entice employees to stay on their farms, workers said.”
Well, why should farmers have to stop underpaying and mistreating workers?
Ask your representatives to mandate E-verify for all workers. See how they respond. (With nonsense). How about you pay US citizens more to do the work? Maybe a lot more? It’s the American way!
6
@Michael Haddon there have been several attempts to pay Americans higher wages to do farm work and all of them failed. The bottom line is that almost no Americans will do farm work even for high pay. I believe the answer is to allow more workers in via visas and also make the farmers pay a decent wage. Then programs to help those who cannot afford the increased food prices will need to be improved.
1
I'm confused- what is an "undocumented immigrant"? Is it the same as an "illegal alien"? And, when Pelosi says "newcomers", is that the same thing, only described in a softer light? Perhaps, as the article suggests, NY farmers should switch to higher value crops in order to stay in business.
1
@Hotspur I hear a lot of simplistic answers in the comments such as "switching to farming of high dollar items". If we do that we will then need to import the lower dollar items from somewhere. It would mean no or limited tariffs and bringing in a lot more via imports. It would mean a lot of farms shutting completely down. It would mean we would rely a lot more on outside sources and ensuring we maintain good relations with our trade partners. Are you good with doing that? If so it sounds like you are for moving to more open global markets which is likely inevitable given the current environment. Or do you have other ideas? Let's hear them!
1
An economy based on exploitable undocumented people is broken. I thought we've worked for a century and a half to end these sorts of practices--and people support it based on poor needy immigrants. Strange.
If it's not okay for us, it's not okay for them. Stop focusing on the immigrants NYT and focus on the policies that allow this to happen. Time for the government to look at different models.
Help us out NYT; don't help perpetuate the problem by barely giving us more than the same human interest stories.
4
We rarely hear this side of the story, one where American businesses knowingly hire illegal immigrants, which without a financial incentive wouldn’t come or stay.
5
It was the Obama administration that wanted to force employers to use the E-Verify system to ensure the status of workers. The biggest opposition group? The US Chamber of Commerce.
It would be far cheaper to crack down on employers who knowingly, or at least in willfully ignorance, hiring undocumented workers. But that would mean jailing businessmen like .... Trump.
11
So why then did these folks vote for the guy who clearly said he would deport illegal immigrants? Did they think Trump was joking? It's hard to feel sorry for the farmers.
10
I think this perfectly encapsulates one of the main arguments for and against immigration. The all too familiar refrain about "immigrants taking our jobs", is replaced with the reality that most Americans would not and are not willing to do the type of jobs that immigrants, in this case undocumented ones, are currently doing.
Undocumented workers, perform the most menial, thankless and oftentimes dangerous tasks and jobs, with little pay, no benefits or protection...because cheap labour is wanted and needed on one hand. On the other , they are no better than indentured servants open to abuse and exploitation.
The persons making up this workforce are, let's face it, modern day slaves. Lest people's sensibilities may be offended...we all share in the common guilt, through our hypocrisy and ignorance, in the treatment and ultimate fate of these undocumented migrants.
Maybe all, and I mean ALL Americans, of all races. religions, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. might want to reconsider their mentality and outlook on these people who are only trying to make a better life for themselves and their families.
392
@loco73
Let's not forget the main reason illegals do it - birthright citizenship. Not surprising he has 4 children despite working minimum wage work. Why should I be penalized for being a sensible human being who, when I dealt with poverty, made sure I didn't have any kids? Your brush is too broad, I cannot continuously feel sorry for Mexico and Central America when their population has increased 4-5x in the past 50-70 years. Let that sink in. The issue here is humans do not want to talk about population limits, rather they want to feel sorry for people who make irresponsible decisions. For my part, I don't use animal products and eat organic so I do not contribute to the senseless exploitation of industrial, chemical heavy agriculture. Let's have the courage to look at the root of the problem instead of all the symptoms that will never really stop.
37
@David
I'm an athletic male that tried multiple times in college to get outdoors related work as I liked the idea of picking berries or landscaping a whole lot more than being a waiter or working in a store.
I finally did get some work briefly deconstructing a barn and doing landscaping.
The landscaping work I got was because the owners main guy was sick. He paid cash and told me outright although I was good he didn't have to pay his illegal helper a full $10/hr
63
@loco73
The bigger problem is that we have an economy that runs on exploitable workers. Changing this would force us to question basics -- like what our cheap food really costs us, or wouldn't other workers need higher wages if weren't for cheap food, and wouldn't that hurt the corporate bottom line and wouldn't that wreck the soaring stock market, or is capitalism inherently cruel.
If the jobs aren't good enough for Americans, why should we give them to our guests?
60
The real problem is represented by the likes of Ms. Raby. First she is perfectly willing to break the law and use undocumented labor if it suits her personal need. Second she still supports a criminal president on many issues. But most importantly, that support is wavering because his actions are impacting her personally. She reminds me of the woman in the Florida Panhandle a few months ago and her dismay that Trump was "hurting the wrong people".
44
The fact is, Americans want "stuff" - stuff that is not necessary for daily living and existing in a fair and communal society where everyone should have a chance to live a decent and dignified life. We don't want to pay what it REALLY costs for gasoline, food, utilities, taxes, you name it. And politicians have then made it so, at a price that is deeply unfair, and increasingly unsustainable.
All so we can have enough money to buy 4,000 square foot homes and 80K cars, and the latest everything. We are terrible global citizens in every possible way.
8
I grew up in the Finger Lakes and picked fruit in high school for extra money, not to support a family as the migrants were and still are doing. As others have written, the conundrum here is economic.
Can anyone see a sensible, fair solution to this problem enacted by the fractious, self-serving bunch we have in government? I cannot. I see a point in the future when it all collapses and creates a lot of long-term harm to people and our economy. Then we'll have to deal with it...or will we.
158
@John B Sure first automate as much as economically feasible. Next allow some to come and work then go home legally. The president made a proposal, the congress did nothing.
2
Another possibility is to allow importation of crops grown in lesser cost countries such as wine from Chile.
3
@John B
So what if you weren't supporting a family? Some did. You are exactly what my other post is about. Legal Americans used to have these jobs. And yet we will see "Americans don't want these jobs" written all over these responses. Easy out for the white collar commenters.
You had a job that led to work skills, to responsibility and other jobs and today you'd be the current day kid that ended up on opioids with no labor history.
3
I'm all for framers hiring legal workers and paying them a fair wage. So what's stopping them?
Economics.
The increase in the cost of their produce would drive they customers elsewhere or worse, discourage consumers from buying their products because of significantly higher prices.
We Americans have grown accustomed to low prices on everything from the fuel we put in our cars to the food we put on our table. If we are willing to, or are forced top pay higher prices for food, then what will we forgo instead.
Trump's policies, if fully enacted can have a severe ripple effect though our economy.
Put aside the racial animus and work out a plan for migrant workers who are a vital part of our economy. Conditions and wages for the workers are improving. It could be a win-win for all.
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@Larry
I think the problem is LEGAL workers do not want these jobs, at any price
16
@Larry - We here in The Land of The Free (old, white, rich men) know the Price of everything and the Value of nothing.
14
@Never Ever Again
Legal workers used to do them. See the above comment for proof. Easy out.
And Larry- trust me (like gas at $4.00 or anything else that fluctuates) people will still be buying milk if it;s harvested legally. That ain't gonna change.
11
A business model that requires illegal aliens to function is fundamentally unsound. The argument that they do jobs that Americans won't do misses the words "at these wages". It is also unethical, these workers lack the protections that other workers take for granted, something that liberals should be appalled by. It is time we punish business owners and control illegal immigration from the demand side, E-verify is a good place to start.
435
Not necessarily so. An acquaintance had a plant nursery and offered twice the going wages and still could not hire good ole Americans...they simply did not want to do that kind of work.
75
@Striving So the owners and their family might need to work 60 or more hours a week or use automation or find another business.
7
@vulcanalex people who own their own businesses typically work long hours already. Would love to hear your specific ideas on how to automate nurseries - robots to plant seeds, etc.. Yes, shut down all nurseries, dairy farms, regular farms, etc. Then we would import all those items and they would probably be cheaper, but we'd have a lot more people out of work I believe. Not sure your ideas would work across all the impacted areas.
24
My son's first job, at age 12, was picking fruit at a friend's family farm in the Finger Lakes. He was one of a couple of handfuls of other youngsters hired to work alongside of the migrant farmworkers from Central America that traditionally worked there. Within a month, my son was the only non-migrant still working there, as all of the other young people found the work too hard and the pay too low. I can't imagine the farms in that area (near the Red Jacket Orchards featured in the story) functioning without migrant labor, and from what I understand, there are nowhere near enough H-2A work visas issued to handle the demand. Yet I hear nothing from federal authorities about dealing with this problem; the only stories generally deal with how many H-2As President Trump gets for his workers in his hotels, resorts and golf courses.
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@raerni And lest anyone answer that moving people from the cities, or getting underemployed Americans from the region to take these "low skill" agricultural jobs from the illegal migrants is the answer, the farmers are not stupid. They have tried everything they can to attract workers, and found few takers. Most farms in the area offer on-site housing, and have raised wages to try and attract workers, but to no avail. When the local McDonalds and Walmarts are paying 10-12 dollars per hour to new hires, why would anyone want to take a far more demanding job that pays less and leads nowhere? If farmers had to follow the traditional laws of supply and demand for their labor force, we would all be paying much much more for our produce and other agricultural products, and more and more Americans would be buying foreign imported produce. Is that a tenable solution? Really, the only rational answer is for the government to make H-2A visas more numerous and easier to acquire, but that doesn't fit into the administration's demonizing of foreign workers.
66
@raerni Your son's experience is a great example of the needs for immigrant labor. I'm a democrat and understand that immigration (legal or not) is needed especially for the work a majority of Americans won't do. My family members who are republican argue that we need a wall "to stop all the illegal immigrants from taking American jobs & living off welfare". I don't understand these arguments as a majority of the immigrants are coming here for a better life where they can work a fair paying job, send their children to school, and not deal with everyday violence. It doesn't make sense to travel the dangerous journey then do nothing to improve their lives and live off the system, also how would they obtain welfare if they're not a legal citizen? As for "taking American jobs" they're not! From what I've seen first hand and read most are doing labor intensive work such as farming, janitorial services, and food services just to name a few. If we want to fix the system we should start with the immigration courts by funding more judges to handle the caseloads and get people thru the system faster.
48
@sweetnthngs I agree most illegals should be denied in say 15 minutes at the border. If we need folks to do jobs our citizens won't that is a temporary thing, they work they go home. Not to become citizens or stay for a long time, and not to create children who would be citizens either.
4
If ICE arrests illegal workers on farms so there are not enough of them to do the work, then out-of-work Americans who want to collect welfare and food stamps should be relocated so they can work on the farms that need them. Wages could be paid from a combination of federal dollars and wages from the farmer. Providing food for Americans is in the national interest. It makes no sense to have out-of-work, able-bodied Americans collecting welfare dollars when these agricultural jobs are going unfilled.
5
As a Texan, this is one of the issues about immigration that angers me. We have long been dependent on undocumented labor. People who say farmers should pay better wages to attract American workers don’t get it: here in the South we used slaves to do this work for generations. And after slavery, we used sharecroppers—which was little better than slavery. If not sharecroppers, farmers hired prison laborers under contract, which was essentially a new form of slavery. Then the undocumented workers came, but guess what? Many of them will leave the fields for construction or domestic or restaurant work at the first opportunity. Do you detect a pattern here? Farm labor is grueling. Nobody except the farmer and his family stands to make much of a living from it. Only the most destitute of people will take these jobs willingly (or perhaps the high school student who will go on to other things), and they will quit when opportunities arise. An increase of a few dollars an hour is not going to make the job more attractive.
632
@Joshua Krause Ontario, Canada has a quota system. Only a certain amount of milk is allowed to be produced. This limits how many people can produce milk in Ontario. This way milk farmers don't have to worry about competing with each other, wages are not driven down, and farmers can make a good living.
99
@Joshua Krause,
What may happen in our rural farming region, and this is known as speculation, once 'They' are gone, Mr. McGregor could find himself in competition with Mr. Potter from the same, or neighboring town over a competitive working assignment.
The back-biting begins, where a worker comes into your house and starts telling you the unfortunate history of Tom, Dick or Harry. All good towns and villages usually have a 'Town Crier', with an invisible trumpet, who is lingering in The Life of Henry Stoner, the 1919 journal of a union farmer, and an admirable one.
A century later, and into the Now, the horse power on the farm has long been retired, where pulling a plow, a rake or a wagon was handled by faithful Old Dobbins.
'Business is slow' is a refrain, depending on which person offers his services, and there is a tacit understanding that funds for the above, as a rule, are preferred in hard cash, or 'cash' on a check. The project is presented as an 'aside', and off the books.
