Archive: Opinions

I ran into an old friend the other day and it really brought back some pleasant memories and good conversation. He's a dairy farmer and a family man, existing (maybe not thriving, but with a lot of 'pluck') in a business that most of us cannot begin to even fathom.

Through the last forty years, probably more, he has survived the damage done to New York's dairy industry which was once one of New York's biggest industries and employers. A dairy farmer these days (and years) is dealing with a myriad of problems, among them a drastic decline of companies and truckers to transport, process and even buy the milk, trucking problems (no qualified drivers), dairy price supports, the bovine growth hormone controversy, feed prices in the stratosphere and even consumer backlash. Throw in property values, taxation, and just to keep it interesting, labor problems which are just as much national and international issues as they are 'local'.

Now, these labor troubles are not really local: they're international. You see, much, if not a majority of our farm labor force in upstate New York is foreign-born. Much of this force is Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan. Much of it is 'legal', that is, within the law currently in force, and much of it is a silent grouping of men and women who are doing jobs that Americans are loathe to perform at any wage level: getting up in the dark, herding the cows, getting them hooked up to the milking machines, feeding them and cleaning the stalls. Maintaining the milking apparatus in pristine cleanliness, dealing with balky animals, doing all the work necessary to get $15.00 per hundredweight (that's not his/her pay rate, that's possibly what the farmer gets for a hundred pounds of milk) from the processor, who holds the farmer's livelihood in their hands. Maintaining an incredible level of sanitation and cleanliness in the barn and the associated operations, from the cow to the truck, three hundred sixty five days a year: a cow doesn't take a holiday, and neither do these people, most of them 'foreigners', as they perform critical tasks quietly and effectively.

And do you know what happens on a dairy farm, or an apple orchard, or a cabbage/onion field if the 'illegals' are rounded up?? Or even the rumor of a 'visit' from the authorities? The farm or orchard cease to exist. That's because these people, legal or otherwise, are the only source of labor to get these products to your table and refrigerator. My friend says he told Tom Reed that if he couldn't hire migrants to work the job that Americans won't even consider applying for, he would have to put up a "For Sale" sign on the family farm in twelve hours. Yes, twelve hours. That's how critical the labor situation is on the farm in upstate NY.

Farming in America (OK, anywhere, any time) has always been difficult work, but now the 21st century has developed an American workforce that won't do manual labor for practically any wage. There are supposed to be 7.5 million jobs open right now for 6.5 million unemployed, but yet my dairy farmer friend can't get good help locally to save his life. He has to depend on Mexican and Central Americans to keep that farm running, clean, proud, and once America's pride and joy. But American kids/adults either want the $50,000 job or the dole: not the hard work that brings quiet joy and work experience.

Does the pay make the difference? Probably not, but my friend says it doesn't matter what pay is offered (and he is more than fair in this regard); hard work seems acceptable to the brown skinned men and women who speak Spanish and still see America as the land of opportunity. They're not taking American jobs, folks; they're doing the work Americans won't do any more.

Thoughts about the above: I have thought that we Americans have a like/dislike (love/hate?) relationship with the Saudis, not because of oil or defense, but because we have an interesting parallel with their current society: their young generation is also loathe to perform menial jobs, and the Saudis themselves contract with hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, Bangla Deshis and Pakistanis to do most of the manual labor in Saudi Arabia. In addition, the Saudis have approximately 6-8 thousand royal princes in their midst (look it up!). Excessive wealth, whether American or Saudi, seems to breed a laziness and a need for foreign labor to perform the necessary tasks for a society to function. All the while despising that labor force, demeaning them and keeping them on the lowest rung of society. Interesting.

I digress. The political argument in this country goes thus: we are told that the immigration 'problem' is first and foremost a 'job-robbing' problem. But the jobs I see that are actually being robbed are not these low-end jobs. It's the high end careers that we're begging and allowing non-Americans to take; our current visa program brings in highly educated young people from India, Pakistan, China, in math, science, computer design and programming, high end skills to compete with our own job seekers fresh out of college, and arguably just as qualified as their Asian and African counterparts. The 'job robbing' is at the high end of the education and income scale, not the bottom end.

I know and recognize that we have an immigration problem in this country. We can't have a caravan (a mob?) trying to crash our southern borders just to overwhelm the Mexican and US border patrols (and keep the media occupied prior to election day). We have a leaky border (unlike the European Union which has, officially, no borders, and is fostering a nationalistic backlash in Great Britain, Germany, Italy, France and Sweden, not unlike our own xenophobic reaction), yes indeed, but that leaky border is enabling you to enjoy lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, onions, apples, peaches (fill in the blank, here) along with your love of that famous yogurt and other dairy products produced right here in your backyard. You, dear reader, had better realize what has made that bounty on your dining room table possible. Not some recent graduate with a degree, not some recent graduate with an H1B visa that we begged and even paid to 'stay on' an American company's payroll, but this bounty has been brought to you by a quiet, dark-skinned man or woman who frequently works 12-16 hours a day, probably 365 days a year, for subsistence wages, maybe rent free in a trailer, just so you can call your restaurant fare 'locavore' while never venturing to ask how that dairy product, fruit or vegetable got to your table. Yes, I recognize we have a problem, and millions of potential illegals threaten our social fiber. But, may I posit that the actual problem is not a people problem as such, it is not the 21st century equivalent of the Poor People's march at our southern border, nor is the problem the college trained engineers and scientists that we need because of the lack of real and attainable standards in our own schools.

The real immigration problem is, once again, traced back to a spineless Congress who won't deal with addressing and building a rational solution to our labor shortages, education and labor force shortfalls and immigration challenges. This is eating at our economic core and Congress continues to refuse to deal with it, bowing to any change in the political wind and, as so often the case, allowing the executive branch or the courts to pronounce, while they continue to 'duck and cover' as they do in foreign relations, war powers, budget entitlements and other huge problems. Four hundred and thirty five empty suits (add another hundred in the Senate, for good measure) that just want to get re-elected because they're incapable of actually coming up with tough, fair and rational answers which are available to thinking people if they decide to act outside of their own parochial and political interest.

All of this while our quiet immigrant trudges in pre-dawn darkness to the barns, the fields, the kitchens, doing our work, feeding America and doing a million other jobs for America's affluent middle class, asking for a chance to prove themselves and their worth. Amnesty? Let's think about it. A path to citizenship? Yes, why not? Tighten the visa program and clamp down on cheating? Of course. But we need it put into a rational immigration program which Congress continuously refuses to work on.

Look at your plate: tell me it would be just as full (and so many other tasks that get quietly done by invisible hands) without an immigrant's hands to supply that plate and our lifestyle.

Can we please define what our true immigration and workforce problems are, and then find and elect people to send to Washington to work it out, without the platitudes and same old cliches? Then my dairy farmer friend might rest easy, before he retires, almost broke (as any farmer really is) and has to sell the cows, and the land, at auction. And, thus, allow another development of McMansions to grow up on the Cayuga landscape, instead of the pastoral beauty we say we love and want to protect, but have little understanding of the immigrant family as well as the hard working farm family. That migrant family? They'll move on to the next job that an American won't dirty their hands for. And Congress will continue to play the world's smallest fiddle.

Trump is right for all the wrong reasons, I think. We have an immigration problem, all right, but we've got it all backwards. We should start in Washington, and build a ten foot high wall around the Capitol, no egress from that hallowed hall of Congress for its members until they get it right. Bread and water for them until they come up with a comprehensive immigration reform with such features as befit 21st century America, and American goals and dreams. Then we might consider letting them 'out'. That's our real immigration challenge.

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