We have to face facts: nearly half of all agricultural workers in the U.S. are undocumented laborers.

Any disruptions, raids, or threats of raids will slow production, increase costs to farmers and consumers, and increase reliance on foreign-grown produce and agricultural products.

There is no doubt that Congress has failed to take on our immigration issues and come up with workable, realistic solutions. Instead, they let the problem compound for decades.

So now, in a rush of hurried and messy Executive Orders, undocumented – as well as legal – immigrants are at risk of random raids and threats of deportation to the point that many are too scared to show up for work.

Right now, the California Farm Bureau reports that the citrus harvest is virtually halted in the Central Valley due to fears by some 55,000 migrant workers that they will show up for work in the morning and not return home at night.

Local industry group California Citrus Mutual summed up the growing problem this way: "Yesterday about 25% of the workforce [didn't show up], today 75% didn't show up."

Whole harvests are at risk of loss without workers to process crops. In the short term, it might be worrisome and inconvenient. In the long term, we risk real economic devastation if agricultural production slows greatly or stops altogether.

Updating our patchwork and painfully slow immigration and guest worker systems is decades overdue, but cruel, sweeping, and threatening directives that target workers and their families at their churches, schools, farms, and while buying supplies at the local Home Depot is an unacceptable solution that helps no one: not workers, not farmers, and not consumers.

Heidi

Heidi Heitkamp, Former U.S. Senator from North Dakota
Founder, One Country Project