Town Hall meetings for the Republicans, Democrats and Realists are held divided at different times, and only Mother Nature and the state of the skies unite the above.
'Of Mice and Men', we are going back to hardship times. Whether Milwaukee will give us all a warm welcome is yet to be determined. There are a few programs listed here, and enough space to add 'common horse sense', with documented sponsorship.
5
@Joshua. The main discernible pattern in your historical summary of labor use by agriculture and mining is that every group you've named has been a type of forced labor.
Enslaved people and prison laborers were physically forced and brutalized if they refused or attempted escape. Sharecroppers and undocumented workers were forced by lack of workable alternatives i.e. racial discrimination, deportation threats, relative poverty etc.
Employers have always used a combination of fear, intimidation, desperation, and brutality to keep their labor costs low and have never tried to pay American citizens based on the value of the agricultural work itself, so we cannot honestly say whether it would work if the right wages and benefits were offered.
However, we can see that when other backbreaking work is accompanied with fair living wages workers have shown up. Mining is one example. Transportation is another.
I'm afraid that hundreds of years of being afforded cheap labor to prioritize profits has created a sense of entitlement among many agricultural employers with a strong resistance to change. Consumers who make more money can afford a raise in price on products if the will was there.
25
Farms in high-unemployment upstate New York depend on illegal immigrants to keep profits high.
There are millions of Americans who lack a high school diploma and compete with immigrants for the low-level jobs. Employers prefer to hire immigrants because it makes them more money. A few dollars a day less for each worker means thousands of dollars a year in extra income for the owners; a good incentive to skirt the law.
Businesses do not hire immigrants because citizens are not available; businesses hire immigrants because there are few American citizens who are willing to work under the slave-labor conditions which provide the greatest rewards for the owners.
7
@Allen It's not just the "greedy" employer. Most Americans buy groceries based on price, and they will not pay .20 more to support a living wage, even knowing it will help them in the long run.
1
@Katrin But if the playing field is level they won't have a choice.
3
Another example that we need comprehensive immigration reform. I have not read any news reports on the Social Security Administration's plan to mail Social Security mismatch letters to employers. For years, the SSA would mail letters to employers who had 10 or more mismatch numbers. The letter states to the employer you are not required to take adverse employment action but you are requested to verify the numbers are correct and that the submitted information is accurate.
During the Bush information, there was an interpretation that a mismatch number was indicative of employer construction knowledge that the person(s) are not legally documented and the employer should terminate the employee after due diligence. Social Security mismatch letters were suspended after a court ruling.
In the Spring of 2019, the letters will resume and with the mindset of the current administration many employers most likely will take a more aggressive approach in their response to the mismatch letter. It is my understanding that there are millions of mismatch numbers. Some of these mismatch numbers are legitimate errors due to last name changes through marriage, an erroneous letter omitted or added, a last name hyphen that does not match, etc. However, many numbers may be imply that the employee is not a legal immigrant.
What will happen when these letters arrive at the employers soon? This incipient event could be a dramatic employment news story. An opportunity for NYT's article.
2
Every time I read about how tough farmers have it, I read something else that says that they're subsidized and receive hefty checks. Others who do business on the up and up but struggle get no such check.
This business about these "poor farmers" and their plight is hogwash. They got used to hiring people for a couple of dollars an hour and padding their own pockets with the bulk of the money.
When people tell them they need to hire American or documented workers, pay taxes and provide a living wage for the backbreaking work they do, they whine that they can't find Americans to do the work when the reality is that they got used to hogging all the money and want to keep it that way.
I think the reason they cannot find American workers is because American workers won't put up with the abuse that illegal workers will: few if any breaks, backbreaking work, unreasonable expectations to generate more money for the owners, no health insurance, being treated like dirt, etc. People are not afraid of physical labor or there'd be no construction workers. What they are not interested in is being taken advantage of. That is the real issue.
If you're unable to run your business without illegal workers and pay your share, then you don't belong in business. If one of those illegals gets hurt on the job, they are likely tossed out with no help from the employer. Disposable people. If that is the way workers are treated, I have zero sympathy for these farmers.
22
Are people willing to pay 2 or 3 times more for milk products?
@Barrie Grenell
Let's find out.
2
@Barrie Grenell That's the point. You and the farmers make it sound like they HAVE to raise prices if they have to pay living wages and benefits. I beg to differ. What it is is that they don't WANT to pay more wages. They want slave labor so they can continue to pad their own pockets. If they weren't so greedy, they could have documented workers earning living wages but taking just a little bit less for themselves.
1
I really can't understand this article. Missing is how much substantial farmers (e.g., managing 800 cows) pay their workers. How much would it take to recruit US citizens to do this work? $20 per hour? $40 per hour? And what would the higher hourly wage do to the price of milK?
10
The restaurant industry, construction, agriculture, healthcare...this is not a regional issue, it’s nationwide.
The implications of legalizing an enormous underpaid workforce are staggering.
If you want to know why we’re unwilling to fix our immigration system, follow the money. It’s the American way!
17
Isn't the right thing to do is pay legal workers and have that cost reflected in the price of the milk we buy?
21
Some farms?! Just upstate?! No. More like Most of the farms in NY state and Most of the farms in the other states, too!
Of course I can't actually document the numbers... but almost anywhere I've been in this country, I see immigrants working, many likely undocumented (and I'm familiar with it in the building industry too, as we've hired them in the past).
It's going on everywhere and in almost every industry. So what?! They're not taking jobs away from citizens... They're doing the jobs that many citizens don't want and won't do. This country needs them.
14
How unreal and irrational we are about immigrant workers, whom we need, apparently. But our very representatives will not figure something out and pass legislation with needed policies and programs. Some national leadership is needed on this issue, to get the word out sufficiently so that legislators will feel safe in making something happen. Our lack of proper policies on this issue is simply because of politics. If we needed migrant workers to run the oil refineries, then we would have seen the solutions years ago. This situation is so unacceptable! And yes, there would be costs associated with this, that consumers ultimately will have to bear. But we already bear other costs associated with our conflicted immigration policies, or lack of policies. And, I must say, the unemployed youth and young adults of our inner cities (predominantly black) are not going to work the farm and agriculture jobs described in the article: those jobs look too much like slavery. But, if we had programs that made those jobs more attractive, to workers and employers alike, perhaps that could change (still a tough sell.)
1
We are often told America would starve without unauthorized immigrants who work on U.S. farms. It is true that unauthorized immigrants make up 26 percent of U.S. farm workers, but according to the Pew Research Center, only 4 percent of unauthorized immigrants are farm workers, So we could deport 96 percent of the nation’s 1.5 million unauthorized immigrants without hurting farms.
Most Americans who opposes illegal immigration would welcome a compromise that lets four percent if unauthorized immigrants who harvest crops stay, but U.S. farmers could legally employ all the migrant workers they need by hiring them though the U.S. government’s H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers program. This program is underused because farmers have to provide H-2A workers fair wages and humane working conditions. Paying migrant workers fir wages would have little impact on the price of groceries. The United States has only about one million farm workers. Most of what you pay at the supermarket are storage, processing, packaging, marketing band transportation costs.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/11/03/occupations-of-unauthorized-immigrant-workers/
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@William Case That's a bit narrow-minded, don't you think? Just because this article is about farms doesn't mean the other 96% of occupations aren't equally important. Americans like new construction homes and cheap restaurants as much as they like dairy and produce.
2
@Peter MacLellan
Employers like undocumented workers because paying them substandard wages gives the employers an edge on competitors who hire only American workers. It drives wages down for American workers at a time income inequity has become a major problem.
However, we do not need illegal immigrants to to do construction work and wait tables. We can hire all the migrant workers we want by increasing legal immigration quotas. Millions are waiting in line,
4
As far as I am concerned all of this has gotten completely out of hand. We should be HELPING the farmers not hurting them with useless immigration enforcement. HOWEVER, I think Vineyard owner Kelly Raby is reaping the rewards of her support of Trump. If her business is hurt: so be it. As the Republicans are fond of repeating “elections have consequences.” Welcome to reality Ms. Raby.
26
This story repeats the same issue that this country has been dealing with for many years. And the same response from the conservative camp is also repeated that we have adequate workers here (that is laughable), or, as stated in the piece, the farmers need to obtain subsidized loans (a form of socialism perhaps) in order to automate (another talking point that automation has taken many jobs).
The facts can be seen once the smokescreen laid by the anti-immigrant camp, and Trump, is penetrated.
Agriculture is hard work. I know, I have worked agriculture.
Agriculture requires dedication, knowledge and, in the case of viticulture, orchards, dairy or produce fields, only select operations can be automated to reduce the dependence on immigrant labor.
We as a country need to step back and think of the consequences of ridding ourselves of immigrant labor, the consequences of labeling every immigrant, legal or otherwise, as the enemy, as Trump and his cheerleaders have.
Perhaps when the shelves are bare we will realize we made a mistake. And it may be too late.
6
@Dan Rid ourselves of only illegal immigrant labor. As many as they need can come and then return home not becoming citizens or making citizens.
1
@Dan it’s sad that you believe Americans are lazy. Many have just been conditioned by Government entitlements and successful capitalism. The same way 2nd generation immigrants fall in the same trap.
Dems are just as hypocritical as the republicans. We need illegals to work low wage jobs, but yet they complain about Amazon not paying a livable wage. Shouldn’t farmers be paying a liveable wage as well as benefits to attack US citizens to work there. They get away with providing sub par wage and no benefits. The Dems and republicans support this idiotic handling of business
2
How nice. The rules do not apply to farmers in New York. May I import my own servants too? Can I underpay them and essentially keep them in bondage on my lands? May I also use them for sexual services, since they are here illegally and they are essentially "mine"?
The mindset here is boggling. This is not America. We do not hold workers against their will, with no labor rights, and then applaud when the "bosses" are forced to pay their illegal help better wages, but still not have to comply by the labor laws that keep American workers from taking jobs like this...
Again, may I break the laws too, if my need for other people's services is great enough? If they can, why not me??
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@Midway - I assure you, farmers in the Midwest are pulling these stunts, too.
And no one’s keeping American workers from taking these jobs. American workers simply don’t want to do them. Hence the streams of illegal immigrant workers being employed by the agricultural, domestic, restaurant, landscaping, and childcare/elder care industries. Americans don’t want to spent 15 hours a day picking grapes, corralling livestock, cleaning toilets, washing dishes, mowing lawns, changing babies’ diapers at daycares, and caring for incontinent, demented, or medically fragile elderly people. Why? Because that sort of work pays less than dirt and is considered demeaning and not a pathway to a stable “American Dream” life. Not everyone can have the corner office, but most Americans don’t want to spend their lives cleaning up after the person in the corner office, either. That’s why the dirty hard work that makes our society run - farming, cleaning, caring for very young children - is mostly done by young, unskilled, illegal/legal immigrants. They don’t have other options, and someone’s got to do this stuff. Just please, don’t perpetuate the farce that Americans would be rushing to inseminate cows or clean bedpans or vacuum offices at 10 p.m. if only illegal immigrants and their unscrupulous employers would get out of everyone’s way.
The article makes no mention of the exorbitant subsidies dairy farmers receive from the Federal government, and the 1.4 billion pounds of surplus cheese currently in storage because dairy production has been increasing despite plummeting demand for milk.
So, the Fed overpays dairy farmers to produce to surplus, buys that surplus at a guaranteed price, makes and stores Velveeta-like “cheese” that few like by the truckload, and punishes the laborers hired by desperate dairy farm owners wanting to maintain their government handouts.
Perhaps we should demand a wall around the Department of Agriculture as a more humane alternative to a border wall.
43
@ ThomasPerc Maryland. There are corporate farms and dairies and there are small family operations. Who do you think are making millions in subsidies ? Many small operations are supported by owners and/or their wives or other family that have a job or multiple jobs to bring in steady revenue. You can not lump “farmers” into the same pot.
1
The same people that say that we must end immigration and build a wall to protect jobs, say that the solution to the dairy farmers' labor problem is to replace immigrants with machinery. How would that create jobs?
When someone contradicts themselves regularly that means they are lying to you regularly.
Why do so many Americans love belong lied to do much?
8
@McGloin It takes people to design, manufacture, sell, distribute, and service that machinery. Demand for machinery creates jobs in the machinery sector.
5
@Bob It takes one person and a computer to design that machinery... not a lot of jobs created there.
It takes a factory full of robots and a foreman to oversee those robots, to manufacture that equipment... not a lot of jobs created there.
It now just takes a sales person and a website designer to sell that equipment... again not a big job creator in that area.
It takes a few people in a warehouse and a truck driver to get that equipment to the farm... again, not a big job creator.
And finally it will take a tech guy from the main office to service that equipment... not some local guys with a some Snap On tools.
It's automation and modern technology, not illegal immigrants that have changed the whole landscape.
