When I was in high school, my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, was much smaller. Less than a mile from East Towne Mall, on the other side of Interstate 90/94, were acres upon acres of cornfields. Between my junior and senior year I took a job working in one of those cornfields, detasseling corn.
Detasseling, which consisted of pulling the pollen-producing flowers from the tops of the plants and throwing them on the ground to cross-breed different varieties of corn, was a rite of passage for teenagers in Wisconsin. I was likely part of one of the last groups of teens in the area to work that job. It was one of the hardest jobs I have ever done. It is hot, dirty, and you are bitten by every bug imaginable.
Those cornfields on the outskirts of Madison are long gone, but corn still needs to be detasseled on other area farms. Today, you will not find any teenagers doing this job. It is all done by migrant laborers, and many of those workers are not in the United States legally.
Migrant workers wages are usually paid on a piece rates basis. During the 1980s in some areas of the U.S. detasseling work shifted from being primarily local teenagers to primarily migrant farm work
The current White House resident campaigned heavily on a promise to curb illegal immigration, and much of Donald Trump’s Republican support in this last election came from rural America. Those voters wanted an end to illegal immigration, in order to stop the so-called thieves and murderers from stealing American jobs. They got exactly what they voted for.
In the 100 days since President Trump signed an executive order to enhance immigration enforcement, the arrests of undocumented immigrants is up 38% from the same time period in 2016, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data
These alarming arrest statistics don’t change the fact that all across the country, farmers are reliant on immigrants for labor.
Estimates of the number of farmworkers employed in the United States vary. According to Robert Guenther, senior vice president for public policy for the United Fresh Produce Association, a produce industry trade group, it’s about 1.5 million to 2 million.
Of those, a large portion is illegal. Again, estimates vary, but Guenther puts it at 50 to 70 percent, a wide range. The Department of Labor, in its National Agricultural Workers Survey, puts it at 46 percent.
Even using the lower number from the Department of Labor, that means almost half of the farm workers in the United States are undocumented. That also means many of the rural Americans who voted for Trump voted against their best interests. He is arresting and deporting their workforce, which is causing many of those laborers to pack up and leave before ICE shows up.
Like many immigrant dairy employees in Wisconsin, the workers in the caravan have stories about walking through the desert to cross the border illegally, coming to work for farmers in the U.S. eager for the help.
They ended up here in America’s Dairyland, the nation’s top cheese state and No. 2 milk producer, attracted by a dairy industry dependent on undocumented immigrant labor to keep cows milked three times a day, year-round. They have raised their children in communities where American workers stopped answering "help wanted" ads for cow milkers long ago.
Like farmers across the nation, Wisconsin farmers rely on immigrant labor. These are jobs that American workers will not take. Immigrants pick our produce, milk our cows, and detassel our corn.
It has often been said that elections have consequences—and it’s now glaringly clear that they do. Regardless of who they voted for, every American will pay the price with higher food costs. And the very people who elected Donald Trump will pay an even higher price when they see their crops rotting in the fields.