Source: The Atlantic
The Atlantic poses a significantly urgent question to the issues surrounding new immigration policies introduced by the Trump administration: Can America’s farms survive the threat of deportation?
Deportations of farm workers have drastically increased in the last months, with hundreds of ICE officials going to farms and detaining workers directly on site. Some of them with previous DUIs or minor offenses on record, but many of them also without any criminal record all – a result of the “newly empowered” wave of immigrant deportations under Trump.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, half of farm workers in New York are undocumented.
The argument that “Hispanics are taking [American] jobs” is invalid, say farm workers, because no one wants to take a back-breaking job with such meager pay, especially not Americans who can find easier work elsewhere for same or higher pay.
“If we had a workforce that was willing to do this work, I’d hire them, but we don’t,” one farmer told The Atlantic.
Farms across New York have been raided for their undocumented farm workers, and farm owners say the uncertainty of their workforce creates uncertainty for their businesses.
In addition to the threats that mass deportations pose on immigrant families, on farm workforces, and on businesses, they also threaten to remove the billions of dollars in state and local tax revenue that undocumented immigrants contribute, according to a report by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy.
While some major cities in America have taken action to protect undocumented immigrants and families against deportation, the mass sweep of immigrant families will continue to take a toll on the nation in many ways.
Read full story at: The Atlantic