2
@McGloin Automation creates good jobs, manufacturing the automation, and then maintaining it. Now less than doing it by hand but being overpopulated fewer people is good.
3
When the Soviet Union was established in the 1920's they made laws with very severe penalties against those trying to emigrate into the country illegally. The concern was that the Soviet Union would be such a great place to live that much of the world would be clamoring to come live in the great socialist USSR.
I learned this in a history class in the 1950's, at the height of the Cold War, when it was extremely hard to emigrate from the Soviet Union, and they had no immigration problem at all---who in their right mind would want to live in such a poor, repressive society?
The Soviet Union fell in 1991. I shudder to think that if US government continues on its present path, we will have to beg people to immigrate to US, or come to work here, or even come to vacation here. That would really solve our immigration problem but could well lead to the end of US.
4
During the 1930s and the Great Depression there was a job surplus in the Soviet Union and over 100,000 Americans immigrated there for work. “Beyond the Urals” is an excellent book on this experience. People will immigrate to work and support their families.
@Jaye Ramsey Sutter
Well, yes, but the USSR in the 1930s killed, through deliberate starvation, millions of their citizens in Ukraine. Certainly this contributed very significantly to their labor shortage.
We hope that people will continue always to do what is best for their families. I also hope that US immigration problems are not solved through a new Great Depression or a swell of white nationalism.
1
It's difficult to sympathize with the dairy farmers here.
The New York/New England area simply doesn't have the right natural advantages for dairy production. Climate, soils, scale of available land and other factors favor the midwest (in the US) or better global locations (such as New Zealand).
The result: New York/New England farms, with high costs making them nationally and globally uncompetitive, "survive" by underpaying for labor. And they "way underpay" by hiring undocumented workers.
Indeed, one can demonstrate the inherent inefficiency of NY/NE dairy farming by looking at the fact that capital intensive ways to substitute for labor (mechanized milking parlors) have generally not been adopted by the local dairies. Why? Because the operations are not sufficiently economic to bear the cost of the capital improvements.
The bottom line is that dairy doesn't work in NY/NE and should not be subsidized. And to subsidize via effectively asking for special dispensation to hire low cost, undocumented, unorganized labor under poor working conditions is NOT a solution our politicians should encourage.
Let the markets work here, as well as fairness and rule of law. The grocery store down the street or the local manufacturer can't get away with hiring undocumented workers at below market wages. Dairy farmers shouldn't be able to either.
If the dairies can't compete, they should close down.
38
@Stuck on a mountain
Another question: if the "boss" man who brings these laborers here illegally barely has the money to pay his workers, who is paying the taxes to educate his FOUR (!) children? Is there a wife/mother living on the farm in the shadows too, to keep the workers happy and productive, and letting the workers reproduce on the American taxpayer's dollar?
(You do know that American workers can barely afford one or two children these days on the legal wages earned, playing under the Dept. of Labor rules?)
5
You could go all the way back to the racist policies of the New Deal when, in order to get Southern Democrats to vote for union organizing legislation, FDR allowed for the glaring exception of farm workers to unionize. At the time, a majority of African-Americans were farmworkers and were not allowed to enjoy the fruits of the American labor movement. Farmers today continue to think they can have it both ways and, as unfair as it is to their immigrant laborers, a solution that allows laborers a voice in their treatment must be included in comprehensive immigration legislation or we will have to pay American citizen farmworkers a higher, living wage. Prices for dairy products will inevitably rise.
7
@scottso
Is the dairy industry really "too big to fail"?
I don't think so. Fine them, and enforce the labor laws.
Those are people being hidden in the shadows on those farms, not slaves owned by the "boss" men going on the record here as breaking the law...
Go get 'em, ICE!
2
People like Ms. Raby keep me up at night.
"Ms. Raby has struggled to find a foreman.... This has left her uncertain about the future of their family farm and the president she helped vote into office.
'I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways, but I’m more on the fence about him now,' Ms. Raby said. 'I don’t want to lose the immigrants who are working here and growing our food.'”
Keep voting republican, people. I don't need much sleep anyway.
36
We both need a better food system and income equality.
People shouldn’t have to be desperate to end up taking these high risk jobs.
People shouldn’t be unable to afford to pay more for room produced in a respectful/healthy/sustainable way.
And since lawmakers are in the pockets of dairy/agriculture, they will subsidize the food we are creating and push it into school lunches, and then find out their immigration policy can’t hack the false demand for cheese/milk/corn etc.
This country did not used to rely on this business model. It’s not necessary. It favors the powerful and rich, but in the end, the power is in the hands of those on the ground who do all of the work.
We’re slowly but surely getting to understand how to organize.
2
@Eve
Organize, and encourage your legal immigrant workers to buy guns...
When the laws fail us, and the "slaves" eventually revolt, the "bosses" will be running for protection, and we all will be responsible for our own protection.
Laws are good things. And they need enforcement to be effective. Farmers are not above the law.
2
@Eve
Yes. Capitalism is not synonymous with free markets. Capitalism is s constant interference in free markets on behalf of global corporations.
The owners of capital keep telling us that government is the problem, even as they constantly demand that government give them special deals or they will go out of business or leave.
If capitalism is he opposite of government interference in markets, why does capital expect lower tax rates than labor, subsidies, protections, and wars to protect their "interests?"
A corporation is a government interference in the free market. Without a corporation, the owners of capital are actually responsible for what their businesses does, like any sole proprietor. Corporations shield their owners from liability, then demand special treatment too.
Global billionaires are manipulating markets and the government to centralize the world economy under their control while they tell us that our government, which is our Democratic Republic, is the enemy. They bought up all of mass media so that if a politician actually is honest enough to point this out, they can call them crazy, and call any policy that would "promote the general welfare," "pie in the sky and unicorn dust."
There is plenty of money, but the wrong people have it and they are spending it on the wrong things. Supply Side Economics has actually reduced avg. GDP growth 40% below the stagflation and oil shocks of the 1970s.
Free markets and democracy from the owners of capital.
2
Companies which rely on illegal immigrants for labor need to be cited or shut down. We will never stem the problem of illegal immigration if this practice is condoned or ignored. It only encourages more illegals.
17
@Stan Gomez
I hope the farmers who were so proud to go public here with their illegal hiring are prepared to pay the consequences. God knows they are pushing all of the social costs of the newly imported illegal workforce onto the local schools and tax base...
Please tell me that the children of the illegal workers ARE permitted to leave the farm and attend school? If not? We are just creating more and more uneducated Americans who are not fit to work, but can collect a government paycheck. There should be housing and worker transition programs on these farms for the lesser educated, and mentally non-competitive but physically strong disabled people.
Plenty of Americans can be trained to do farm work, milk cows. In Wisconsin, it used to be a good job for those with Downs Syndrome. Low paying, but it kept the workers off teh disability rolls too, and gave them a sense of place and purpose working for neighboring farms. American jobs, American workers. American labor laws. That is what built this country. We don't want to return to the plantation slave days, just swapping the poor blacks for the poor browns...
2
@Stan Gomez
US was founded by illegals.
1
One of the industries most affected by removing immigrants will be health care, and it's already a problem in rural areas (both here and in Britain). We put 4 parents into 5 different nursing homes, and the most empathetic, caring, skilled workers were immigrants. These were not low paying jobs. Americans generally could not deal with body fluids, dementia, and immobility.
That said, I don't know why an already obese nation is subsidizing dairy (or cattle, ethanol, tobacco, fructose). If prices rise, supply will decrease, and dairy farms will find it easier to find labor.
5
@Steve Are the people doing those healthcare jobs immigrants, or illegal immigrants? There is a rather large difference.
4
@Steve in Ky
Thank you for your comment. I agree that Nursing home aides are very caring and amazing individuals. If you think they are well paid you are mistaken.
1
@M Pay was one of the things we checked when selecting a home. This included nurses, aides, therapists, and cafeteria workers.
Cry me a river. The biggest Trump signs I saw in upstate NY were on the side of barns. His big pitch was the darn wall that he's willing to subvert the constitution to get. So you won! Be happy.
63
Farmers are different breed of people. They support Trump even when his trade war cause them pain. They support Trump even when his immigration policy hurt them. They support Trump even his climate denial ultimately will kill their business.
83
@Tran Trong To be fair, many if not most farmers in upstate New York support Trump because they still remember President Ronald Reagan's tax gift -- and they still hope to keep it.
The sad thing is Trump's policies are single-handedly destroying family farming and the tremendous healthy economy it brings to farmers, their communities, and the world at large.
9
They voted for Trump. They've done this to themselves. They also like to underpay workers for their work, give them unsafe working conditions and threaten them with deportation in order to get away with these practices. It's hard to feel any empathy for them.
78
I'm vacationing on Longboat Key, FL, a town of old white people that are totally dependent on Spanish speaking brown people for every service. Without the immigrants all human life on this island would cease to exist.
40
@Gerard Iannelli No, wages would go up, and a broad range of individuals would be clamoring for these jobs.
4
@Gerard Iannelli
No. Yards would be mowed every other week, instead of every week for example. Everything would look scruffier, but it would be just fine.
3
Devin Nunes' family has a dairy farm, in Iowa, which uses undocumented labor. So do all their neighbors. This has been writen about before. Oh, but that's okay because of who he is.
126
Paying these illegal workers less than minimum wage is immoral and illegal. No one mentions that. The poor farmer who voted for Trump and continues to break the law. Round up the owners of these farms and vineyards and put them in jail. Round up the illegal workers whose low wages push out legitimate workers provided through H-2A , with all its problems. Then focus on fixing the H-2A program. I don't like Trump and will not vote for him, but these farmers who encourage illegal immigration, pay a pittance in wages and break the law, are just as much to blame. This game with the farmers needs to end. Sorry, being a farmer should not make you rich and farmer's welfare needs to end.
51
@John "Being a farmer should not make you rich"
I dare anyone to go into farming today. Unless you are born into a larger industrial farm family, you will work 18-20 hour days and will be happy to cover expenses. It is not an industry that young people without vast amounts of capital can enter and hope to raise a family. 2300 acres is not your average farm, at least not in the NE USA.
Many outsiders look at families that own 500 acres as being rich, but you can't eat or pay bills with the dirt. Selling land will only sell the prinipal out from under you, and besides, farm land is not worth as much unless you are lucky enough to be near a growing city.
2
Please research farm worker wages before you make unsubstantiated claims. https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/
Farm workers in California typically make better than minimum wage. US citizens do not want to work in the fields. In central California first generation immigrants are farm workers and second generation immigrants are becoming growers. The US is increasingly dependent on these immigrants to efficiently run farms. Trump distorts the truth, most immigrants are hard workers with the same hopes for their children as the native born. Trump has done nothing for agriculture or the environment during his term. Try to stay informed and vote accordingly in 2020.
4
@John
The names and illegal practices are listed in this article...
The government, and ICE, should use this information and enforce the labor laws, today. Go after the bosses breaking the law, not the workers, just like we go after the johns not the poor prostitutes paid to service them.
Why do farmers think they are free to set their own laws on their land? Protect the workers, go in and arrest these named farmers who are admitting their crimes.
2
We need to adjust our thinking to a new world. One of permanent over supply of people and labor. Automation is making this worse everyday. This isn't an empty continent of 150 years ago that needs uneducated, unskilled people with big families. Central America has seen its population increase by 4-6 x since the 50s. There has been no similar increase in jobs or economic development to soak up all these extra people. That is frankly impossible under any scenario. The planet adds 80 million people per year. The sustainable way forward is with lower populations in harmony with the environment, not shifting people around to exploit their labor for short term economic gain. Help Central America solve its problems at home.
11
New York state outside cities may lean towards Trump, but not all farmers do. They know they need immigrants. Like the meat-packing industry -- this is heavy work most American-born workers just don't want to do, and/or can't. Sorry but part of the problem is that Americans ourselves are too weak, fat, lazy and entitled for the long hours and dedication it takes to do seasonal labor. That's why we need people who actually work hard: immigrants.
6
@Erika Jones
Oh speak for yourelf Erika.
You sound like a plantation owner justifying the moral crime of "owning" people as personal property.
When workers have no rights, ALL American workers suffer. It is a race to the bottom, with excuses all the way down.
1
Where I live in New York State there are many land owners with huge acreage containing nothing more than fences and sometimes donkeys. All these acres declared “farms” and their owners ( most likely Republicans) receiving tax incentives to save thems lots of dollars. The maintenance of these “farms” is in the hands of undocumented individuals, some who I know, and has been for many years.
11
I own a farm. The commodity we used to produce employed up to 20 people seasonally. But due to the "free trade" regimen the nytimes has pushed for 40 years we had to compete with farms abroad that pay slave-like wages and have no enforced health and safety or environmental regulations. It was impossible to compete. We survived by switching to a commodity that requires relatively little labor -- we no longer employ anybody but family.
12
@Marigrow
The expert from the conservative think tank cited in the article thinks your solution is appropriate. In fact, he thinks you will have to automate or sell to larger corporate farms to compete globally.
