Farmers will have to pay higher wages to farmworkers and rely more on mechanization to carry out agricultural tasks when illegal immigration is ended, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told a Wisconsin dairy farmer. At a town hall meeting, farmer Jason Vorpahl said many dairy operations have to rely on Latino workers because U.S. citizens are hard to recruit. “What is the short-term solution to keep our current labor force intact?” asked Vorpahl, who has 2,800 cows.
“We’re going to end illegal immigration,” said Cruz, who’s running for the Republican nomination for president, in a CNN transcript. “And in the agriculture world, I think the first option should be trying to find American workers. Now that may mean wages come up. It may mean that we have to use more tools,” said Cruz, citing a newspaper story of an Arizona grower who invented a tool to pick peppers after the state toughened its laws on undocumented workers. The grower hired community college graduates, at a higher wage, to run the equipment that replaced hand harvesting.
“If there are needs in the labor force and American workers not available to do it, that’s where legal immigration should come in. But it should be in a situation where you’re vetting the people,” Cruz said.
U.S. farm groups were proponents of comprehensive immigration reform as a way to ensure a stable and legal workforce. Half or more of U.S. farmworkers are estimated to be undocumented.