Food for Thought: The Immense Cost of Deportation on the US Food System

By TaNoah Pierre

If even half of immigrant workers were forced to leave the US, at least 3,500 American

farms would have to close. In national discussions around inbound migratory movements ,

one of the principal topics of contention is what it costs to have immigrants living in the

States. Something that is less often discussed, however, is what it may cost to have

immigrants leaving the United States. It is not possible to properly evaluate whether they

represent a net gain or a net loss for the US economy without knowing what the

contributions of immigrant populations actually are . Since they represent a large majority

of the US agricultural workforce , the threat of forcible removal of foreign born workers is a

threat to the entire food system which has historically been sustained by their labor . As we read in Andrew Wainer's Bread For The World article on Immigrant Workers and the US Food System,

Almost three-fourths of all U.S. hired farm workers are immigrants, most of them unauthorized. The U.S. food system—particularly fruit and vegetable production—depends on immigrants more than any other sector of the U.S. economy.

How have immigrant laborers become so indispensable to food production ? Since the mid-nineteenth century, the US has faced a chronic shortage of

essential labor in critical systems such as food and agriculture. Farm work, which has

increasingly decreased in popularity among US workers, is a perfect illustration of the

drastic difference caused by this phenomenon. Both of the groups that constitute the farm

labor workforce, have suffered a considerable decline in size with rates of family or

self-employed (farm) labor seeing the most reduction. What was once a staple of American

family life is now largely rejected and much less practiced by US citizens who are moving

away from it for a number of reasons.

Which? While many are under the erroneous assumption that it is a low-skill job ,

farm work actually requires specialized training, mechanical and organizational skills. It is

not only tedious, physically demanding work but it is also extremely dangerous. Made even

riskier with mechanization, farming safely requires, in addition to adequate equipment, lots

of skill to effectively avoid injury and death, which are surprisingly common. Farmers are

more likely to die or sustain a lifetime injury on the job than police and even firefighters.

And although they put in long hours of work, often in inclement conditions and in

exchange for low wages, farmers are also much more likely than people in other professions

to face social denigration because of their work.

There is such a significant gap between the number of farmworkers needed and the

number of farmworkers available that the US government was compelled to implement

programs such as the H2A Temporary Agricultural Program, which allow foreign workers to

legally provide essential labor on a temporary basis. Farmers who successfully demonstrate

their lack of success recruiting US candidates can bring in foreign-born workers to meet

their seasonal labor needs. However, they must also cover their housing and transportation, nationally and internationally.

With no US citizens to farm and so many limitations around immigrants who are authorized to, many employers tend to favor farm workers who lack

legal status, as they do not have the protections of programs such as the H2A, which makes

their labor easier to “afford” and keep year-round. As a result, there are not only three

times less farmworkers in the United States today than there were a century ago, but the

great majority of the remaining workforce is composed of non-US citizens, three-quarters

of which are unauthorized.

An estimated three-fourths of agricultural workers in the country today are not authorized to be here, said the co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform (ACIR) – and lawmakers and regulatory agencies are practically tripping over each other in an attempt to get rid of illegal workers and/or punish the people who employ them.

The millions of foreign workers laboring on these farms even when it means being, underpaid, exhausted, sick and socially denigrated, have and continue to be

the backbone of the US food system today even as they are under threat regardless of their

status. We do not all have the luxury of choice. And for people willing to endure what it

takes to ensure their family’s survival, for people willing to sacrifice everything because

their livelihoods depend on it, even work that is rejected by most is regarded as a chance to

offer a better life to their loved ones than they had to leave behind. Never mind that those

forcible removal measures would be taking this away, their impact would extend way

beyond the families being separated. This is demonstrated, amongst other things, through

a study conducted by the dairy industry, which revealed that if all immigrant labor were

eliminated, milk prices would increase by around 90%. Therefore, even in contexts where

quantitative measures are prioritized and where the humane aspects of decision-making

are considered negligible, an evidence-based analysis would prove the forcible removal of

immigrants detrimental to the short and long-term interests of the very entity seeking to

implement these actions.

Immigrant farm workers fill low-wage jobs that citizens are reluctant to take. Attempts to recruit citizens for farm worker jobs have failed; without immigrant farm workers, our country’s production of fruits and vegetables could decrease.

An accessible path for foreign born laborers to gain legal means of being in the US would

not only reunite thousands of families, it would also alleviate the worsening crisis of an

unstable workforce in farming, amongst other labor that citizens will not perform but

depend on. The benefits of more clement immigration laws are not only more ethically

sound and sensible . They are also - for the sake of this argument- the materially beneficial

choice to make. For as long as the question of whether or not immigrants positively impact

the US is raised, it is important to consider an objective truth: they put food on American

tables.