2
@Marigrow
And, I suspect, the people who buy the commodity you used to produce, now pay less for it. It sounds to me like you prefer a socialist system, rather than capitalist, although my guess is you don't look at it that way.
1
@Marigrow And the upshot is, aside from lost jobs, food that could have been produced locally is shipped to the US from around the world, thereby wasting a ridiculous amount of energy and contributing to global climate change. Growing local food should be supported, not destroyed by free trade policies. I am strongly opposed to illegal immigration, but support the creation or expansion of legitimate agricultural visa programs as needed to sustain US agriculture. A nation that destroys its farms in favor of international growers is making a foolish choice.
1
Ms. Raby and her farm seem to have survived thanks to the low cost labor that undocumented farmers provided for years. What if anything is she doing to honor and support Victor Pacheco after his years of loyalty. He gets deported, but what about her, what penalties does she suffer for having hired him and profited from his hard labor in the first place? The hypocrisy of Trump supporters goes well beyond their desire to see a wall built; taking advantage of people who do work that most Americans wouldn't is just one of the more blatant ways.
49
@Jon Creamer
Victor was paid for his labor. That is all any employee should expect.
1
@James
No, not in America, James.
Here, we have Labor Laws. They protect human workers like the Victors, had he immigrated here illegally.
2
@Midway
That's is a slightly different perspective than what I was saying. Jo seems to feel that the employees should "honor and support Victor Pacheco after his years of loyalty." Victor was paid for his labor.
If the GOP was serious about undocumented workers, they'd go hard on the companies who employ them. Big fines with rewards for anyone who turns them in, even if it's the illegal worker themselves.
It would be carnage with food rotting in the fields while millions of otherwise honest, hardworking people suddenly in crisis if not done with a amnesty/guest worker program, but it would get everything that 'conservatives' claim they want.
8
yes its hard to get Americans to work for 8.50 an hour. So do what the rest of us do and pay 14.00
30
There are some who actually choose to pay $25-30/hour for unskilled help, pay payroll taxes, provide vacation time and bonuses. Do you know what that gets you? Contributing members of society,tax revenues, loyalty and long term commitment, willingness to do a good job, and trust.
There are some who happen to believe that whether documented or not, everyone deserves a fair shot at the American Dream. And with a living wage, most can afford health care, life in a safe neighborhood, child care for their children, a better school and peace of mind.
Isn't that what being a citizen really means? Contributing to the greater good, helping those less fortunate, giving people a leg up who never had bootstraps, and just being a decent and caring human being?
Everyone can do their part...if they should choose to stop looking out for only themselves. I'm sure paying more for milk is the least of many of our worries.
2
The real larceny is that these immigrants pay social security taxes they will never claim. If the trust fund is solvent, thank an undocumented immigrant.
26
Be prepared to see those wage hikes show up on your receipt at the grocery store. Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but for every action, there is a reaction.
4
@Thomas Hobbes
Lololol.
I am sure the legal workers paying into the system today do not have to thank the illegal labor for providing for our futures.
1
I have no sympathy for the dairy owners who pay such low wages that they can only attract workers who are here illegally. Increase wages so you can get Americans. If milk costs more than so be it.
15
It's interesting to note that Donald Trump is a native New Yorker. He certainly must know what goes on in this state. Yet his programs are effecting this state terribly. I wonder why?
Why doesn't New York State develop a temporary work permit program for these immigrants? Certainly something could be worked out where everyone would be in compliance with the law.
4
@Louis New York votes for Democrats, and President Trump takes a winner-take-all approach in an attempt to gain the presidency for another 4 years?
Vote Republicans out of office, or expect this to get much much worse.
2
Has anyone taken basic economics? You know, supply and demand? Illegal immigrants push down the cost of labor, a.k.a. wages. If we had fewer illegal immigrants, we'd have a higher price of labor AND a higher price of milk. We'd pay the actual, true cost of producing milk rather than an illegal, off-the-books fiasco that is our current situation. As big business complains that "they can't find workers," what they are really saying is that they can't find CHEAP workers. Everyone who is "pro" massive immigration needs to face the fact that it lowers the cost of American labor (a.k.a., wages). It's simple supply and demand and don't let the cognoscenti tell you otherwise.
15
Ask the people who pay the wages, not the cognoscenti. Many offer far, far more than minimum wage and still can’t get takers. Many others do so and pay well over minimum wage plus all the taxes and ss to people who have documentation that’s fake.
2
@S T
Sounds like that's an unsustainable business model you are tring to have the rest of the American workers prop up...
Are all these little farms really "too big to fail"? Sell the cattle and the land and out buildings where the illegal labor force and their families are housed. Then, go get a job yourself.
Farmers can fail. We will still eat. Don't let the cheeapskates kid ya. Their property holdings are often woth millions when liquidated.
1
@Midway You’re entirely missing the point. It’s not that the can’t get cheap labor - it’s that they can’t get labor at all. Americans don’t want to do this stuff. You want to work in a mushroom farm? I bet you don’t. Heck , I don’t. We need a rational system for work visas.
And as others have noted, we have to make American consumers understand that we have to pay the true cost of food. Why should folks pay 99 cents a pound for chicken on sale when the huge chicken farms in Delaware for example are pouring waste into the fields and water, fouling them and then requiring taxpayers to foot the bill for the cleanup? Or if the price of milk is so low that dairy farms (with not mandated quotas) are not sustainable without very cheap, illegal labor, then it's the price of milk that is the problem.
As a society, we want everything cheap, cheap, cheap, but we pay in the end for pollution, unsafe food, immigration issues, miserable in inhumane treatment of animals, and more. Let's pay upfront for what we consume.
71
@Ms D
Good comment: by creating an economically sustainable food system in America, we are much less likely to tolerate food waste, and poor nutrition, like we do today. Instead of creating cheap factory food and sugar water, we could educate children in the schools about proper nutrition. (and cut the "free breakfast" programs that serves them a cereal desert bar for breakfast. Scrambled eggs, oatmeal, fruit...
The more government money is involeved in the food industry, the more obese Americans become. Which in turn forces healthy Ameicans to subsidize the healthcare industry...
If we all had to pay for our consumption as we go, we would incentivize change, or at least encourage the practices of the fittest workers who are still capable of working.
3
A friend in NY state who owns an orchard who has always used H-2As. She has had trouble getting them in time for picking season for the last two years since Trump was elected. These workers are the same apple picking specialists who have been coming every year from Jamaica. They can pick without doing damage to the trees, sort as they pick, and work rapidly. This article fails to indicate that some agg workers have specific skills and experience. Many work following the season as crops ripen. My friend has always provided housing for her crew and paid for any minor medical events. I am not sure you could find short term medical insurance for H-2As. Getting an H-2A after the snow has fallen and your crop is dead is hardly effective.
12
I live in an agricultural area in south Georgia. The farm labor force here is almost exclusively Hispanic, probably some legal and some not. Anyway, Americans don't do that anymore. Without the Hispanics, the system would crash. All we get out of Trump is talk about walls and deportation. Apparently our government is not clever enough to resolve the problem. As for the farmers, let's hope they don't resort to whining about the situation since they were strong supporters of Trump in the first place.
18
Maybe someone would care to overlay a chart of businesses exempt from the Labor Relations Act and businesses that rely on undocumented labor. I bet they are almost the same. Farmers and consumers want it both ways. They want a cheap product. Sorry. We don't pay enough for food and we waste a lot of it. But what about the poor? Maybe if their jobs paid a living wage they wouldn't be poor. We had a labor union movement once upon a time during the last gilded age for a good reason. That reason has returned, thanks to Ronald Reagan and his friends at the Heritage Foundation.
32
@mary bardmess You are living in a fantasy land if you believe that many red-blooded Americans, those young enough to work the dairy farms, the orchards and fields, if wages were competitive.
No amount of collective bargaining a labor movement would bring will not entice persons to work in the agriculture industry. It is hard work, it requires stamina, and one cannot be distracted by today's electronic devices.
So, we can either watch our farmers leave the industry and our shelves become bare due to no product, or, we can use common sense and welcome the labor force in a legal manner.
6
@Dan: As a 40+year former resident of the Hudson Valley, I can tell you for certain that there a few "American" farm workers , dairy or agricultural, doing farm labor. The children of these farmers do not want to farm anymore. When the parents die, the farms are sold, many to real estate developers catering to weekenders from NYC and elsewhere. Seasonal fruit pickers from Jamaica have also become scarce. There are undoubtedly many undocumented farm workers from Mexico and Central America in these jobs, and although, it's "illegal" it's necessary, as there are no "white" people willing to work the fields, orchards and dairy barns. And...it's not the only "farming area" of the US, short of the Amish communities , where family members are not out in the fields. ICE is very present in and around Columbia County, NY, where I lived until very recently, harassing farm workers and anyone with "brown" skin they perceive to be "illegal"! Who is going to feed us in the future, and I also mean the rest of US?
1
@Upstater
Who is going to feed us in the future, and I also mean the rest of US?
----------------
Amazing how an upstate New Yorker in 2019 could sound so much like a helpless plantation mistress in the South immediately after the Civil War when slavery was finally put down after a long national fight. I won't answer you like Rhett did to Scarlett, but I will tell you to invest in a big bag of rice and to start growing your own vegetable garden...
You'll survive. You won't starve. And freeing the workers -- treating them like real human beings with the accompanying human rights is the moral thing to do. Feast on those facts?
According to last week's story about Baltimore, there are plenty of unemployed young adults available to work these farms. It's not tragic to have to move to where the jobs are located.
7
Farm workers have skills. Not just anybody can do the work.
1
"Last fall, Victor Pacheco, the foreman on Ms. Raby’s family farm for 23 years, was detained by ICE agents and deported to Mexico."
There are so many facets to immigration but I'll just comment on one. What we did to Victor Pacheco, and the many others who have worked here for many years, raised families, been hard working good "citizens" - that is a disgrace. It is unthinkable to me that we can't solve one piece of this immigration puzzle at a time.
89
@Charlie Citizens? Where's their visa or proof of citizenship? People are so ignorant when they think illegal immigrants are the same as legal immigrants, or even worse, citizens. You should read the USCIS website and see for yourself how one international can become a US citizen. The process can take decades and thousands of dollars, plus a lot of anxiety.
@Cindy I wrote citizens parenthetically, something you clearly missed and instead took me literally. I get what an illegal immigrant is. My point was someone who has been here for 23 years, who has raised a family, is valued by his boss and his community is an easy problem to solve. Change the law.
2
He had 23 years to straighten it out. He could have hired an immigration lawyer to work on things, unless he had a criminal background they would have found a way. But he didn't......
I.C.E. and Khaalid Walls are lying and I am a witness. They did a sweep outside a Catholic Church shortly after Trump's election and nabbed my boss Lupe. He went to church every Saturday and it was his only break from managing three milking shifts at a large dairy where I worked milking cows. He had his bible with him when I got him out of the Buffalo Federal Detention center in Batavia, NY and became his obligor. The evidence is on my personal Instagram page in the form of a check for the interest on the now forfeit immigration bond: @grevlingard
61
We have always relied upon immigrant labor to do the hard stuff. The Chinese cut those tunnels and built those snow sheds through the Sierras and helped lay those tracks for the railroads in California. We imported slave to pick cotton and other crops in the South, dairy farmers in New York, tomatoes in Florida, Apples and other crops in Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington. Wine and all the other crops, strawberries, avocados, artichokes and all the other vegetables in California. The help build our houses, and then they clean them. They do our laundry and raise our kids. They are the hardworking home health aides that come and bathe us when we are sick. Our country runs on them and it is no secret. They are often paid less than minimum wage. We could not afford the things we have from the fruits of their labor if we paid them a living wage and 80% of what they do would not get done if they were not doing it. The government keeps it illegal so their wages remain low. Farmers promise bonuses for workers who work hard all season and then call ICE at the end of the season so they don't have to pay them.
The jobs we have lost in this country are gone,NOT because of Mexican labor, but rather they are shipped over seas or factory robots have replaced them.
There could be prosperity in this country if we would stop beating up on people here and abroad and start looking after them. NO country should spend 70% of its budget on war machinery.
93
@Ken Sayers You are talking about slavery and the abuse like it's a good thing. Just because something was the norm in the past it doesn't make it okay today.
While visiting the small towns where the migrant workers lived during their picking season, I was amazed to see tiny homes that were so cramped they had their pad locked small refrigerators on the front porch. In later years while living in SF CA, I volunteered to pick wine grapes for the small Joe Swan winery in the Napa Valley. Joe was a United Airlines pilot and some of my friends in the SF wine retailing told me about his request. So went and picked wine grapes. Well I never knew how hard stoop labor is until I picked wine grapes. Then I thought about all those slaves who picked cotton for 12 hours a day in very hot/humid weather and how these jobs were eliminated by large machines, causing many black people to migrate to cities like Atlanta without job skills.
