Brent Batten
Naples Daily News
Feb. 27, 2017
Like every year at about this time, millions of dollars worth of fruits and vegetables are ripening in Southwest Florida.
But unlike other years, there’s a new trepidation over who will be around to pick them.
A revised set of rules guiding immigration enforcement has created anxiety in the community of harvesters, according to agriculture professionals.
Fear of the unknown threatens to exacerbate a shortage of labor that has plagued the industry for years, they say.
“The farmworker community is petrified over the prospects of deportation,” said Mike Stuart, president of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association.
“It hasn’t impacted agriculture yet, but it has caused a lot of angst, anxiety, nervousness on the part of immigrants, on the part of farmers,” agreed Gene McAvoy, director of the University of Florida agriculture extension office in Hendry County.
Last week, the Trump administration unveiled a new set of priorities for immigration agents to use in deportation matters. The new guidelines expand the universe of deportation targets, from focusing mostly on those accused of serious crimes to including just about everyone in the country illegally.
“There has been a chilling effect on the availability of labor,” Stuart said.
And it comes just as the demand for pickers peaks in Southwest Florida from March through April.
According to figures from the U of F extension service, almost 48,000 people work in agriculture and related industries in Collier County. That’s almost a quarter of all the jobs in the county. Ag sales amount to more than $2.5 billion per year.
Both Stuart and McAvoy say it is difficult to say how many of those working in agriculture aren’t properly documented.
“All of those working present documents that on their face appear valid,” Stuart said.
But both men say estimates run from between 50 to 70 percent lack legal standing to live and work in the U.S.
In the week since the new directives went out from Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, word has spread quickly through Immokalee and other farming towns.
“The worker grapevine used to be strong before social media. Now, with social media, the rumor mill fires up pretty rapidly,” Stuart said.
Gayane Stepanian is the director of the Redlands Christian Migrant Association, providing preschool care to hundreds of children, most of them Hispanic, in Immokalee. She’s seen the nervousness in the community.
“There is a sense of fear and tension that is very real. There are less people in the streets. Less people in the businesses. It is visible,” she said.
The potential labor shortage would affect vegetable crops more than citrus.
Andrew Meadows, communications director for Florida Citrus Mutual, said the citrus industry gets most of its workers through the federal government’s H-2A visa system. A grower can bring in a specific number of workers on a particular date for a set period of time under the H-2A program.
“H-2A has its issues, but we’ve been able to make it work,” Meadows said.
McAvoy said fruit and vegetable crops are less predictable than citrus, making the H-2A option less attractive for growers of tomatoes, watermelon and berries.
“It’s very inflexible,” McAvoy said of the H-2A system. “If your crop comes in two weeks early, you’re just out of luck.”
Farmers have had trouble finding enough workers to bring in their crops for a decade or more, McAvoy said. Domestic workers don’t want the jobs. The recovery of the building industry is luring potential farmworkers away.
Even under the old rules, more immigrants were being deported than ever before, McAvoy said.
Obama administration moves to strengthen border security and the presence of drug cartels along the Mexican border add to the shortage.
“They’ve made it difficult and dangerous to get across the border,” he said.
No one can say for sure if the new policies will make finding enough farmworkers impossible.
But observers hope that whatever the outcome, the situation will force changes to immigration laws that workers and growers can live with.
“There are still a lot of changes going on. There’s hope that once things settle down, we can have a meaningful discussion,” Meadows said.
McAvoy was more blunt. “One of the things we’re hoping is this will create a crisis that will force some reforms to the immigration system.”
Stuart acknowledged that dealing with immigration is politically difficult. “It is one of the most volatile issues our country has faced. We need a solution that provides the industry access to a legal and stable workforce.”
McAvoy said that if farmers can’t find workers to pick crops, the U.S. will end up importing food from countries where environmental and sanitary controls are less stringent.
“I don’t know if we want that,” he said.
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