A key Republican constituency may have turned their backs on Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
Farmers experiencing a labor shortage are feeling disenfranchised and losing hope for an overhaul of the existing guest-worker program.
“There are growers out there screaming for labor,” California farm labor contractor Carlos Castañeda said in an interview with Politico published on Tuesday. “The people who are coming in are doing the work that not a single American would like to do.”
Frank Muller, a vegetable and nut farmer from California, said he fears without illegal immigrant labor, there will be no one to pick his crops.
“My farm would shut down today if you removed my … workforce,” Muller told Politico. “You hear all these disparaging remarks about immigrants, but these guys are the hardest-working, most dedicated people … I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The President of the National Council of Farm Cooperatives, Chuck Conner, said that nearly 1.4 million illegal immigrants work in U.S. agriculture each year, representing 60 percent of the industry’s labor force.
For years, farm groups have lobbied Congress to make it easier to bring in foreign labor, because they claim they simply cannot find Americans willing to do the work.
Many farmers also disagree with Trump on the use of the E-verify system to validate the legal status of workers. The Republican frontrunner has advocated for expanding the system nationwide.
“We know the majority of our workforce, particularly the seasonal workforce, continues to be illegal or without proper documentation,”said Barry Bedwell, president of the California Fresh Fruit Association. “We’re not opposed to E-verify, but in advance of a program that gives us a legal workforce, it’s a death sentence for agriculture.”
The industry is experiencing vast changes as automation continues to make its way into agriculture. In April, The Wall Street Journal reported that produce growers may soon turn to automation, as commodity crop farmers have over the last decade.
Robots have the ability to replace the cost of labor and provide higher levels of production, but have not been fully embraced because of cost, maintenance, and concerns about a massive low-skilled labor force.
However, when efficiency and productivity are considered, farmers may be turning to robots, with or without President Trump.