Later in life while working for a large CA wine maker, I then visited some of our contract central valley wine grape growers and saw how they were using grape picking machines to pick grapes at night when cooler temperatures reduced grape cluster shatter and huge amounts of grapes could be quickly harvested. Cesar Chavez organized the Mexican pickers and attempted to stop the use of machines to harvest grapes. This effort included throwing large rocks into the trailers containing grapes to sabotage the wine presses. Google Sabots.
7
If we have a zero tolerance boarder then we need to have a zero tolerance employer policy to match. Detain and charge those law breaking owners of farms / manufacturing / construction / restaurants / child day care & nanny services / GOLF COURSES who hire undocumented workers and exploit these desperate people. They are all indirectly supporting the coyotes / trafficking of people. They are indirectly causing desperate people to endanger themselves in the desert southwest. Seize their illegal property / profits used to commissions their crimes.
Then we will see the real cost of MAGA when we have food shortages, automation takes more jobs, existing house prices escalate, we can only eat at home, rich people have to take care of their own children and our GOLF greens are brown and unkept.
Do the crime, do the time .....
Opps my bad, this will impact the 1%, so never mind...
53
@Justice Say’n Illegal immigrants are violators of US immigration laws. Do the crime, get deported.
1
@ Cindy,
Since you favor deportation of illegal immigrants, then you should also be in favor of jailing and civil forfeitures of those people and companies hiring the illegal immigrants.
The owners and corporations who hire illegal immigrants should be thrown into jail for breaking the law (it is against the law to hire undocumented workers) and their assets and illegal profits subject to civil forfeiture because they have been used in the commission of a felony crime. Also since it is a felony, those law breaking US citizens can no longer vote, serve on juries, etc... you broke the law by hiring illegal immigrants, so suffer ALL of the consequences.
Zero tolerance. Lock’em up. Seize their illegal gains.
Let’s declare a war on illegal immigration based on the success of the war on illegal drugs. Hit the demand side as hard as you are hitting the supply side, right?
Are we not a nation of laws? Or are some citizen$$$ more equal than other citizen$ ....
1
The chickens have come home to roost.
Rural America overwhelmingly voted for Trump, even though he was very clear that he hated immigrants. Many of his voters are among those who are the most disadvantaged by his policies, which are boondoggles for the wealthy.
Farmers should have known what they were asking for. They got what they should have expected and only have themselves to blame.
222
@David Yeah, I don't know why farmers thought that a city guy who was born with a golden spoon in his mouth would consider the needs of rural folks while he was race baiting and pushing nationalist slogans.
36
@David He hates ILLEGAL immigrants, not just immigrants. His wife is a legal immigrant. Why can't people differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants?
@Cindy, No, he hates all immigrants, with waivers only for his wives. And there is some doubt that his current wife was a "Legal" immigrant, as she supposedly worked illegally as a model. And her parents are part of the "chain migration" that he rails against. So clearly what is good for Trump is what he likes. Do you think he cares or even knows that he is putting family farmers out of business with his trade wars and crackdowns on law-abiding agricultural workers who happen to lack documentation?
2
Most farmers vote and support Donald Trump.
19
Get them documented. That is not easy but you took the easy way to start with
10
@R.Kenney There is no way to do that-- no path to citizenship for undocumented workers in the US. That is the problem facing the DACA kids.
10
@Kathy Who said they had to become citizens?
Amèreica, the top grifter's society.
“But the good thing about it now,” he said, “is that we get paid more and this farmer is good to me.”
Glad to learn the undocumented slaves are happier about it now.
20
ICE should target aliens indiscriminately and do workplace roundups regularly. We are not going to deport all 11-20 million illegal aliens until we take a much harder line. I have zero sympathy for employers hiring them. They should be charged as well.
12
@DRS If we deported 1000 people a day, starting with only 11M illegal immigrants, it would take 30 full years to deport all 11M. There are more than 11M here; more arrive every day. Obviously the solution is not to count on deporting everyone. We can't have a flat out amnesty either, because that opens the flood gates. The solutions are nuanced and expensive, and they involve some kind of logical guest worker status for farm workers, who must still be paid a living wage, so that the markets for farm products can come to some kind of normal equilibrium. (Right now we have over supplies of milk.)
8
The writer makes a statement that immigrant farm workers are employed on small farms, but please note that the big 2000-5000 cow dairies, are employing many more undocumented laborers, are also responsible for flooding the market with milk, keeping milk prices down, and driving out the small farmer. Having more machines on farms would help.......which machines, robots for milking, at $250,000. This is complicated, but can be solved, if people actually want to solve it. It is a ‘wedge’ issue, like abortion. Politicians need it to keep us divided.
7
'To search private property like a farm, ICE needs a warrant that shows reason to believe a particular undocumented immigrant is living or working there.'
Do you mean like saying the name and location of the farm in the New York Times? Why wasn't this entirely anonymous when it puts people in danger?
4
The headline is dishonest.
‘Immigrants’ have nothing to fear from a crackdown. Illegal immigrants might.
Hard to have an honest debate about immigration when one side deliberately uses false terminology.
11
They are "undocumented immigrants". "Illegal immigrants" is an intentional slur against these people who are just trying to feed their families. An honest discussion needs to be had for sure, but using bigoted language isn't a good way to start it.
4
@Mel
Calling someone who entered my country illegally an ‘illegal immigrant’ is not a slur, nor is it bogotry.
In fact the use of the term ‘immigrant’ in the context of illegal entry is a polite concession to someone who could be described instead as an illegal alien.
As for just trying to feed their families, there are many Americans and Canadian trying to do the same but competition from illegal workers drives down their wages.
2
It is truely sad when strict enforcement of American immigration laws is slanted negatively by the NYT. The Times should criticize the elected political leaders of our great Republic for not doing their job in reforming our immigration laws and protecting our borders. If our university students had some character they could help out as farm workers on weekends and spring break , rather than getting drunk and partying.
9
@Peter Olsson MD
Before Greed Is GOOD took over, kids did work in the fields, vineyards and barns. They won't do it anymore and they don't have to do it anymore. That is not an answer. Fix the system to allow dairy farm workers to be here legally.
6
@Peter Olsson MD
Weekends? Spring break? Uh huh.
In the Soviet period, university students had their arms twisted to harvest potatoes. No experience required, a pitchfork or shovel their only tools, and a realatively short harvest season. All in support of the workers' paradise.
As the article points out, dairy farms operate year round, cows need to be milked more than once a day, every day, and few crops ripen in the spring. Farm work requires training and experience with equipment and animals that most college kids in this country don't have.
Not to mention that most students are not getting drunk and partying; they're just the ones we read about. Most are working on or near campus as well as studying, shelving books, bagging groceries, stocking shelves, waiting tables, doing internships ...
1
If Ms. Raby was dumb enough to vote for Trump, then too bad for her. She didn't do kindly by her foreman who had served her well for 23 years.
132
You mean too bad for Mr Pacheco and his family. Ms Raby got exactly what she voted for
10
Immigrants built this nation but now have out lived their usefulness? You do not miss your water until your well runs dry. Prepare for a very expensive America.
27
One has to wonder if Sheldon Adelson's and Trump's hotels receive the same level of scrutiny from ICE.
122
@Bill Norton
Of course they the BIGLYIST scrutiny!!! You know this by Don Jr getting “tough” on the illegals they’ve employed for .....fifteen years. What hypocrisy.
5
The farmers exploited undocumented workers in good times and created a nightmare by voting for Trump.
Cry me a river.
89
Seeing this in the Hudson Valley
4
"family farm" sounds so much nicer than "family labor camp exploiting vulnerable undocumented people at sub living wages"
if your business model depends on paying people less than it costs to survive, and exploiting people who are undocumented and cannot defend themselves or organize for better wages and labor protection, you are a criminal
41
The USA needs an uncomplicated way to bring in documented temporary workers as we do here in Canada. We bring in bus loads every spring, provide them with a decent wage and seasonal accommodation and they head back to their warmer climate for the winter with enough money to tide them over until the next season. It seems to work out well for everyone. One bonus is the increased availability of Mexican ingredients in the local supermarkets for our visitors which is great for us who enjoy Mexican style food.
4
This is a huge problem for farmers and landscapers in Ohio and, I suspect, across the country.
The no-nothings in Washington will flush these businesses down the drain with their idiotic policies (or non-policies). Trump needs to be gone -- the sooner the better.
10
I have always been puzzled by our lack of logical solutions to these problems. Migrants from agricultural to construction could apply and receive work visas to the US for 1 to 5 years, industry dependent, for a fee and available at Embassy and consular offices in their home countries. Preferences would be given to workers south of the border in our own hemisphere. They would get special SS cards. Employers would be required to pay wages on a scale and insurance.
We are fooling ourselves thinking that there are Americans willing and able to take these jobs. The unemployment rate and demographics say otherwise. Of course the larger problem is that the Republicans would have to admit their E-Verify and agricultural and construction fraud.
10
@Sailorgirl Certain issues work better for our bought and paid for politicians if they can keep them alive as issues and not ever solve them. Immigration is one of them. That includes both parties.
4
Actually, some Syrian refugees I know like Trump because they think he must be good for business. -It's not just dairy farmers. This idea that the businessman knows best is as ubiquitous as it is dangerous.
9
The war on illegal immigrants embodies a lot of the same ambiguities as the war on drugs. For both, the demand is nearly inflexible. Both the farmers and the drug users cannot survive without breaking the law. And the result of heavy handed restrictions makes breaking both immigration and drug laws ever more lucrative. It is a war where the spoils of victory go to the "enemy". Both drug lords and the so-called coyotes have highly lucrative incentives to flaunt the laws.
Like the war we once fought in Vietnam, it is an endeavor without any possibility of success. And in both cases, were success possible, then we'd all be worse off for it.
3
@Lee Elliott: This analogy is false. The war on cannabis is built on lies. But there's nothing false about reports of half a million illegal migrants entering our country annually.
3
Immigration is a complex issue and can not be broken down into ridiculous sound bites.
The President and the GOP need to stop the ice raids and come up with a in depth solution. Politicians get a salary to do there job which is to support Americans in all professions including farms across the country.
Stop pointing the finger at the immigrants and point it to the lack of political will and leadership. There are models across the world addressing immigration we are special because we care to much about cheap labor to stuff our pockets with.
Trump has vetoed immigration plans and has come up with nothing. So he needs to once again start the process and bring it a successful conclusion for everyone.
We are not in a schoolyard this is real life and once again children should not be put in cages no matter what.
5
There are clear reasons why anyone prefers to hire immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, in almost any employment sector (agriculture, commerce, health care, domestic work, etc). It doesn't generally have to do with pay, as the pay is the generally the same regardless of where the worker was born. It has to do with their qualities as employees. Not necessarily in order, these special qualities that most immigrants offer to a much greater degree than others are reliability (they show up), hard work (they don't goof off), honesty (they don't steal or cheat), intelligence (you'd be surprised at their insight), dedication (they don't just quit or call in sick on a whim when they don't feel like working), and thoughtfulness (they care about more than just the paycheck, they will go the extra mile to help a person). If you talk to people who have employed immigrants, you will get similar observations. Immigrants are not "stealing" jobs from "Americans"; they are DOING the jobs in a serious way, while others just won't. Low-tech or high-tech, blue-collar or white collar, the story is the same.
33
@Kevin
Very well said, and similar to my observations of the immigrant workers I have encountered, and hired at times in the Mid-Hudson Valley and Northern Catskills.
One of those men who started as kitchen help, doing yard work and odd jobs on his times off. Then went to work for a local landscaper; and then other contractors; now, after some 17 years here, and still fighting his deportation, has applied for legal residency, and started his own 'legal' side business. How does he contribute to the local economy? Buys all materials and tools and equipment at the local lumber yards and hardware stores; buys his trucks and cars locally; buys his gas and fuel locally; pays rent; same as with all the 'local' contractors, can be found at the local diners and delis getting breakfast and lunch for himself and his workers;
When those businesses accept his cash no one asks where he got it, or where he came from.
3
@Greg
So he took one of those "Dead end jobs" that everyone here is saying farm work is (or cleaning, yardwork etc.) and has not in fact hit a "dead end".
He's used the skills and capital and done well for himself.
All we are saying is he could have been a legal citizen (of any race) given the same opportunities without having to fight for decent wages and it's a true win win.
1
How serious could the threat of an ICE raid be if the farmer you quote in this story is willing to give his name? He says all it will take is for one of his undocumented workers to be stopped for a traffic violation yet he seems to have no problem directing ICE to his farm. What gives?
6
In the last four years Courtland county gave the GOP about $400,000 and the Democrats $130,000. Their vote for Trump was 6% greater than for Clinton.They GOP vote was a political swing to the GOP. Politically they put their money in synchrony with their mouths. The Times talked to the wrong farmers. Everything is fine around Homer. The GOP immigrant bashing and economic exploitation is what they prefer and what they get.
