Mass Deportation will reduce California to an agricultural Rust Belt

Mass Deportation Will Reduce California To An Agricultural Rust Belt

By Patrick Dwire

Last month, on December 17th, the Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution reaffirming Santa Cruz County as a “Sanctuary County that is a welcoming community and a place of trust and safety for all immigrants regardless of immigration status.” Most of the public comment focused on the trauma that President-elect Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportation of undocumented immigrants is currently causing. Fourth District Supervisor Felipe Hernandez was the only speaker who emphasized that agriculture is the “backbone” of California’s economy, and undocumented farmworkers are the backbone of California’s agriculture. Reducing the promise of this humanitarian disaster to simply economic terms, reviewing some fundamental facts about our state’s agricultural industry seems appropriate.

The Salinas Valley is known as “the salad bowl of the world”, producing more than half of the nation’s head and leaf lettuce, at least half of the nation’s broccoli and cauliflower, and about one third of the nation’s spinach and strawberries.

According to State EDD statistics, there were about 72,000 agricultural workers in Monterey County last year, just about one third of the county’s workforce. There are at least about 10,000 farm workers in Santa Cruz County, up to as many as 15,000 during harvest seasons, making up between 10 and 15 per cent of our county’s workforce.

Zoom out to California’s Central Valley stretching between Redding and Bakersfield, and we have, in terms of agricultural production, nine of the top 10 counties in the nation. California is the fifth largest supplier of food in the world, growing over one-third of the nation’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruit and nuts. Fresno County alone has agricultural sales greater than 23 states.

According to the Santa Cruz County Workforce Development Board, at least 50 per cent of farmworkers “have problems with immigration documentation.” The Center for Farmworker Families, a local nonprofit supporting farmworkers, puts that percentage at 75 per cent.

So, at least half and probably more of the workers in one of our most important industries are currently threatened with deportation. The other half are traumatized with anxiety that they, their children, or their parents could easily be swept up in the pending mass deportation. Between 1/3 and 1/2 of all farmworkers in America reside in California, roughly between 500,000 – 800,000 farmworkers depending on the season. California is ground zero for mass deportation.

If successful, mass deportation would reduce California into the agricultural equivalent of the mid-western Rust Belt; food rotting in the fields or fields left fallow for lack of workers, food processing plants shuttered, with prices for fruits and vegetables spiking. We will not have globalization or the Chinese to blame for this calamity- we will be doing it to ourselves by terrorizing our farm labor work force.

Who will stand in opposition to workplace raids by ICE? Who will go out to the fields and inform workers of their rights, and monitor ICE enforcement officers and detention centers for legality during and after the round-ups? How will the governor respond if ordered to deploy the National Guard to co-operate with ICE, and is threatened with the withholding of federal funds for crucial services if he fails to comply?

These are important questions not addressed in the sanctuary county resolution. Our local officials and politicians will need broad public support when facing the wrath of the Trump administration for non-cooperation. This opposition will need to include loud voices from across the industry, including growers, Farm Bureaus, farm input and equipment suppliers, processing and packaging companies, and trucking contractors. The entire industry should be getting prepared to raise hell at the prospect of losing more than half of their workers, and we should all be getting prepared to support them.

Shielding the rights of our local farmworkers combined with outright defiance of mass deportation will be necessary not only to mitigate the humanitarian disaster promised by the president-elect, it will be necessary to save our state’s economy.

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Patrick Dwire is a freelance writer living in Felton. He can be reached at paddyd385 [at] gmail.com.