Arizona’s SB-1070, which has not gone into effect, is having its intended effect of destroying the state’s farm sector according to the Phoenix New Times. Farmers there are seeing a sharp drop in the number of farmworkers in the state. As a result, more than 17,000 aces of land have been taken out of cultivation. One farmer told the newspaper that he used to plant 700 acres of onions but that he now only plants 10 because he can’t get workers.
States like Arizona that have passed tough laws against immigrant workers typically claim that they will direct unemployed Americans into agriculture. The Phoenix New Times says that past experience bodes ill for this as a solution:
In a February letter to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement, one of the bodies vetting the E-Verify proposal, the Agricultural Coalition for Immigration Reform, reminded lawmakers that past efforts to recruit American farmworkers “have failed miserably, clearly demonstrating time and again that there is not a domestic workforce sufficient to meet the need.”
Consider that in the late 1990s, state and county agencies in California launched a “welfare-to-farm-work” program in the state’s Central Valley at a time when regional unemployment was as high as 20 percent in some areas. A massive campaign addressed training, transportation, and other obstacles to getting workers in the fields.
Though there were more than 100,000 potential workers, only three jobs were filled.
In Washington State, a labor shortage for the 2006 cherry harvest prompted an advertising blitz to recruit about 1,700 needed workers, particularly for the much larger apple harvest that was just around the corner. Only 40 people took jobs.
The following year in North Carolina, farm officials set up a statewide hotline to fill about 60,000 crop and livestock jobs.
“Two calls were received; one was from a grandmother who felt that farm work would be good for her grandson,” the Agricultural Coalition wrote in their letter to federal lawmakers.
Most recently, the United Farm Workers kicked off a “Take Our Jobs” program with a media campaign in 2010 that even included airtime on the show of political comedian Stephen Colbert. By October, more than 10,000 people sought out more information, but only nine actually took jobs in the fields.
“Most of them quit after a few days or weeks,” the Coalition reported.
