Op Ed: E-Verify Proposal a Bad Idea for Dairy State
Wisconsin's status as America's Dairyland was built on the hard work and perseverance of generations of family farmers. This industry generates $26.5 billion in economic activity each year and is interconnected with nearly every industry sector in our state. Every dollar of dairy income delivers an additional $1.54 into local communities.
While Wisconsin's dairy farms have remained almost entirely family owned (99 percent), farming has certainly advanced since the first barns went up. As dairy farms have modernized, one of the biggest challenges has become finding employees to milk and feed cows, clean barns and do all that's needed to keep a dairy farm functioning properly.
This labor-intense work is a 365-day-a-year responsibility. Cows need to be milked two to three times every day. Unfortunately, the reality facing many of our farmers is a shortage in the workforce, despite paying a living wage and providing benefits such as health insurance, 401(k) and paid vacation.
We need Congress to come up with a commonsense solution to ensure that farmers have access to a legal workforce. Right now, the House of Representatives is considering a bill that could cripple the agricultural industry.
The proposal, H.R. 2146, would mandate farm owners use the federal E-Verify program, an online database employers can use to check the immigration status of employees. If a prospective hire is not in the database, a problem that has occurred regularly, the farmer and potential hire must spend time and resources jumping through bureaucratic hoops.
Let's be clear. We all agree that we must solve our illegal immigration problems. However, we must consider the unintended consequences of this legislation. This problem must address immigration in a way that does not place additional barriers in front of farmers without providing access to a legal supply of labor. The results of these unintended consequences would devastate Wisconsin's economy and jeopardize our nation's food security.
The state of Georgia provides an example of what could happen if we force a one-size-fits-all approach to immigration reform on agriculture. After Georgia passed its version of immigration reform, farmers there are dealing with a labor shortage of 30 to 50 percent and are facing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. With the fragile nature of our economy, I certainly wouldn't want to face a similar problem here in the Dairy State.
Farmers aren't the only ones who would suffer. Consumers would pay the price too. If farmers start losing their labor supply, they simply won't be able to care for their cows, forcing them to ship cows or go out of business. Without American farms, you can bet more food production would continue to move overseas. That's a foreign policy nightmare making us vulnerable to a number of threats.
A better solution would be for Wisconsin's congressional delegation to work with other agricultural state lawmakers to develop a solution that will allow farmers to keep the experienced workers they have and create a system to ensure enough legal farm workers in the future. That will make sure we can keep our cows in Wisconsin and keep advancing an industry we're so proud of here in the Dairy State.
Laurie Fischer is the executive director of the Dairy Business Association.
