Last week it looked hopeful that U.S. farmers and those in the hospitality business would be protected from immigration raids that have ramped up in recent weeks.
After meeting with Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, President Trump posted on July 12, “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. … Changes are coming!”
The next day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were told to halt all raids on farms and meatpacking plants, hotels and restaurants, with the focus returning to undocumented immigrants with criminal records.
Despite those assurances, the presidential reprieve was short-lived. This week, it was business as usual.
The president has backed himself into a corner.
The administration’s goal is to deport 3,000 migrants a day, which experts say is impossible unless massive raids are conducted. No exceptions.
On Sunday a White House official told the Washington Post, “anyone present in the United States illegally is at risk of deportation.”
Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary, said there’s no wiggle room.
“Those who think we can ignore these laws so that we can keep somebody in a job are absolutely ridiculous. We have a generation of people who have been cheated out of jobs.”
American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall sees the other side of the coin.
“Unfortunately, domestic workers do not apply for farm jobs, despite aggressive hiring efforts. Without farm workers, vegetables will be left in the fields, fruit will remain unpicked, and cows will go unmilked. The end result is a reduced food supply and higher grocery prices for all of America’s families,” Duvall posted on the federation’s website.
According to the Agriculture Department, 42% of today’s farm workers do not have legal status.
The government’s H-2A visa program provides a legal means for foreign-born farm labor for up to 10 months.
The program — and its counterpart, the H-2B program for non-farm workers — began in 1986 under President Ronald Reagan in recognition of the value and need for immigrant workers.
According to Duvall, the agriculture workforce programs “are broken. They do not meet the year-round needs of farmers, and they’ve become so expensive they are out of reach for many farmers.”
Many farmers don’t want to use the visa program because it requires them to provide housing, transportation, and medical care for the workers.
