Release Date: June 2007

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A whole lot of cows wouldn’t get milked, and a whole lot of people in this country would have trouble getting food, if it weren’t for immigrant workers on America’s farms. Like it or not, the nation’s entire agribusiness system is heavily dependent on continued access to immigrant workers, some of who right now are of questionable legal status.

That’s why developing a sound, rational and workable reform of U.S. immigration laws is so critical, and not just to the dairy industry. Many of America’s dairy farms depend on foreign-born workers to milk cows and do chores that other Americans can’t or won’t do. This is an issue not just for large dairies in the Southwest, but for farms of every size in every state. Even in one of the leading dairy counties in Vermont, which is about as far from the Mexican border as you can get, three-quarters of the dairy farms reportedly employ at least one foreign-born worker.  

That’s why it’s welcome news that a bipartisan deal was struck earlier this month in the Senate to address head-on our current policies about employing workers who may not be in this country legally. Rather than continuing to speak in hushed tones about the 11 million illegal workers currently in the U.S., and to turn a blind eye to the fact that the massive agriculture, construction, and foodservice sectors are in dire need of continued employees, the Senate has cobbled together a compromise approach that addresses most of the needs of both employers and employees.

NMPF has been actively engaged in this issue for over a year. Last year, a task force of dairy producers developed a set of three principles that any type of immigration reform legislation should address. Those principles include:

• An affordable & efficient guest-worker program that ensures the continued availability of immigrant labor for all of agriculture, including dairies;
• A provision that allows those currently employed or with recent employment history in the U.S. to earn the right to work here legally, regardless of their current legal status, and;
• A provision that specifies that the responsibility for ultimate verification of the legal status of a worker lies with the government, not with employers.

While the details are still sketchy, it appears the Senate bill is likely to address these three criteria (although there will be a new and more rigorous database of Social Security information that employers will have to use to verify the legal status of their employees). The Senate legislation features a provision known as AgJobs that many farm organizations, including NMPF, have been supporting as a key to immigration reform. It embodies the guest worker proviso that NMPF has been backing.

The bill has – as it should – provisions that improve our border security. In fact, it appears that the legislation will specify that border security must come first, before efforts can be made to legalize workers who are currently illegals. It is also likely to change employment processes in the future, meaning those presently employed may be handled differently than those hired in the future.

But no realistic attempt at reform is possible without addressing two overwhelming facts: we can’t summarily deport tens of millions of people, and even if logistically and politically that were possible, it would be crippling to significant sections of our economy. If consumers think milk has gotten too expensive with this spring’s surge in prices, just wait till the flow from farms to stores drops to a trickle.

Increasingly, dairy farms all around the country, from North Dakota to Texas, have been the target of federal raids looking to deport illegal workers. We cannot afford to avoid resolving this issue any longer. That’s why we can no longer turn a blind eye to the need to address this issue with a political solution – because our homeland security, criminal justice, demographic and economic needs are all in serious conflict here, and our nation’s leaders need to find a realistic approach to the matter.

Of course, the reform package has a long political path to tread in the months ahead. The Senate bill will likely face opposition from both some Republicans and some Democrats. The bill will face an even harder test in the House of Representatives, which last year passed a very punitive version of immigration reform that does not meet the needs of dairy farmers. Despite the high-profile compromise agreement, the deal is far from done. The only sure thing is that if Congress fails to act, then labor-intensive food production will faced increased pressure to move offshore, and we will be trading away a measure of our food security.