2
Farming is a factory, don't make farmers any heroes or anything when they drive a tractor all day growing corn and soybeans for profit. Everything is profit in America. Farmers seldom if ever grow any real food. Certainly not any produce and fruits and vegetables. It is all corn and soybeans so they can genetically modify your bodies with the 'boxes' of food you buy.
So farmers are losers to me, let's get this straight. Most American farmers do not not grow real food and almost none do it organically.
3
I have three kids, youngest being 2 years old.
Trust me, if we deported all illegals, I’d still buy milk even if it were more expensive. Why?
First for my kids. Second, because I’m not selfish and would support the resulting, higher living wages for my fellow blue collar Americans who would take those jobs over illegals.
13
Except the fact that your blue collar Americans would never take those jobs to begin with, even if the wages were higher. They don’t seem interested in doing hard, sweaty, thankless jobs like farming which is why farmers are in this mess in the first place, no?
2
@Jay Lincoln
You are kidding yourself if you think Americans will take those jobs. In Vermont we can't get people to work. We pay well over $15 an hour. Doesn't matter if you pay $20. The worker will show up for awhile, then after a brief time, collect his/her check, and disappear.
And no it is not slavery we are doing the same work right along side them.
2
@Jay Lincoln I think what @pamela means is that farmers have destroyed the local labor market for American farm workers (who had to go elsewhere for work) and now they cannot recruit local workers. Chicken-egg. They caused this and now it will hurt them to do it the right (legal) way. This is like the "logic" used to justify increases in the badly abused so-called skilled worker visas.
3
The first problem is that Americans are used to paying below market costs for products, #2 is the birthright citizenship, #3 is the inability of the workers to move back and forth across the border (i.e. work here, live there), #4 is the lack of political will to fix this problem (no American wants to work on a farm, so we have to accept that we need low skill workers, but they need to be guest workers who can't drop anchor babies- they should not even bring children with them).
6
Don’t feel sorry for farmers, they all voted for Trump. People need to research the issues before voting not listen to inflammatory rhetoric and lies.
70
@Susan This sounds more like an anti-farmer comment than a comment about fairness or justice. By the way, Clifton Park was built on (and destroyed) excellent farm land. Loss of prime farm land is a major reason that we must import so much of our food, and worry about chemicals and additives in that food. Rebuild our cities and stop destroying prime farm land. It never can return to agriculture.
2
To the Trump voters now facing the consequences of their votes: You broke it, you bought it.
43
I am stunned by the number of respondents who are castigating farmers who use immigrant labor. Before so callously and ignorantly, putting in their two cents, I suggest they spend one day out there in the fields. It will be an "enlightening" experience. There is a reason why citizens don't do these jobs. They are back breaking. No amount of money will change that. To paraphrase an old adage, walk in someone's shoes before criticizing.
12
@Peter
No, sir. I'm not sure who you are, but YOU don't get to decide which American laws are followed and which are broken. Trucking is a physically costly job too. Why not just break the law and put illegal immigrants behind the wheel? WE don't need no steenkin laws. And the newcomers work cheap and do what they are told because they have no labor law protections. For shame!!
2
The solution is simple.
A) Enter the country legally.
B) Don't hire people who are here illegally.
See. That was simple.
12
You aren’t paying attention. It’s not that simple.
1
I am always struck by how Republicans only develop empathy when issues effect them directly. When they have a gay son or daughter they suddenly see the plight of the gay community. The opioid crisis impacts their loved one and they want help instead of incarceration. Now crack downs on illegal immigrants impacts their bottom line and suddenly they want thoughtful policies. Hypocrisy is in the their DNA.
61
Undocumented workers would not be an issue if we had governance that worked instead of politicians who bray platitudes.
Americans have plentiful, nutritional and by world standards very affordable food supplies. Laborers from Central America make that possible. Without the hard work of these people, American standard of living would decline for the simple fact that food prices, especially for fruits and vegetables, would be multiples of what are charged today.
The reality is that American residents will not perform many types of agricultural labor. The work does not pay as much as welfare or McDonalds or unemployment. The work is much more physically taxing. The work doesn't lead to any career paths. Just look to Japan as the land of $8 oranges picked by Japanese laborers.
America doesn't need more walls or border barriers. A stupid idea promulgated by ideologues.
America needs updated immigration policies that foster and encourage seasonal labor migration. Policies which protect the American food supply, provide OSHA safety for the migrants, and encourage respect for the law on the parts of farmers, builders (try to get a roof installed without Mexican laborers) as well as migrants.
Additionally, the US needs an updated Monroe Doctrine for Central and South America. One that spells out the future of the Americas in such a way that Americans of North, Central and South believe that continued US hegemony works for all and not just for the benefit of neo cons.
9
Why doesn't the farmer use migrant workers under the legal visa system?
4
@Margo There are few of these legal farm worker visas available. They are bought by intermediaries who truck the same group of immigrants around to various farming regions of the US, treating them badly. These migrant workers don't even have their hands on their own visas.
4
Illegal is illegal, if your business simply cannot survive without breaking US immigration laws, change your business model.
No sympathy as I face the same daunting business environment as many but choose to follow the letter of the law and sleep well at night.
9
While we espouse humanitarian undertakings by Politicians, a reality exist, that being just how much Americans benefit from all our illegals. Shutting down, and deporting existing illegals, would have a profound affect on consumer prices. Our folks who no longer participate in the work force or those unemployed won't do the jobs illegals do.
Seems to me that any voter with any sense should have come to this conclusion when they were chanting “build the wall” in 2016.
9
The attitude of the farmers is just unconscionable in my opinion. I “still like Trump” says one, but am “on the fence” because I’m losing my illegal, underpaid workers. Far be it for her to actually reduce her profits and pay a living wage to legal workers. These farmers act like the problem is the federal government’s immigration policies. The problem is the farmers. Greed will always exploit and then whine and play victim when called to account. If we all have to pay more for our milk so the dairy industry hires legal workers, so be it. And any federal program bringing temporary workers here should mandate fair wages and living conditions. The elitist attitude of these farmers is just sickening.
6
And here you have it when the trump supporter says, “I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways, but I’m more on the fence about him now,” Ms. Raby said. “I don’t want to lose the immigrants who are working here and growing our food.” The right wingers want to have it all—fear mongering tribalism and nationalistic policies but also cheap labor to do their dirty work. Talk about entitled.
45
if employers pay living wages there will be no shortage of labor. the employers who pay sub living wages to undocumented criminals are complicit in human trafficking and directly responsible for the daily exploitation of the people they employ
why is it so difficult for employers to act justly?
6
Because, the lack of enforcement of our overly complex and outdated immigration laws encourages the behavior. A status quo that too many ideologues on left and right seemingly prefer to thoughtful compromise.
2
Yeah, our dirty secret. Many of these folks wash and cook our dishes in the finest establishments, they pick our cherries and melons and roof houses and mow lawns. Work Americans cannot or will not do. If you get your roof reshingled in Ohio it will be done by Latins. Local contractors tell me that no young able bodied locals will apply. If they apply and are hired they last a few days.
10
This has left her uncertain about the future of their family farm and the president she helped vote into office. “I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways, but I’m more on the fence about him now,” Ms. Raby said. “I don’t want to lose the immigrants who are working here and growing our food.”
Leads one to wonder just what our dear leader needs to do to get her “ off the fence”?
6
“It has long been an open secret that some farms survive by relying on an undocumented labor force.” Really? Where is that an “open secret.” It is a well known and embodied reality that immigrant communities have long populated our vegetable and fruit picking and sorting farm worker ranks and our cow-pig-chicken industrial processing complex. Wake up, America. Support the people who put food on your table.
8
@Joe B. Not unless they're here legally!
What difference does it make who they are ... When someone works hard, early, in unpleasant jobs and helps create wealth for farm, restaurants, hotels. And had Medicare & social security taxes deducted from their paycheck. And they buy stuff and pay sales taxes at Walmart?
Deport Zuckerbeg & drug company billionaires. They are the biggest enemy.
4
NY farmers need alternative crop options. Hemp comes to mind.
1
"Send them all back and build the wall" Our immigration system is broken and, so far, DC is paralyzed and cannot fix it. And until the American citizens feel the pain of a broken system it cannot be fixed. I believe ICE needs to focus their efforts in districts represented by mmigration hawks (e.g., King, Nunes Meadows, Jordan). Only when American citizens see empty shelves or prices double what they were a week before will they elect representatives willing to fix this problem.
6
@Tom "Only when American citizens see empty shelves or prices double what they were a week before will they elect representatives willing to fix this problem."
I have been hearing this broken record for many years now, peddled by agribusiness exploiters of illegal immigrants - that if we don't reform our "broken" immigration system (read: allow unlimited numbers of peasants from south of the border into this country for the purpose of providing cheap farm labor), we will be paying astronomical prices for food or we will all die of famine, etc. It's a tired and phony argument for open borders. I am still waiting to see any evidence of the upcoming food supply calamity but of course it's nowhere to be found. Pray tell Tom, why is that?
3
@Tom
Why is it progressives are willing to pay a fortune for food or see nationwide hunger but are unwilling to pay a small gas or carbon tax to finance renewable energy projects?
@mpound
Those same people who want empty supermarket shelves to prove a political point won't pay a nickel extra for gas to pay for renewable energy projects. Nor have they ever worked on a farm. Every year it gets harder to find people to work. Even something like weedwhacking fence lines. Workers show up for a day, and then disappear. You can pay 17 to 25 an hour. Doesn't matter what you pay. Americans do not want to do manual labor any more. FYI farmers work very hard. Try it sometime.
Between this issue that Trump demagogued and Trump's I am a genius on trade and will start a massive Trump war till you tell me I am great, the end will come re a deep crash in the economy.
The only question is when and how bad.
PS: Oh add on trillions of dollars in deficit spending with his corporate welfare tax cuts to the mix.
4
So hard to feel bad for these folks who put Trump into office. What did they think was going to happen?
43
"Last fall, Victor Pacheco, the foreman on Ms. Raby’s family farm for 23 years, was detained by ICE agents and deported to Mexico.
Ms. Raby has struggled to find a foreman skilled enough to manage her vineyard, where the grapevines are now dusted in a light coat of snow and in need of winter pruning. This has left her uncertain about the future of their family farm and the president she helped vote into office.
“I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways, but I’m more on the fence about him now,” Ms. Raby said. “I don’t want to lose the immigrants who are working here and growing our food.”
but...but...I just could not vote for 'her'.
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
40
I have no sympathy for Ms. Raby. If she supports the President, she must accept his policies, even if they harm her. She got what she voted for.
33
This is why border walls around the world always fail, and why the solution is enlightened. Let’s stop denying our better angels, and cease handing power over to a few global elites who seek to divide and conquer, impoverish and enslave, and profit from further rigging the game. Put people in the system already. That’s how the future will be built.
4
@Daniel Kauffman ✅
Nothing is more elitist than being in favor of open borders.
Everyday during planting and harvesting season when I drive to work I see the migrant workers out in the cabbage field, rainy, muddy, hot, dirty, dangerous work. Currently migrants are out pruning fruit trees in the cold and snow.
The farmers here offer a good hourly salary, even housing if needed and yet they need to rely on migrants.
This county votes republican on every level.
Talk about voting against your own interests.
12
ICE is cracking down on illegal immmigrants in "Blue" states like New York and California to punish them for not supporting Trump. Of course, the employers he's hurting are usually big-time GOP supporters. Upstate NY votes Red, the Central Valley in CA votes Red too. So do just about all the farmers in the Great Plains states -- Red to the core. And who relies on these immigrants? These voters. And who is getting hammered with Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric and actions (and his tariffs, too, for that matter)? These voters. Yet just as is the case with many GOP policies that actually harm them, these voters will rise to the dog-whistles and vote Red yet again (and again, and again, and again). I just continued to shake my head is disbelief.
7
Most Americans welcome LEGAL immigrants, but do not want ILLEGAL immigrants. We cannot afford (or choose not) to support our own citizens: the poor, the ill, elderly, disabled, veterans, et al. US taxpayers cannot possibly support the hundreds of millions of foreigners who would like to come here.
US laws allow foreigners to seek entry and citizenship. Those who do not follow these laws are in this country illegally and should be detained and deported; this is policy in other countries, too. (And, of course, the US and other nations try to screen out convicted criminals.)
The cruelty lies not in limiting legal immigration, or detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, or forcing those who wish to enter the US to wait for processing. What is cruel, unethical and probably illegal is encouraging parents to bring their children on the dangerous trek to US borders and teaching the parents how to game the system to enter the US by falsely claiming asylum, persecution, etc. Indeed, many believe bringing children on such perilous journeys constitutes child abuse.
No other nation has open borders, nor should the US.
