Farmers: Immigration Raids Imperil Harvests
Jay Gallagher and Leah Rae
The Journal News (NY)
ALBANY - With the harvest season beginning, farmers around the state say crackdowns on immigrants are causing a widespread labor shortage that threatens this year's harvest of some fruits and vegetables.
"Some farmers are flat-out short of hands," said Pete Gregg, a spokesman for the state Farm Bureau. "They're worried about leaving fruits on the trees and vegetables on the ground."
New York is home to a labor-intensive farming industry that expects this year to produce 3 billion apples, second to Washington state, as well as cabbage, corn, cherries, peaches, strawberries and blueberries. Most of those crops have to be picked by hand.
At Cascade Farm in Patterson, David Frost is preparing to work harder and longer hours when four of his employees return to high school and college, halfway through the growing season. It's impossible to find replacements, he said, even though there is no shortage of willing laborers nearby.
"We've checked with a lot of day laborers, and none of them have papers," said Frost, who runs an educational farm with a range of organic produce. "And we're a not-for-profit, so we don't want to jeopardize our status with any kind of problems. So we're doing it by the book.
"They all need work. We need them. But they don't have papers," Frost said.
About half of the nation's 1 million hired farmworkers do not have legal authorization to work in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Earlier migrants have had opportunities to legalize their status, but Congress has deadlocked over a proposed legalization program. Of farmworkers who entered the United States since 2001, only 2 percent have legal status, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey.
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