Farmers backed ‘The Donald’, and now they’re worried
America’s food producers face devastation from the threat to expel illegal workers, write Caitlin Dickerson and Jennifer Medina
The once-steady stream of people coming from southern Mexico has nearly stopped entirely.
Jeff Marchini and others in the Central Valley of Merced, California bet their farms on the election of Donald Trump. His message of reducing regulations and taxes appealed to this Republican stronghold, one of Mr Trump’s strongest bases of support in the state.
As for his promises about cracking down on unauthorised immigrants, many assumed Mr Trump’s pledges were mostly just talk. But two weeks into his administration, Mr Trump has signed executive orders that have upended the country’s immigration laws. Now farmers in Merced are deeply alarmed about what the new policies could mean for their workers, most of whom are unauthorised, and the businesses that depend on them.
“Everything’s coming so quickly,” Mr Marchini said. “We’re not loading people into buses or deporting them, that’s not happening yet.”
As he looked out over a crew of workers bent over as they rifled through muddy leaves to find purple heads of radicchio, he said that as a businessman, Mr Trump would know that farmers had invested millions of dollars in produce that is growing right now, and that not being able to pick and sell those crops would represent huge losses for the state economy. “I’m confident that he can grasp the magnitude and the anxiety of what’s happening now.”
Mr Trump’s immigration policies could transform California’s Central Valley, a stretch of lowlands that extends from Sacramento to Bakersfield. About 70% of all farm workers here are living in the United States illegally, according to researchers at University of California, Davis. The impact could reverberate throughout the valley’s precarious economy, where agriculture is by far the largest industry. With 6.5 million people living in the valley, the fields in this state bring in US$35 billion (12.3 trillion baht) a year and provide more of the nation’s food than any other state.
The consequences of a smaller immigrant workforce would ripple not just through the orchards and dairies, but also to locally owned businesses, restaurants, schools and even seemingly unrelated industries, like the insurance market.
Many feel vindicated by the election, and signs declaring “Vote to make America great again” still dot the highways. But in conversations with nearly a dozen farmers, most of whom voted for Mr Trump, each acknowledged that they relied on workers who provided false documents. And if the administration were to weed out illegal workers, farmers say their businesses would be crippled. Even Republican lawmakers from the region have supported plans that would give farm workers a path to citizenship.
“If you only have legal labour, certain parts of this industry and this region will not exist,” said Harold McClarty, a fourthgeneration farmer in Kingsburg whose operation grows, packs and ships peaches, plums and grapes throughout the country. “If we sent all these people back, it would be a total disaster.”
Mr McClarty is not just concerned about his business, but also about his workforce, he said. Many of them have worked for him year-round for more than a decade, making at least $11 an hour. After immigration officials audited his employee records a few years ago, he was forced to let go of dozens of employees.
“These people had been working for us for a long time, and we depended on them.”
Now he worries that a Trump administration could mandate a Homeland Security Department programme called E-verify, which is aimed at stopping the use of fraudulent documents. In all but a few states, the programme is voluntary and only a small fraction of businesses use it.
Farmers here have faced a persistent labour shortage for years, in part because of increased policing at the border and the rising prices charged by smugglers who help people sneak across. The once-steady stream of people coming from rural towns in southern Mexico has nearly stopped entirely. The existing field workers are ageing, and many of their children find higher-paying jobs outside agriculture.
Many growers here and across the country are hopeful that the new administration will expand and simplify H-2A visas, which allow them to bring in temporary workers from other countries for agricultural jobs. California farmers have increasingly come to rely on the programme in the last few years.
But Mr McClarty and others say that legalising the existing workforce should be the first priority. While they support the idea of deporting immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes, they oppose forcing people to leave the country for minor crimes, like driving without a licence. Since the election, they have continued to call their congressional representatives and lobbied through trade associations, like the Western Growers Association, whose chief executive is part of Mr Trump’s agricultural advisory board.
Farmers are also anxiously awaiting the administration’s plans to alter long-standing trade agreements. Mr Trump has said he will pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement if he cannot negotiate better terms for the United States. Growers would benefit if Mr Trump negotiated more favourable terms. But backing out of the agreement entirely could provoke retaliation from Mexico that would hurt California’s agricultural industry, which earned $21 billion from trade last year.
Yet, many of Mr Trump’s supporters say they are counting on him to follow through on his promises. Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said that limiting the use of foreign labour would push more Americans into jobs that had primarily been performed by immigrants.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s programming computers or picking in fields,” he said, “Any time you’re admitting substitutes for American labour you depress wages and working conditions and deter Americans.”
Most of the workers in Mr McClarty’s vineyards and orchards have well-established lives in the area.
Javier Soto, 46, bought a home for his family of five in Reedley, a city of 25,000 that calls itself “the world’s fruit basket”. He has worked for the McClarty farm for the last six years and his supervisor knows he is here without papers.
“It is more scary now that he is really the president and we see what he is doing,” Mr Soto said.
They are hopeful Mr Trump will not make good on most of his threats. “Quien más habla, menos hace,” they tell each other — the more you talk, the less you do. There are too many of them, they reason, to throw them all out.