Guest Editorial
The ICEman cometh

by Jerry Kozak

Jerry Kozak is president and CEO for the National Milk Producers Federation. He is a guest columnist for this week’s issue of Cheese Market News®.

The political pendulum that is the immigration issue is swinging from the direction of reform to one of punishment, and it has the potential to clobber dairy farmers in the process.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency announced that starting in September, employers would have to explain why certain workers have Social Security numbers that don’t match those in the government’s database. If employers can’t explain the discrepancies, and get workers to produce valid documentation, then employers will have to dismiss those workers.

For many agricultural employers who may have workers using surreptitious Social Security documentation, this scenario puts them in a no-win predicament: either fire otherwise hard-working and productive employees — and risk having little to no help on the farm — or proceed with business as usual, and hope that ICE and other law enforcement agencies don’t begin legal action against their business.

The many employers who are fretting about this development received a ray of hope at the beginning of September, when a judge in San Francisco ordered the federal government to delay the Social Security Administration from sending out thousands of no-match letters this month.

The order was the result of a lawsuit filed by labor and immigrants rights groups. A hearing on the groups’ request to permanently bar the implementation of the DHS rule is scheduled for Oct. 1. But the reprieve is not likely to be more than a temporary one, and employers shouldn’t get their hopes up that litigation is the answer to this issue.

The real solution has to come from Capitol Hill, a place where reality only rarely intrudes on the proceedings of Congress. The immigration reform issue has shifted from a golden opportunity in the Senate earlier this year to reform our laws and come up with realistic solutions to one now focused on crime and punishment, aimed at both workers and their employers. Many members of Congress have, so far, chosen to view this as a law enforcement issue, rather than what it really is: an economic and demographic dilemma that needs more than just new regulations to solve.

As a Future Farmers of America advisor in Michigan noted recently, “employers could be doing all the right things, according to the law, and still be doing something wrong” in deciding whom to hire. Farmers have to walk a razor-thin line between being charged with discriminating against workers and violating the ICE rules.

The larger problem is that agricultural employers simply can’t get access to both the seasonal and perennial labor they need in order to operate their businesses. And the same is true for many companies involved in the construction, landscaping, foodservice and hospitality sectors, as well. No manner of sanctions against employers, or sky-high borders along the Rio Grande, will change the forces that have created a misalignment between what employers here need and what immigrant workers can offer. Unfortunately, that message is only partially understood by a partial number of members of Congress.

The hoped-for solution to this quandary is the AgJOBS legislation, which Congress has considered in various forms for several years. NMPF has been a strong supporter of this approach to rectifying our immigration policies and aligning them with the needs of dairy producers. We have been part of a much larger coalition of other agricultural employer groups with similar goals, all of us pushing our legislators to look hard at the reality of the need for reform.

The AgJOBS bill was part of the larger immigration package that was considered earlier this summer by the Senate, only to collapse in the end when a centrist compromise was doomed by criticism from both the left and the right.

But elected officials must understand that the consequences of inaction on this issue will be profoundly negative for dairy farmers and others. Millions of cows could go unmilked in this country if farmers are forced to fire employees that are the target of the no-match letters. Although it’s only then that consumers and some members of Congress will finally understand the real-world consequences of the shift in this pendulum, we certainly don’t want the issue to reach that crisis stage, particularly without a way of providing some immediate correction to what the pendulum could do to our industry.

So, dairy producers need to contact their members of Congress to urge swift enactment of the AgJOBS legislation. But we need everyone involved in this business — family members, suppliers, haulers, cooperative representatives, processors, along with everyone else you know — to also weigh in on the matter.

Congress now is back in session, and we in dairy cannot allow them to overlook the reality of this issue. Visit NMPF’s website today (www.nmpf.org) to directly link to your senators’ and representative’s offices so that you can tell them about the urgent need for AgJOBS. What Congress does with the Farm Bill tomorrow matters little if we can’t get the cows milked today.

CMN

The views expressed by CMN’s guest columnists are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of Cheese Market News®.