8
We aren’t supporting them. They are working—at jobs Americans won’t do. That’s the problem: farmers need the workers so your family has food on the table.
3
As a matter of good business sense, many of these undocumented workers (aka, illegal aliens) are needed to do the jobs that otherwise wouldn't get done. ICE cannot be criticized for doing their job of enforcing the law, albeit perhaps more strictly than was the case under previous administrations. As they say, though, if you don't like the law change it. Many tech workers come from India and other countries on special work visas. There's no reason why any required worker no matter what the industry should not be issued such a visa if Americans cannot be found to fill these necessary jobs. It's just good business sense.
3
@Mike They won't get done at those wages. Whatever happened to the Dems standing up for American workers?
1
Where is Adam Smith? The free marketeers believe that the market corrects all ills. Nowhere in this article is it mentioned that if workers are in high demand, wages should rise. Somehow business people always revel in the free market when it means that the boss's salary needs to go up. But workers on the ground? Nope, sorry, gotta import illegal labor who will work for a pittance.
16
@Les Biesecker
Indeed, wages should be higher for these jobs.
Reality: Business people will take every advantage the market can give them including underpriced labor.
Reality: Will white working class people take janatorial jobs or farm work in the fields? The farm working population in this country is mostly people of color.
That's how farmers make a living...yes, you complain about it but wages will not rise because several farms will go out of business if they did. Their margins are not what they once were.
3
I have a simple solution.
Pay market wages like other industries and you'll have all the workers you want. Shoppers will quickly get accustomed to paying the new prices for produce, just as they grew accustomed to paying more for gas. If Congress then decides we need immigrant labor, so be it, but at market wages, similar to the H-1B visas and not undercutting opportunities for legal workers.
Let's stop this racism! Illegal employment is a euphemism for slavery. Didn't we criminalize that in the 19th century? Why is it still prevalent in the 21st?
10
@Vivian They are paying market wages. Trump is trying to squeeze labor supply. Well, actually he is just a pandering hypocrite because he's played the same game as an employer, but the point stands.
Worried about the inhumanity of some type of slavery? Why put people at the bottom in the cross hairs? Increase the minimum wage and enforce that. Then see if opportunity disappears for undocumented laborers.
You want individual employers to pay above current market wages? Who'll go first?
4
@Edgar Snark
All employers need to be compelled to employ only legal workers and follow the laws of this country. That's the way Americans are supposed to do business. We're rewarding lawbreakers by allowing this laissez faire attitude to continue.
I'd love to drive at 100mph on the highways but I don't as I'm afraid of getting caught. Why shouldn't employers who break rules have fears about breaking the law?
I recommended market wages. In NY State this could be around $25 an hour for such back breaking work. Does anyone think they could find legal workers willing to work for that rate in upstate NY? Now are you willing to pay $1 more per pound for fresh vegetables? Problem solved. No violins necessary.
1
'Ms. Raby has struggled to find a foreman skilled enough to manage her vineyard, where the grapevines are now dusted in a light coat of snow and in need of winter pruning. This has left her uncertain about the future of their family farm and the president she helped vote into office.
“I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways, but I’m more on the fence about him now,” Ms. Raby said. “I don’t want to lose the immigrants who are working here and growing our food.”'
Really, this just makes my head hurt.
171
@JR . Exactly. The majority of these same folks voted for Trump. In many ways they get what they deserve. Trouble is- the ripple effect negatively impacts everyone eventually.
24
@JR
Didn't Ms. Raby listen to Trumps rhetoric during the election? His campaign gatherings were full of rabid (racists?) supporters saying, "Build the Wall". Don't forget his tirade against Mexicans, "they are rapists and murderers"
But then she is surprised at aggressive ICE raids on farms? What did she think she was voting for?
5
The same was said said 160 years ago; it involved cotton and another oppressed people.
Raise the price, pay a living wage to legal residents, have an honest discussion of labor needs and the true costs -- all the costs of labor, medical, educational and a funded retirement.
Do not do business with countries that pay slave wages. Yes, that means tariffs to offset the economic advantages claimed by environmental depredations and human rights abuses of other countries.
If legal immigration needs to be increased to fill the void, have that discussion, enact that policy.
30
@TOM
Easy to say...very hard to do.
Countries will go else where to sell their labor to the lowest bidder.
Your workers of the world unite opinion is fine on its face but very hard to convince countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.
Tarriffs for them they will just go to China or Europe.
1
@TOM Yup. Better... Enforce your ethical and environmental standards and open the doors to anyone that wants to come. Then watch our economy flourish with legions of productive taxpayers.
2
"I still agree with Trump in a lot of ways...." was all I needed to hear. I hope Ms. Raby loses the family farm.
217
While I don’t go as far as saying “let her lose the farm” I agree it is difficult to feel empathy for her situation when she voted for these polices. How about “ let her eat cake?”
57
@HoosierGuy Agree, she only cares about the Trump policies that affect her.
38
@HoosierGuy: I cannot hope for the loss of Ms.Raby's farm. I have no idea how many innocent victims that closure would harm.
My immediate and long term wish is that the corrupt policies and practices of the ruling authorities that enabled this debacle will be driven to ethical correction by public demand.
9
It is all "Fruit from the poisonous tree."
I object to the position that "Americans won't do this type of work." I did this type of work as it was the only work I could get and if I needed the money, I had to work. The issue today is there are too many alternatives for people "who do not want to work" (disability is another issue).
15
@Mark If Americans will do this type of work, why aren't they? What is the advantage to taking a risk with immigrants that might be deported?
But I agree, there are too many alternatives for people who don't want to work hard. Take the Trump family, for example.
7
The health care industry relies on undocumented workers too, especially nursing homes. Where would our parents be without them?
26
@Diane
Your parents would pay market rates from legal workers.
6
While the nursing home operators make a fortune.
3
I agree with a lot of the comments below. Illegal immigration needs to stop. We are all "paying" for this -in terms of the benefits these people get from the US without paying taxes (Medicaid, public education, trips to the ED without paying their bills, etc.). America's consumerism is going to have to stop sooner or later as prices will keep rising, our taxes will keep going up, and we become more like Europe (in terms of what we can afford to buy - a lot less, the taxes we pay - a lot more). We can't let everyone in. We need to adopt Canada's model for immigration.
15
I wouldn’t mind being more like Europe. My relatives have more disposable income as they don’t have high monthly premiums, high copays. Drugs are far less expensive. Their children go to university free. And their tax rate is the same as mine. Oh, their food is better too.
4
@Sarah99
I am pretty sure that you are paying half the price for farm products because of illegal immigration. Pick your poison, paying someone else’s ER bills or much higher prices of milk, etc.?
2
It’s a market. Higher prices are inevitable no matter what happens.
4
I can have empathy for both the workers and farmers, but it only goes so far. Americans have boxed themselves into this corner over decades. Nobody wants to do the dirty work any longer that the immigrants do. And I can't help but be annoyed by the immigrant who worked that farm for 23 years and never sought a path to citizenship......there isn't any good excuse for that. We have to find solutions to this problem.....we need to elect people who will.
13
I don’t think it’s so easy if you don’t have resources and are here illegally. Now, the farmer might have been able to work something out if they had invested themselves in the problem, but it probably would have involved things like letting the person go back to their home country for indeterminate numbers of months while things processed, which may never have felt tenable for a critical worker, who probably has kids here.
11
@Jean Auerbach Precisely. We need to get past our obsession with compliance and start defining law in a way that is humane and productive. We are not here to serve the law. The law is to serve us. And there are boatloads of precedents about bad laws we eliminated. Amnesty is really acknowledgement of our fallibility in governance. What's a bad law? Hint: typically one that is widely flouted.
8
In this part of eastern PA, you can buy local milk at 30% more compared to generic milk from who knows where. Guess which sells better?
But we have family farms where the kids want to leave and if the land isn't too rural, selling the land for housing is at least an option. Get rural enough and even that isn't much of an option. Getting loans to mechanize can only go so far if you've already done a lot of that.
They all voted for Trump, it's Tea Party country outside of the suburbs. MAGA.
48
So long as dairy farm workers have illegal status, they fall outside the protections of our labor laws. These workers are not best served by looking the other way. They need a functioning permit system to bring them inside the law, including our labor laws.
For years, northeast milk prices have been ruinously low for farmers. Many can only stay in business through exploitation of their illegal labor. Yes, if these workers were brought within the law, the cost of the labor would increase, and many farms would sell off their herds. But those that remained would benefit from the reduction in overall milk supply, which would result in higher prices paid to dairy farmers for milk.
19
This article points out what is wrong with both immigration and the economy in this country. The farmer complains that he can't get cheap, easily exploited labor to work on his farm. Of coarse, what isn't said, is that the reason the labor is so cheap is that the public is subsidizing his workers. The man pictured in the article has 4 kids. They, I assume, are receiving a "free" public education, at an average cost of 12-15,000$/year. Many farmers do no provide health insurance so they probably get Medicaid at public expense. Due to the antiquated birthright citizenship law they may be citizens even though their parents are illegal, but that doesn't alter the fact that the public at large is subsidizing these farmers. And what happens when the workers get too old to do this difficult work? Who pays for their retirement? Does the farmer provide workers compensation if they're injured? Usually not. This system is corrupt and dishonest from the top down. Make these guys hire legal workers and pay them a legal wage. The left loves to point out how great it is to have low wage immigrants (as though exploiting workers was democratic ideal). Of coarse they only cherry pick the numbers. In reality it is much more complicated and cost shifting to the public to subsidize farmers is not how this should work. The rest of us are paying in hidden ways already. We should at least bring it out in the open.
94
To the commentator who complains of the costs being shifted to the public: how much are you willing to pay for farm produced food? That is also part of the equation.
26
@Al I almost always vote Democratic and I *agree completely* with your comment. Well written. I also read the Times often, and feel like this article did not address the issue you have eloquently made here: farmers (in this case; other businesses that hire undocumented workers commit the same offense) indirectly get public subsidies for their undocumented workers to avoid paying a living wage w/benefits to documented workers. If the cost of milk was adjusted higher, perhaps by $1 - $2/gallon to afford documented workers, would people stop drinking milk? Of course not. I like the Times, but it's a shame they did not thoroughly address this latter possibility or scenario. Good comment, Al. We do not need a wall, but instead stronger enforcement of our immigration laws and those employers that ignore the notion that you must hire people legally authorized to work in the United States.
37
@Dana Bultman
Very little of the retail cost of supermarket food goes to the farmer that produced it. Often, the package represents a higher percentage of the total cost than the food within the package.
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All of the Trump voters i know in NY are small business owners that don’t like paying any taxes. Perhaps the small farmers should talk to their neighbors and let them know how it all really works - or maybe raise their prices to pay domestic labor a livable wage and see if those Trump voters like them “taxes”.
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@Deirdre These farmers produce a commodity and cannot raise prices. Indeed, they are going further under every day. I know a farmer who lost his market last summer. The buyer stopped buying his milk so he started dumping it into his manure pit. He was picked back up by the same buyer a few months later but that lack of revenue destroyed his business. He's been selling off heifers ever since. Ugh.
4
By logic if trump was such a great business man, a good deal maker as he calls himself trump would be richer, and more successful, he is not.
Instead in spite of the great economy Obama left us, America is losing jobs each and every day, the rust belt never got its coal jobs back, and why would they? Cleaner, cheaper and more efficient energy has replaced coal.
GM is closing a plant not in small part to trump tariffs on steel,
Harley Davidson had to deal with trump boycott.
The trade war with China has changed nothing, we are importing more than ever from China, in fact the trade imbalance has gone up.
And farmers have been complaining about trump immigration policy since 2017, they need seasonal workers not a wall at the border.
The solution? vote trump and the GOP out, and let us elect a hard working president like Obama was.
2021 cannot arrive a day too soon.
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@Gianni And this problem only started when President Trump was elected? Your post isn't relevant to the problem at all, but at least you got a dig in on someone that had nothing to do with the issue at hand. Try taking a look at history.
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@Rick, trump has made immigration and the economy his concern. So, try to be part of the solution than a part of the problem.
3
Remember the big deal Trump made about the “unfair” Canadian dairy industry?
In Canada, the government limits each farm’s production of milk so that there is not oversupply, which means that farmers get a higher price per gallon and can make a living without relying on undocumented, exploited foreign workers.
So...the price of milk in Canada reflects the actual cost of production, farm workers get benefits, and farmers make a living (and don’t lose sleep at night over breaking the law by hiring undocumented workers).
And this arrangement is what Trump and the GOP call socialism.
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@Dan Garofalo
Americans would balk at diary product prices, Canadians pay.It works for Canadians as they will not complain.
4
Canada uses the same type of labourers as in this article. The only difference is they have a legal program bringing in itinerant labour. It's seasonal and temporary at most. The discrimination and abuse is still there. Is just that Canadians are polite while doing it, hiding behind thin veneer of legality and proper procedure.
