Want Lower Food Prices? Ease the Crackdown on Immigration
The majority of US farmworkers are undocumented migrants and we should be making their lives easier, not harder.
US food security depends on immigrant farmworkers.
Photographer: Sandy Huffaker/AFP/Getty Images
It’s an accepted reality that the business of food in America is sustained by the toil and grit of undocumented immigrants. They operate our dairy farms, process and pack our meats, and tend and harvest our fields. What’s overlooked is how imperiled these essential workers have become. They now face rising deportation crackdowns and increasingly dangerous environmental stresses, with no clear path to becoming legal citizens — even after decades of tax-paying labor.
As leaders in Congress debate proposals for immigration reform, including the GOP’s stringent Secure the Border Act that recently passed in the House, they must confront this blind spot: First, recognize the critical role of migrant farmworkers in our food networks; second, expand and modernize the temporary visa program to establish a clear path to citizenship for long-term workers.