I don’t talk about national politics very often in this newsletter. There are plenty of outlets for that kind of news, and I know that most of my readers enjoy a bit of an escape from it. And most of the time, the politics that impacts us most on the farm is internal to California. But the crops grown in California, including on our farm, are 100% tended and harvested by immigrant workers. Close to half of agricultural workers in the state (and in the U.S. overall) are undocumented. Immigration law is a federal issue.
Like most undocumented immigrants, the majority of undocumented farmworkers are law-abiding, hard-working people who perform critical roles and make a vital contribution to our economy. They are certainly not competing for jobs Americans want — during the worse recession we’ve seen in recent memory, there was a shortage of agricultural workers. And during the Covid pandemic, agricultural employees were told — correctly — that they were “essential workers”.
During the last twenty years or more, there has been essentially zero publicly visible enforcement of immigration regulations in California. Strict border enforcement by Presidents Obama and Trump (in his first term) cut down on the number of immigrants looking for work on farms, and caused a fairly dramatic employee shortage. But even then, there were essentially zero raids or other “workplace enforcement” actions. California’s decision to issue drivers licenses to non-citizens resulted in a large drop in the number of “crimes” attributed to them (driving without a license is a crime) and thus in many fewer undocumented immigrants with criminal records for failing to appear in court.
Our current President ran an openly anti-immigrant campaign the first time he was elected. And most of his most of his statements in the 2024 campaign were focused on immigrants who have committed serious crimes. so it’s perhaps not a surprise that he is now talking about rounding up undocumented immigrants and deporting them. Surveys indicate that many people who voted for him believed that that is the population he was going to focus on. But now’s he’s talking about detention camps to hold millions of people — and there simply aren’t millions of undocumented felons in the U.S.
Farmers who voted for Trump don’t believe that he will target agricultural workers, and I hope they are right. Perhaps his bluster about immigration is a show meant to scare more people from migrating to the U.S., much the way that his talk of tariffs against Mexico and Canada appears to be mostly a bargaining tactic. The problem is that talking about deportation or tariffs is bit like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.
Immigration agents have begun conducting raids in California since the beginning of the month, including in a few agricultural areas. With cell phones and the internet, news of these actions spreads instantly through immigrant populations. Since last week, we’ve been hearing rumors about deportation raids almost every day. Someone saw ICE agents in the next town over, someone’s uncle’s cousin’s friend’s Dad was picked up. So far none have been confirmed locally.
While “only” 45% of agricultural employees in CA may be undocumented, the other 55% have friends, family members, or co-workers who are. That means that everyone is on edge worrying about what may happen. It is a great injustice that any of them, the people who are doing difficult jobs to put food on Americans’ tables, should also have to suffer this type of stress.
Immigration has always been the “third rail” of American politics. But it is outrageous that we still have not found a way to legalize our agricultural workforce and bring the hard working men and women who put food on our tables out of the shadows.
Thanks,
Pablito