The proposal by businessman Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, “to deport undocumented immigrants and wall off the southern U.S. border has created an unexpected bastion of resistance: Dairy farmers,” says Bloomberg. “Farmers say they can’t get enough relatives or local workers, even with pay starting at $11 an hour or more,” and that short-term guest-worker programs, designed for crop harvest, are inadequate for year-round livestock work.
One-third of U.S. dairy farms employed foreign-born workers in 2014 and half of them were immigrants, according to a study commissioned by the National Milk Producers Federation. The report said a complete loss of immigrant labor could mean the elimination of 7,000 farms, 208,000 jobs, a 23-percent drop in milk production and a 90-percent increase in milk prices at the grocery store.
Farmers, who traditionally are social and fiscal conservatives who lean Republican, face the question of supporting Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, said Bloomberg, quoting a Wisconsin dairy farmer as saying, “With my group of friends, we kind of joked around and said, ‘Wow, did you ever think you’d vote for Hillary?'” An executive with a dairy group said he is dismayed by Trump’s immigration policy but plans to vote for him anyway in the belief Trump’s proposals won’t be put into place and he is superior to Clinton on other issues.
Trump’s immigration plan calls for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, higher fees on visas, implementation of an electronic “e-verify” system to assure job applicants are in the country legally, repeal of birthright citizenship, a requirement to hire American workers first, and a pause in admission of foreign workers. The American Farm Bureau Federation, which supports immigration reform, says Trump has not provided details of a visa program to allow entry of workers from abroad.