This country has always had a hypocritical relationship with the undocumented workers who keep America’s agricultural, construction and hospitality industries humming.
On one hand, we simply cannot function without them. On the other, xenophobic politicians whip up fear and mistrust of workers on the lowest economic rungs when it serves their purposes.
And voters, who may be angry about all sorts of things, often find it easier to blame outsiders for woes they have nothing to do with, such as inflation.
But we can’t delude ourselves: President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible threatens devastating consequences for the country’s economy, for prices and for the people who come to this country to pick our fruits and vegetables, build our homes and wash our dishes.
California, where some economists estimate that half of our 900,000 farmworkers are undocumented, would be especially hard hit.
Joe Del Bosque, 75, has grown cantaloupes, almonds and asparagus on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side for decades. During the picking season, his employment rolls can swell to as many as 200 workers, none of whom is native-born and white. Some of his workers have lived in the United States with “temporary protected status” for years, some have green cards and the rest have been able to provide documents that satisfy minimal federal requirements.
“A lot of these jobs in agriculture are not wanted by American citizens,” Del Bosque told me Wednesday. “And I don’t blame them. It’s hard work in extreme conditions out there that a lot of people don’t want to do at any wage.”
Also, he said, the work is seasonal. Farmworkers roam from crop to crop based on the time of year.
“The people that do it go from one farm to another to another,” Del Bosque said. “Who can make a living in this country working a three-month job? It’s not easy.”
The prospect of widespread immigration raids and deportations has sent chills down the spines of farmworkers and their bosses, many of whom remember when employment shortages left produce rotting in the fields as recently as 10 years ago.
“We need to get together and agree we need some form of immigration reform, especially for essential workers,” said Del Bosque. “They provide food for the country. Can’t get more essential than that.”
In the mid-1980s, when he managed cantaloupe fields, federal government pilots would fly small planes over the state’s cropland looking for large crews of workers, he recalled. The pilots would radio information about the workers to the ground, where vans full of immigration officers would storm farms to, as Del Bosque put it, “capture as many as they could.”
One raid he witnessed ended in tragedy. Two of the farmworkers fleeing the feds jumped into an aqueduct at the edge of the field and tried to swim away.
“One didn’t make it,” Del Bosque said. “He drowned on the spot. They pulled him out and he’d passed away. I remember they had a hearing in Merced, and several of us came to testify about what happened. But I don’t think anything ever came of it.”
Human Rights Watch reported that from 1974 to 1986, 15 migrant farmworkers were known to have drowned in Central Valley canals during immigration raids. Immigrant rights groups accused Border Patrol agents of deliberately herding workers toward irrigation canals, which they used as barriers to prevent flight.
Border Patrol vehicles at the time carried no lifesaving equipment, which “suggested callousness, if not criminal neglect,” Human Rights Watch argued. In 1984, Border Patrol officials belatedly announced that agents would be required to carry lifesaving equipment when working near rivers and canals.
Without question, this country’s immigration system is broken. It’s illegal to hire undocumented workers, but employers do so anyway because they can’t function without this human capital. With rare exceptions, the government looks the other way. In fact, the odds that an employer will face an inspection by immigration authorities, my colleague Don Lee recently wrote, “are even less than a taxpayer’s likelihood of being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.”
Lee’s story focused on E-Verify, the computer-based program that allows employers to check a prospective employee’s legal status easily, almost instantly and free of charge.
The problem, as Lee reported, is that most employers won’t use it. They simply do not want to know that workers are here illegally; they desperately need the labor.
The summer I graduated from high school, my sister got me a job waiting tables with her at a restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills. The restaurant, Pages, was sort of an upscale diner, with a long counter, a pie case and booths along a picture window at the front.
Every so often, we would hear a stir in the kitchen as the Spanish-speaking men who worked in the kitchen warned each other that “la migra” — the immigration authorities — were on their way. This was long before cellphones; I don’t know who tipped them off.
From inside the restaurant, the guys would clamber up to the roof, wait for the “all clear” and then get right back to busing tables, washing dishes and cooking. Those who were apprehended and deported would soon return to work after sneaking back across the border, which was much more porous before President Reagan’s 1986 amnesty coupled with stricter border enforcement. Bosses who encouraged and condoned such attempts to evade the feds typically faced no repercussions.
It was a ritual, almost pointless dance — except that it was disruptive and scary as hell.
And it will continue unless and until Congress rectifies our incredible hypocrisy about undocumented immigrants by reforming the immigration system. It might be in Trump’s best interest to keep demonizing them, but it most definitely is not in ours.
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian