Help Wanted In The Fight For Labor
A crackdown on illegal immigration must be accompanied by a guest worker program, or else many growers are in trouble.
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A crackdown on illegal immigration must be accompanied by a guest worker program, or else many growers are in trouble.
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Signs like this (translated "We Need Pickers") were a common sight in Washington this past year.
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If your grow a crop that’s labor-intensive, and you want to know what a crackdown on illegal immigration like the E-Verify program might cost, you could ask Gary Paulk. Last year the state of Georgia’s new law cost him $250,000 in revenue on his blackberry crop.
“I can say that unequivocally,” says Paulk, who grows blackberries and muscadine grapes in the southern part of the state in Irwin County. “We had a 25-acre block that we didn’t pick. The mature fruit just fell on the ground,” he says. “If we tried to do it all, the overall quality would have gone down. So we just cordoned off that block and said those are being abandoned, and we will do a good job on the crop that can be picked.”
Blackberries require a lot of pickers, because every acre must be picked every day for 45 days, Paulk explains. For his 150 acres, he needs 500 workers. But last year, because many former pickers were scared off by Georgia’s new law, House Bill 87, the Illegal Immigration Reform Act, he could only get 350. That’s why he made the decision to abandon the one block and focus on getting good quality berries out of the rest of his acreage.
It wasn’t like Paulk just threw up his hands. He tried working with the state Department of Labor, just like state legislators suggested, because Georgia has a 10% unemployment rate. “I asked for 25 workers for starters, and I got one,” he says. “We have a family operation, and we all own a piece, so we all put applications in for workers, but we never got any more applicants.”
Nothing Else Matters
Paulk says that when the law actually starts applying to him — last year the rumors alone were enough to drive workers away — he’s not sure how he can even enforce it. That’s because, as the name implies, E-Verify requires checking out a person’s citizenship status via the Internet. But Paulk says that in rural Georgia he often feels fortunate to get service for his cell phone, much less a reliable Internet connection.
Paulk is also angry about the lack of justice in the anti-immigration law. “If you get pulled over and have an illegal in your car you can be prosecuted for transporting illegal aliens — that even applies to church vans,” he says. “People didn’t think: When you fish with a large net, you catch a lot of fish you don’t want.”
Furthermore, Paulk believes the law has racist undertones that will haunt the state. “A lot of campaign promises were made, saying these people are taking jobs from Georgia residents, and myths like they don’t pay taxes, and that’s just not true,” he says. “One day we will look back and say this is almost as bad as the Jim Crow laws.”
Now that 25-acre block of blackberries, which was only four years old and was in its prime, is plowed under. Paulk is considering cutting back further on his fruit acreage, and planting crops that can be mechanically harvested. It’s not what he wants. “I hate to put my acreage in cotton and peanuts,” he says. “But like they say, if you can’t harvest the crop, nothing else matters.”
Indeed, for fruit growers, nothing else matters. American/Western Fruit Grower checked in on growers, Extension personnel, and grower association executives around the country to see how they fared regarding labor this past year, and their prospects for 2012. Click here to read about Pennsylvania apple grower Brad Hollabaugh and his feelings regarding immigrration. For more thoughts from across the country, keep reading.
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