Immigration Debate Threatens S.C. Peach Picking

The heated tempers of the nation’s border states are driving the debate over immigration policy. States such as South Carolina, though, are reckoning with a different set of challenges: a skimpy agriculture labor market and cumbersome immigrant worker programs that go unfixed amid partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill.

Over 20,000 U.S. farms employ more than 435,000 immigrant workers legally every year, according to 2012 U.S. Department of Agriculture census data. Thousands – probably tens of thousands – more are employed illegally. In the fruit orchards of the Carolinas, farmers confront a blue-collar labor vacuum.

“Because we’re not a border state, it’s definitely harder to get people over this far from the border to work,” said Chalmers Carr, the owner of the East Coast’s largest peach grower, South Carolina’s Titan Farms. “2006, 2007, even 2008, we had a very robust economy and there were not enough farmworkers then. And there’s truly not enough farmworkers now, legal or illegal.”

South Carolina in particular has a unique view, having seen the greatest percentage increase in Hispanic population in the country from 2000 to 2010 – nearly 150 percent, according to the most recently available census data. Although its Hispanic population sits at a comparatively low 5.1 percent, the increase reflects decisions by immigrants to make the trek deeper into the U.S. And while many are taking temporary seasonal work, the labor shortage has become a permanent issue for growers and workers alike.

“It’s not a temporary situation,” said Lynn Tramonte, the deputy director of America’s Voice, which focuses on changing immigration policy. “It might be a seasonal job, but we’re going to keep having grapes that need to be picked and cows that need to be milked, and immigrants are coming to do that sort of labor.”

Immigrant workers who slipped over the borders years ago are aging out of the workforce, and their younger, more able-bodied counterparts are being kept from the fields because of the bureaucratic clutter. But the crops and the growing season don’t wait.

“We’re losing that aging population, but we’re also not getting anybody replacing them because of the mess we have at the border and no immigration law,” said Manuel Cunha Jr., the president of California’s Nisei Farmers League, which represents over 180 types of farms, including those that produce raisins, vegetables and flowers.

The trend certainly isn’t limited to the southern edges of the country either.

Those realities may be what’s shifting the debate in states that traditionally opposed any immigration restructuring. The support of South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham for a less-restrictive immigration policy has prompted much criticism from other more conservative Republicans. Such reaction forced him to back off a push to overhaul immigration law in 2008. Even those conservative attitudes are changing now, however.

Despite the shift in perception, lawmakers left Washington for the August recess with immigration plans in limbo and little expected to come of them once they return in September and turn their focus to November’s elections.

Away from the partisan politics inside the Beltway, it’s a delay that could wreak havoc for seasonal growers who are limited by complicated federal programs such as the H-2A and I-9 temporary immigrant visas.

Both programs provide passes for immigrants looking to cross the border for seasonal work. But minimum wage and identity requirements make the programs difficult for growers to adhere to, and they can be incentives either to buck the system or to move farms overseas.

“When we need those workers we have to have them, because Mother Nature doesn’t hold up and wait for us to get workers,” said Cunha. “When it’s time to harvest, it’s time to harvest.”

On top of that, South Carolina’s Carr says the recent influx of children slipping across the U.S. border has clogged the bureaucratic process further.

“I don’t know how many problems go on this long without being fixed. . . . I don’t think businesses such as mine can continue to wait and operate based on what may happen six years from now,” he said.

Comments

[seasonallaboursolutions]

It interesting to see the Immigration debate is base on the labors or picking, It also useful for the fruit pickers or other kind of picking, The Immigration helps to set the mind or focus to the work.