New York farms need immigrant labor program, senators hear

WASHINGTON — The federal government’s stepped-up enforcement of immigrant worker laws could put hundreds of farms in the Northeast out of business unless Congress updates a guest worker program, a key agricultural lender in the state said Tuesday.

Robert A. Smith, senior vice president of Farm Credit East, told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that more than 1,700 Northeast farms are vulnerable to increased enforcement by immigration authorities, putting as much as $2.4 billion in annual sales at risk and threatening to take more than a million acres of farmland out of production — in most cases, he said, because workers appear to the farmer to have legitimate documentation when in fact they do not.

Indeed, the effect of increased enforcement and possible use of electronic verification already is causing some farmers to hold back on expansions, Mr. Smith told an immigration subcommittee chaired by Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.

The panel revisited an issue that has tied up Congress for several years despite dire warnings from farm groups. In New York, farm experts say the apple harvest is especially reliant on immigrant labor, but dairy farms increasingly rely on immigrants even though dairies are not eligible for the H2A guest worker program that admits farm workers temporarily.

Stepped-up enforcement and the prospect of the e-verify program have forced the discussion to resurface. The House is considering an e-verify measure.

Witnesses agreed Tuesday that the H2A program is not functioning as intended and is desperately in need of revamping. They also agreed that the growing farm labor crisis cannot be fixed without giving current workers a path to legal status — although such a move could come in varying ways.

“Agriculture needs a much better solution,” said Ronald D. Knutson, an economist with the Food and Agricultural Policy Institute at Texas A&M University.

Among other problems, Mr. Knutson said, is that even with increased mechanization, farm work is physically demanding and must be completed on a timely basis — often not giving farmers the time to wait for work permit documentation to go through, for instance.

And dairy work, unlike crop work, is not seasonal. Farmers need milkers around the clock, 365 days a year.

For those reasons, Mr. Knutson said, fewer than 5 percent of U.S. farms use the H2A program. And dairy farms are not eligible, although several lawmakers have pledged to extend it to them.

Mr. Smith predicted an enforcement-only solution will drive up farmers’ labor costs and those who stay in business may switch to less labor-intensive crops. In the long run, he said, that could lead to more U.S. food imports.

Lawmakers need to ask, Mr. Smith said, whether they prefer domestic food production that relies on some foreign workers, or overseas production that uses exclusively non-U.S. labor.

“We believe this is a jobs and food security issue,” Mr. Smith said.

He told Mr. Schumer that farm labor costs could climb as much as 20 percent.

“That puts them, in many cases, in a nonviable situation,” Mr. Smith said.

Of the 1,732 farms Farm Credit estimated to be at risk, the greatest number — 528 — are dairy farms. Dairy is by far the north country’s biggest agricultural commodity, and New York ranks among the top states in milk production.

Those dairies represent 8,679 workers, although that is fewer than the 15,345 in fruit production, Farm Credit reported.

Lawmakers have been unable to reach a solution, in large part because of disagreements about how to handle undocumented workers already in the country. In general, lawmakers have been looking for a way to let immigrants work on dairy farms for a few years at a time. Democrats and Republicans have been open to giving undocumented farmworkers at least a path to legal status, if not citizenship.

On Tuesday, Reps. Kathy Hochul, D-Hamburg, and Richard L. Hanna, R-Barneveld, proposed legislation to expand the H2A program to dairy workers, allowing them to stay for renewable periods of three years.