When Cody Heller hears former President Donald Trump denigrate immigrants and promise mass deportation, it infuriates him. His Heller Farms, a fourth-generation family dairy in Jackson County, relies on immigrant labor. Thirty-two of the farm’s 46 employees are from Mexico.
He's hardly alone. A 2023 UW-Madison survey of Wisconsin dairy farmers found that nearly 40% of farms have at least one foreign employee; other studies have estimated that immigrants account for up to 90% of the labor force in the dairy industry.
“Mass deportation would have a dynamic, negative economic impact, to the point where it would destroy the food cycle in our country and literally change our food prices overnight” Heller said. A 2015 Texas A&M poll found that eliminating immigrant labor nationwide would increase retail milk prices by more than 90%.
Still, Heller, who said he does not identify with either political party, voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and said he will again this year.
In that, he's also far from alone — the UW-Madison survey found 59% of dairy farmers identified as conservative, while only 4% identified as liberal. The remaining 38% identified as moderate, progressive or libertarian. Yet, just 15% of respondents opposed creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented farm workers.
With his vote for Trump this year, Heller is betting that Trump's deportation promises are nothing more than "white noise" intended to appeal to his white working-class base.
“He believes that immigrant labor is directly competing for labor with his base, and that is what they like to hear,” Heller said. But that isn’t true in the dairy industry, he noted, where farm jobs are often turned down by domestic workers.
“He can’t do it, nor would he ever do it,” he said of a mass deportation.
It's a sentiment echoed by several farmers who spoke to the Wisconsin State Journal for this story, none of whom had confidence that Trump could actually enact sweeping deportations...
Rosenow said he thinks there is a “tradition” of conservatism among his community that can be difficult to change.
“There’s also a lot of apathy involved,” he said. “If you don’t care, you don’t want to see another political ad, you don’t want to talk politics, then when you go to vote, you just think, ‘well I’ve always voted Republican, so I might as well vote Republican again.’”
TLDR: Trump says he will do XYZ, but he wouldn't do XYZ if it would hurt me.
Alex, what is white male privilege?
ReplyDeleteIn a clear example of the article title, a third of minorities voted for Trump.
DeleteFirstly, agri-biz is a multi-billion dollar industry owned by very wealthy families--as well as stock holders. To call this concentration of wealth and power "male" is as tired as it is nonsensical. Trust me, these families are 50% female--at least. Secondly, if we're arguing for cheap food, how does that square with the interests of the privileged, who NEVER worry about the cost of food? Thirdly, see comment below.
DeleteProud Wannabe members of the Leopards Ate My Face Party.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/vu3sz5/origin_of_leopards_ate_my_face/
DeleteWell, guess we're going to find out. If Trump enacts everything he's said he would it'll bring America to its knees.
ReplyDeleteThe tariffs on Chinese goods, which he still thinks the Chinese (possibly Mexicans) will pay, will raise the price of everything and probably cost jobs as China brings in its own tariffs. Will it encourage more local manufacturing? Maybe, but those are going to be jobs most non-immigrant labour hasn't done in America, in a couple or three decades.
Home Owners Associations nationwide are going to be sending out a LOT of enforcement notices about scruffy lawns.
First he wrecks the country, then he says he's gonna heal it.
ReplyDeleteOf course the ag industry wants cheap labor. Always has. But the notion that we'll all starve without undocumented workers is nonsense. Never made sense: At some point, as demand for labor rises and wages rise, the worker comes knocking. The addiction to cheap undocumented labor is not incurable, but no addiction is cured without some pain. I'd rather pay more for food knowing that legal resident workers are well enough to paid to get them into the field. It's the honest cost of goods, not the cost of goods as subsidized by desperate people leaving lands we've often been instrumental in impoverishing. Stabilize those countries. Grow, harvest and process our own food. Stop letting mega ag corporations call the shots.
ReplyDelete"Never made sense: At some point, as demand for labor rises and wages rise, the worker comes knocking. The addiction to cheap..." documented inflation...
ReplyDeleteDid you suffer a stroke while writing your reply?
DeleteThe issue is not immigration. It's ILLEGAL immigrants that is being protested.
ReplyDeleteIf Mr. Heller is employing documented, legal immigrants, he has nothing to worry about. If he is employing undocumented immigrants, he shouldn't be broadcasting that in a newspaper article.
ReplyDeleteAs AaronS says, the illegal immigration is what is at issue.
Mr. Heller is probably employing undocumented immigrants because most farmers do. It's not just an issue of cheap labor but also of finding workers with the necessary skills. Farm work does take skill, and the Mexican workers have been doing this for years/decades. There's no longer a large pool of American workers with those skills.
DeleteFarmers have also been begging for decades for the creation of some kind of guest worker program to allow them to legally use the Mexican workers but for political reasons that's been a nonstarter.
I've heard this same argument used to justify recruiting skilled/trained nurses from places like the Philippines and South Africa. As if we're somehow too feeble to train enough of our people and need to drain them from other countries--especially much poorer countries. If there is a lack of American citizens who know how to work on farms I do truly believe we could close that gap in about six months if we had the will to do so.
DeleteIf you pay American workers enough then, yes, we'll find American farm workers. That's going to cause a large rise in the price of food.
DeleteI think what will happen in reality is that we'll start importing more food from Mexico. Paying the extra tariffs Trump will charge. And the American farm industry will suffer. All this because we don't want a guest worker program to legalize the farm workers.
Did you forget or just ignore that Trump was attacking both legal *AND* illegal immigrants in Ohio and *American Citizens* in Puerto Rico?!
ReplyDelete