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@Dan Garofalo I grew up in a dairy farming area. I, as well as most everyone I know would do anything to have that way of life return. But, those days are gone, in part because of US Farm policy. In Canada, it seems they are protecting the way of life of the small dairy farmers that ARE the rural economy from western Ontario to the Atlantic.
THAT is purpose driven protectionism, that may well be socialism, but I would love for my kids to have grown up on the family farm, as I did.
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The clearest explanation as to why Walls don’t work can be found in Season 3, episode 5 of Malcolm Gladwells podcast, Revisionist History. If US wants illegal immigrants to decrease, then a Wall & strict border is absolutely wrong way to go.
In short, circular migration, in which migrant labourers come to US, then return home , result in families living where they want to live ( in Mexico) , businesses getting their labour, & migrant workers in the US only during the 6 months of the year required.
A solid Wall & impervious border results in workers bringing their families because they can’t risk going back & forth every 6 months, results in undocumented children, etc etc.
Of course, this logical & clear explanation requires some nuanced thinking & therefore won’t appeal to the red meat maga crowd.
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That is not the logical and clear explanation you might think it is.
The real estate industry would be devastated if their rental housing could only be filled six months out of the year. And the rent the undocumented pay is what pays the property taxes, which pay for schools, police, and other city services. Most people never think of that. They also don't think of all the state taxes they pay in the stores, which support state services as well. Besides, the farm owners have to pay taxes if they want a deduction for the cost of their labor, so the taxes go to the government, and little is ever claimed in benefits.
In the days of the braceros, the farm owners had shacks on their property in which they housed the crop pickers, and they couldn't care less under what sort of inhumane conditions they housed them, with cold water to bathe, wind whistling through the cracks, little food for the children and certainly no schooling. We have advanced as a society by not permitting that gruesome Steinbeckian way of life today.
And the pay is not the principal issue, it is that their backs, wrists, and joints may be worn out and crippled by the age of 40, and then they cannot work in the fields at those breakneck speeds.
They are subsidizing our comfortable and inexpensive way of life, just as surely as if they were working in a sweatshop in China. You only complain about them because you can see them, while you can close your eyes to the slave labor in the 3rd world.
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@Steve kohl
They're still trying to understand his Igon values.
There's a serious problem when many businesses, even an entire industry, cannot function except illegally, by hiring illegal workers. Stop it already with the term "undocumented." There's no such thing as someone who crossed illegally in the middle of the night and somehow misplaced the documents that they would never get crossing that way. That's become a problematic term because it allows people to talk about a huge illegal presence in the US, while thinking themselves friends of the poor and doing their virtue signalling.
People are either legal residents of the US or have a green card, or other authority to be here such as thru a guest worker program, or they are here illegally, they immigrated illegally.
There are a few ways to work on this problem the farmers are dealing with. The primary and most important one is to provide a more robust guest worker program that either provides foreign guest workers who can work all year long, or provides workers for alternate seasons in the year, so that when one seasons' workers depart, another crew can arrive.
Second, start matching people who are homeless or poor and in need of work, with these farmers in need of employees. Granted that not many homeless will actually be functional enough to take a job, let alone a hard job, but showing that you can offer people in desperate straits a comfortable life and regular work for many years, has to be attrractive to at least some.
And then expand the use of e-verify.
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@Oakbranch There is nothing "comfortable" about the life that farm laborers experience. Wishing it were so -- offering them the "dignity" of regular work -- will run into the harsh reality of that labor.
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Of course, the other reason migrants (mostly illegal aliens to use the accurate term) are ‘essential ‘ to farmers is that they are cheap. Low wages, evaded taxes etc. all line the pockets of those who ‘depend ‘ on this underclass to provide labor. It is often said they do jobs that others, including poor and homeless people won’t. Likely that is because a living wage isn’t offered to those who are citizens.
And please match sappy stories like this with a profile of the 10 MS-13 thugs who stabbed one of their own a 100 times this weekend. They are nervous about Trumps crackdown too.
4
A big reason people are coming here illegally is for the jobs supplied to them. Anyone employing illegals should be held accountable (including Mars’s Lago). For their own protection those crossing borders need to be processed according to the law. Fix this and the fake crises will become even more fake. It has to be fixed. Prosecute those hiring illegals. Period.
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And yet they are too ignorant to see where the problems come from: Trump. They are reaping what they sowed by supporting him.
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@katherinekovach
You know, you’re right.
If only the entire nation voted for a venal and duplicitous Hillary Rodham Clinton this nation would not have any problems whatsoever with illegal immigration.
If only we knew...
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@katherinekovach How can this comment have over a hundred likes. Blaming a system that has been broken for decades on Trump without a word of detail is like blaming a snow storm on Trump. Mindless partisan hatred at it’s finest.
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@Todd It's got 174 now! I just added my own to its (that's the correct usage BTW) tally.
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We have the same problem in the seafood industry; who's going to shuck all the oysters? If it weren't for right wing nationalists we would have a guest worker program. Instead, they insist on keeping immigrant status illegal so they can smear and deport theses good people who are part of the fabric of our economy and society.
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@Sherry "If it weren't for right wing nationalists we would have a guest worker program."
Wrong. And no the roadblock isn't "right wing nationalists" (whatever that means). Despite what their lobbying groups say, the last thing the seafood and agriculture industry want is a regulated "guest worker program" - that would mean employers would have to pay at least minimum wages, payroll taxes and compliance with OSHA and other regulations. Any claim from the agribusiness industry that they do want regulation of their workforce is as fraudulent as the day is long.
Don't you think that if there was any genuine desire for a guest worker program, we would have had one in place all these years?
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The seafood industry is renowned for whining about labor shortages and abusing their workers.
Who picked crabs from the Chesapeake before Mexican migrant workers arrived? Black women. But picking houses found they could pay Mexicans less and treat them even worse. Every year the crab industry complains they can’t get enough temporary worker visas for their isolated Eastern Shore facilties. They don’t tell you about when crabs catches are down, so the foreign guest workers aren’t being paid much. It’s not a guarantee work hours situation. Some people pay labor brokers overseas for the guest worker jobs and return to Mexico in debt. Would you take that kind of job?
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@Sherry
‘... who’s going to shuck all the oysters?’
I don’t even know where to start with this...
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“But the good thing about it now,” he said, “is that we get paid more and this farmer is good to me.” that's good, no?
10
This is not just a New York issue. Same situation with fruit pickers in California,
landscapers in Atlanta, GA, and construction workers in Virginia Beach, VA. If you drop in on a local SBA meeting or community Chamber do Commerce group, you will hardly ever see mention of illegal immigrant labor. It’s a dirty little secret. It equates to profits for small businesses across the country, while denying any path to citizenship for immigrants who contribute to commerce, pay taxes, and help fund social security benefits for retired American citizens.
You will likely never see enforcement of legal penalties against a small business who employs illegal immigrants. They don’t use E-verify as required by law. This same group of people profiting from immigrant labor are the Trump supporters and right wing conservatives who employ them, so legal consequences don’t exist for them, just for the laborers who keep their businesses alive.
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@TheUglyTruth - Just for the record, E-verify is NOT required by law, at least everywhere here in the US. I think it should be but then employers would have to turn away a cheap labor alternative and we'd have to pay much more for products and services produced by that cheap labor. I do not disagree with your sentiments. Enticing illegal immigrants to come here is wrong and needs to be dealt with. A good place to start would be to make E-Verify mandatory but that would actually start to address the problem and that's just not going to happen anytime soon despite what Trump and his cronies say.
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@TheUglyTruth E-Verify is not required for most states (Trump is trying to make it a requirement but it is not mandatory nationwide currently). Only in AZ & MS is e-verify required for all employers, CO, GA, MO, NE. OK, RI & UT requires it for public contractors only, and CO, GA, ID, MN, MO, NC, NE, OK, RI & UT requires it for state agencies only. Source: https://www.govdocs.com/mandatory-e-verify-included-trumps-2019-budget-proposal/
1
To be clear, both sides of the aisle are profiting from illegal immigrant labor . Funny how you equate it with the Republicans. That is why Pelosi is fighting the wall so much. Plus, she won't back anything that makes E-Verify 100% required. It isn't a party problem, it's a National Problem. My money says that it isn't going to change.
3
We need all workers here legally with they and their employers following tax laws, wage and work rules.
Workers and businesses following the law should not be undermined by those who ignore them.
If a necessary industry needs different regulations and supports then we figure that out legally.
Take the 'immigrant' angle out and why should we allow any business or resident to evade taxes, violate work and wage rules and outright commit fraud?
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Can you dig into that a little more, when you say there is no alternative labor force. That could be a whole article or an FAQ. One would expect there is an alternative of staffing Americans, but then the farm owners couldn’t pay their staff $3 an hour. That seems more insidious to me and worth writing about.
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They won’t pay them more than $3 an hour because we won’t buy their apples at $7 a pound.....
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@Smith
People whose closest contact with a dairy farm is the milk at your local grocery just don't get it, just as you don't. "Americans", who I suppose you mean US citizens, as Mexicans are "Americans" as well are NOT going to do farm labor, no matter what the wages. They are not going to work in the rain, snow, blistering heat doing manual labor, period.
My son is a farmer, he employs two men from Mexico using the legal H2a visa program he pays them around 12.oo USD per hour, provides free housing, a truck to use to go to town for groceries, shopping, etc. and at the end of the season, he pays them a bonus, usually a couple of thousand dollars, oh. he also pays all the visa fees as well as transportation both ways to their home near Vera Cruz. Why does he have to do all this? Because there is no one in our area that will work. He like all farmers who wish to use the H2a Visa program must advertise in three different newspapers three employment ads, before he can legally apply for the visas. He has been doing this for around 15+ years. know how many locals have applied at the local employment office or responded to his ads? Zero!! So in order to farm, he has to employ migrants. So for all of you city folks who don't have the foggiest idea as to what really happens in the ag industry, either get informed or shut up!!
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Curious where you get the 3 bucks an hour.
4
We just can’t run an economy on the backs of near slave labor. We have reasons - actual humanitarian ones - for wanting people to be here legally. This farmer should have been losing sleep over breaking the law, not the consequences of getting caught. Please, no more defense of having an underground economy. Solutions will involve punishment for employers like these, some better form of guest worker status, ids and tracking, and adherence to wage standards.
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@Chip, The farmers should be losing sleep in jail or prison.
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@Chip I come from near Albion NY. As a child in the 1950s and 1960s the local farmers contracted with migrant "organizers" who brought in migrant crews from Mexico to pick local crops for Lipton's processing plants. I never remember hearing about visas but Lipton which held a primary contract with the organizers constantly tried to make sure health and welfare were maintained. I know living quarters were visited yearly. I also know it was not enough and was a scam since wages disappeared into "company stores" leaving the workers with next to nothing or in debt to the "organizers". Even then a temporary visa system was hoped for. The H-2A did address seasonal. They need a visa for annual workers which would at least provide clarity. If it is too costly, it will not work for the small farms. I have to wonder if big agg is behind this resistance.
5
@poslug The visa for year round farm workers is one of the many nuanced parts of the solution. I would also like to highlight the commenter above who talks about mining and other jobs that Americans will do for good pay and regulated environments. It is just nonsense to say that Americans won't do certain jobs. They won't do them at low wages or low safety levels. Our attitudes must someday shift away from treating citizens differently according to their profession and wages. Even street sweepers in Japan are treated with humanity. Not so much here.
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If you are relying on an illegal labor force, your business model is broken. These “poor farmers in crisis” are likely not paying social security, unemployment and other taxes for their workers, have a labor force afriad to report an unsafe work environment, sexual harassment or discrimination, and farmers can and do pay an illegally low wage. Many also engage in wage theft. Some of these issues (fear of reporting the employer for any reason) continue to exist with legal foreign laborers whose visas are tied to a specific employer, as many are.
These farms don’t work. The price of milk is very low, and it’s low because too much is produced and because we have a complicated and broken subsidy system for agriculture in the US. Not cracking down on illegal migrants -or even allowing more legal foreign labor - is not going to solve the systemic problems putting US dairy in crisis.
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@Big Cow
support granted to U.S. dairy farmers in 2015 represented approximately C$0.35 per litre — almost three-quarters of producers’ revenue.
Stop buying all dairy products.
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@Big Cow
It is my understanding that the "industry standard" for hiring undocumented immigrants en masse, while maintaining plausible deniability, is to hire people who claim to be someone else. So they DO pay all their taxes ... the workers just can't expect to ever BENEFIT from their contributions. (Such workers are also trafficking in fraudulent documents, in addition to violating border controls.)
If credit card companies can verify electronic transactions in moments, there is NO excuse for the federal government not being able to figure out that one man can't be working on five farms in three states at the same time.
It isn't incompetence, it is willful ignorance at the bidding of agribusiness.
8