Posted on 09/15/2006 8:32:02 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
CLIFTON SPRINGS NY--On Aug. 28, dairy farmer Rodney Brown had no workers to milk the some 600 cows on his farm outside Clifton Springs. He went to the home of his Mexican workers, also located on his property, and found it empty. Finally, he reached a worker on his cell phone and learned that Immigration & Customs Enforcement officials had come at milking time, 6 a.m., and taken six men.
Brown said he’d been using Mexican workers since 1999, with no problems. Two of the workers taken had been with him since the beginning.
And their papers said they were legal. But you never know for sure, Brown said, echoing other farmers and the farm bureau itself.
The raid left Brown, 46, and some borrowed help from neighbors scrambling to milk the herd.
Brown is among a growing number of farmers experiencing the effects of stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws.
"We don't blame the ICE or Department of Homeland Security," said Julie Suarez, spokeswoman for the New York Farm Bureau. The problem lies with politicians who haven't addressed that "we need a viable guest-worker program."
The state Farm Bureau says increasing immigration raids have made this year the most challenging ever for farm labor — and with approaching harvests, raids are ill-timed.
For example, strawberry farmer Jim Coulter, 78, of Lockport, found himself 10 people short with 20,000-plus quarts to pick following an immigration raid this summer.
He had two weeks before the berries would go bad.
So the farm 20 miles north of Buffalo asked its pick-your-own customers for the extra hands. Neighbors sent help but in the end, the farm couldn’t finish the harvest. Coulter said he was down at least $20,000.
Farmers, including Coulter, gave Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton an earful last week at the state fair and Aug. 30 during a visit to the the New York Wine and Culinary Center in Canandaigua.
A month ago, farm bureau staff met with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in western New York to complain.
“They promised they wouldn’t go on farms unless there was a violation or a disruption off the farm,” said bureau President John Lincoln, who has two Guatemalan workers on his East Bloomfield dairy farm. “But even the presence of immigration is a problem in itself.”
Farmers say that as the country debates tougher immigration enforcement, the government is under pressure to show it’s doing its job.
How is it that farmers are suddenly finding that their workers from Mexico and other countries — sometimes workers who have been with them for years — aren't legal?
In many cases, "fraudulent documents are so good, you can't tell the difference," said Suarez. The federal government has promised to provide new guidelines to help employers verify whether a prospective worker is legitimate. But until then, farmers and others who hire immigrants are at a risk of using illegal workers and not knowing it, she said.
A U.S. Department of Labor survey in 2001 and 2002 said 53 percent of the country’s 1.8 million crop workers weren’t authorized to work here. But workers often show up with seemingly real documents.
ICE spokesman Michael Gilhooly pointed to a recent raid last month at a hydroponic tomato farm in North Tonawanda, near Buffalo, to illustrate how illegal immigrants fool employers.
According to a Aug. 30 report of the incident, agents arrested 34 illegal aliens working at the farm and charged each with two criminal violations: use of a fraudulent alien registration card — commonly called a green card — and false use of a Social Security number. Those charged were to be scheduled for a removal hearing before a federal immigration judge.
Mark James, executive director of the Finger Lakes Office of the state Farm Bureau, said other problems stem from workers not coming to work because they've heard rumors of raids. He cited a recent case in which workers at a vegetable processing plant in Ontario County didn't show up one day because they heard of a possible raid. So the plant had to shut down, losing that day's production.
Earlier this year, the farm bureau sent an alert to its 35,000-plus members about immigration raids and told them not to talk to the media about them. “It is a reasonable assumption that some of these employers have been targeted due to comments made in local papers,” the alert said.
Gilhooly bristled at the bureau's suggestion of retaliation. “That is of course incorrect,” he said. “As far as timing, when we reach a point in our investigation, we conduct an operation.” He would not comment further.
Statistics on this year’s raids would not be compiled and publicly released until the federal government’s fiscal year ends Sept. 30, he added.
And this is a problem...why?
Basically, the farmer is saying that he should be allowed to break the law.
Mark James, executive director of the Finger Lakes Office of the state Farm Bureau, said other problems stem from workers not coming to work because they've heard rumors of raids. He cited a recent case in which workers at a vegetable processing plant in Ontario County didn't show up one day because they heard of a possible raid. So the plant had to shut down, losing that day's production.
That's the whole point of deterrance, my friend.
And milking machines were first patented in 1879, so it's not like it should be news to any dairy farmer anywhere in the world.
Why yes only in America could milking cows become a crime.
Gee, how were cows milked before 1999??
How do cows get milked in Europe without Mexicans? And don't tell be Muslim immigrants, they're all unemployed per the MSM.
Illegal immigration has been the number one reason for wage stagflation in the United States.
Probably not muslims, but Polish and other eastern Europeans.
Even with milking machines, it takes one worker over an hour to milk 40 cows. 600 cows would require 15 helpers.
Eastern Europeans and Pakis
We pay for the schooling of illegal aliens children and foot the health care costs for nearly all of them.
A nice subsidy for the farmers, forced onto the American tax payers.
It's time for farmers to pay the rate needed to hire American workers, and to push for more efficient equipment that reduces the need such labor intensive farming practices.
BTW, sampleman, when are you going to take a job milking cows, instead of posting on a computer?
If you can't make it without ILLEGAL labor, then you shouldn't be in business in the first place.
As Mikey says as he milks his own backyard cow within a suburban sub division.(/sarcasm).
Mikey I ain't the one condemning and sliming the farmer getting his milk to market as you are.
Boo Hooo, sniffle, sniffle....
I have an idea. This novel idea has worked for generations. It also removes the fear of all your employees going to jail or deported, all at one time.
HIRE LEGAL EMPLOYEES
Drug dealers are just trying to their product to market, too. Perhaps we should allow them to thumb their nose at the law as well?
I'm in a minority here, but I support a guest worker program for this reason. Canada has a program, which strictly controls the workers, forces them to go back to mexico after the growing season, and forbids them any "path to citizenship".
Under those guidelines, having a well-regulated program which tracked these workers, made them pay taxes, but brought them out of the shadows so they weren't paid less than what americans would get paid if they wanted to do these jobs, would solve a large part of the immigration problem.
What i mean by solve is this -- a lot of pressure to NOT crack down on immigrants is the farm lobby which uses this labor, and which really CAN'T find workers in america to do the jobs. If we provide a program for them that makes those jobs available to americans but allows importing temporary workers under strict control when americans cannot be found, we remove a large part of the political support for the stupid amnesty and other parts of the senate plan.
You could certainly implement a guest worker program in a bad fashion, but I don't think we should reject the concept just because it could be done wrong -- we should embrace the concept but done RIGHT. The other side has already sold the name, if we passed a program called "guest worker" that was for part-year employment and threw the workers out at the end of each employment season, the other side would have a hard time with the "wait, that's not what we really meant by "guest worker" argument.
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