As consumer demand for Greek yogurt grows in upstate New York, dairy farmers are having a difficult time finding legal workers to fill the year-round milking operation, the Los Angeles Times reported. Out at sea, immigration troubles have stymied Louisiana crawfish businesses during its peak harvest production season, incapacitating fisheries with a smaller workforce and production, the Advocate reported. And with Congress stalled on permanent immigration legislation and a lack of Americans to fill low-skilled roles, both industries are unable to keep up with demand for their products.
Dairy farms generate about $1.9 billion annually to New York state’s economy, making it the number one agricultural industry in the state, the Worker Justice Center of New York reported in 2012. The Greek yogurt company Chobani expanded its operations in 2011 and now makes up the largest yogurt producer in the state. A report released last October found that “the state would need more than 2,200 additional farmworkers and about 100,000 more cows to ensure the steady production of sufficient milk to satisfy yogurt makers’ needs,” the LA Times stated. But with an increased workload, at least one major dairy farmer relies on “Latino workers, most of them members of an extended family from Mexico” after attempts to hire locals petered out. Of the three locals that applied, only one worked out.
Dairy farms rely on the H-2A visa program, which has no annual cap, allowing foreign workers to legally work in temporary agricultural jobs in the United States. However, a national survey conducted by the National Council of Agricultural Employers of H-2A employers found that “administrative delays result in workers arriving on average 22 days after the date of need causing an economic loss of nearly $320 million for farms that hire H-2A workers. Costly recruitment requirements result in less than 5 percent of those referred by the government working the entire contract period.” The wait time is too late for cows that need to be milked daily.
Meanwhile, Louisiana’s crawfish industry relies heavily on legal migrant workers on H-2B visas from Mexico and Central America to peel wild crawfish caught during the 100-day peak season between mid-February through early June. The crawfish industry utilizes the H-2B visa program, which has an annual cap of 66,000 visas and allows U.S. employers to hire mainly seasonal foreign nationals working in temporary non-agricultural jobs. The U.S. Department of Labor issues 33,000 visas twice a year, the first cap having been reached by January.
Processors buy sacks of live crawfish from fishermen based on the number of peelers that they are able to hire. The Advocate reported that “Louisiana hired 5,546 H-2B workers in 2014, according to the U.S. Labor Department, which was third behind Texas and Florida. They are put to work processing seafood, sugar cane and crawfish.”
But by the time Louisiana processing plants can hire a second wave of guest workers, the harvest season will be largely over, the Gulf Seafood News observed. “Without the peelers, the processors will stop buying as much crawfish from the fishermen,” the Advocate stated. That could lead to a loss of “half the industry” a processor said, calling it an “emergency.”
Louisiana’s six congressmen and two senators have written a letter to U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez stating that local businesses would be impacted “and some may be unable to operate” if they’re unable to hire more seasonal workers. The Advocate reported that “the crawfish industry’s losses this year could be as much as $30 million out of the $100 million industry.”
Without new immigration laws, low-skilled companies face the prospects of having to change industries. Dairy farmers could “switch to growing crops whose workers are eligible for temporary guest-worker visas,” the Los Angeles Times reported. And crawfish “fishermen may find something else to do,” local Louisiana Mayor Sherbin Colette observed.
“This is a food security issue for our country,” Dean Norton, New York Farm Bureau president, said in response to the president’s November 2014 announcement to take executive action and grant temporary deportation relief and work authorization to upwards of five million undocumented immigrants. “Without a legal, stable workforce willing to work in agriculture, our farms will face a growing problem of being unable to provide enough healthy, safe food to our people.”