Immigration, Trump, And Labor Shortages

Kevin Drum points out that the largest garlic grower in California has discovered a remarkable method for solving the chronic labor shortage that the farm had struggled to fill in the last few years. According to the LA Times, the farm "announced recently that it would hike pay for farmworkers from $11 an hour to $13 hour this year, or 18%, and then to $15 in 2018. At the end of last year, the farm was short 50 workers needed to help peel, package and roast garlic. Within two weeks of upping wages in January, applications flooded in. Now the company has a wait-list 150 people long." Somehow the fact that raising wages actually increased the pool of prospective employees astonished the owner of the farm who said, "I knew it would help a little bit, but I had no idea that it would solve our labor problem." As Drum says, perhaps other businesses in the US might learn something from this.

Meanwhile, those same California farmers are becoming increasingly concerned by Trump's seeming determination to actually cut back on immigration. These farmers and many others across the country rely on a large pool of immigrant and migrant workers to actually harvest and pack the crops that we all eat. And it is unlikely that, even at $15 an hour, they will be able to get enough "real" Americans to do the backbreaking, manual labor that these farmers require. Today's news about the deportation of Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos in Arizona will do nothing to alleviate these farmers' concerns. Far from being one of those hardened criminals that Trump railed about during the campaign, Garcia de Rayos's only crime was to actually come here illegally when she was a teenager and then live a quiet and productive life, raising a family, for 22 years. Her "crime" was to be caught working illegally 8 years ago and for that she is being deported today.

Trump's executive order on immigration basically considers anyone here illegally who did anything other than simply exist as eligible for deportation. If they worked, if their child received free school lunches, if they received food stamps, or any benefit from state or federal government they are subject to deportation. And the order authorizes the building of massive new detention centers (by private contractors, of course) and the enlistment of state and local police in the deportation effort. It threatens to cut federal funds with localities that refuse to cooperate with the effort.

Farmers, who probably overwhelmingly voted for Trump, are finding out that they probably should have taken Trump literally. For them, the days of low cost immigrant labor may be ending and a new round of labor shortages beginning.