On the campaign trail Trump has promised to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants in America, and around 9 million of them are working. And according to this Pew Research Center study undocumented immigrants are providing over half the farm labor in many states. Georgia already tried this little experiment a few years back, and the results were crops rotting in the fields as immigrant farm workers regardless of legal status gave Georgia a wide berth. Fortunately we still had immigrant workers in 49 other states to pick up the slack… But Trump wants to repeat this failed experiment in immigrant hating nationwide!
On election day immigrants will be hard at work bringing in the harvest in much of America. Just down the supply chain, immigrant food processing plant workers will be turning that harvest into the bounty of food products we normally find in our supermarkets. But if Trump wins, that harvest will grind to a near halt. There is ample evidence that even rumors of immigration arrests will empty the fields and packing plants in a near instant, with both documented and undocumented immigrants hiding out, as even those with legal status quite reasonably fear being mistakenly caught up in immigration raids. I’ve seen the streets empty at midday in an immigrant neighborhood when rumors of an immigration raid were circulating, and after packinghouse raids in the midwest even immigrants that didn’t work at the raided packing houses and their families disappeared. So if Trump is elected on the 2nd tuesday this november, on wensday every outbound highway will see a parade of immigrants leaving America for relative safety.
So if Trump wins, by late in the week of the election just a skeleton crew will remain to harvest the crops on time, tend the livestock, and process our food and send it to the supermarket shelves. In many of these farms and plants there are nowhere near enough non-immigrants to staff these facilities. For example, in west central Minnesota in just one township there are a pair of mega-dairy CAFOs, each with a million square foot “barn” and nearly 10,000 cows. Each requires an immigrant crew of around 20 workers, and in that township and the surrounding ones about the only folks who aren’t already employed are children that need to be in school and seniors unable to handle the physically demanding work. Same in the huge hog and poultry barns located miles down dirt roads from anywhere in the midwest where immigrant workers do the work that no one else is available to do. As those immigrants are forced to flee in the face of Trump’s threats, livestock will go unfed and cows suffer from going unmilked. What skelton crew remains will have to cut corners just to keep the livestock watered and humanely put them down, if possible. Down the road in the packing plants meat will rot and crops spoil as the few workers left struggle just to shut the plants down.
Imports, small farms, and warehoused foods will keep the supermarket shelves from being totally barren immediately. But you’ll have to make some creative substitutions for your thanksgiving dinner, and forget about a turkey for christmas. Going out for new years? The hotel will be pretty much unstaffed, and the buffet rather barren. By inauguration day just the fear of Trump’s immigration crackdown will limit our diet to low labor input foods, while the wealthy will drive up the cost of “local food” and organics so only they can afford to eat them. And for farmers, this is just the first Trump assault- Wait ‘til Trump’s 35% to 45% duties on imports from Mexico and China set off a trade war, and half the soy products we produce are exported...
So if you live in a state that will decide the presidential race, do everything you can to help Hillary. If not, support your downballot democratic candidates so we can at least keep Trump and the republicons from seizing all power. Wherever you live, start stockpiling and prepare to provide sanctuary for the immigrant workers that feed and care for us!