Thread: WI-Immigrant labor rises on state dairy farms

Immigrant labor rises on state dairy farms
Growing pool of workers provide cheap alternative
By Jacob Kushner
November 12, 2009


Sandi Zirbel has seen an influx of immigrants on dairy farms in Wisconsin firsthand.

As the co-owner of a 635-cow dairy cooperative in the town of Glenmore, Zirbel said immigrants frequently come looking for work.

As many as 19 out of 20 people who apply to work at the farm are immigrants. Two-thirds of those applications get tossed.

"Some of them simply just don't fit into the system, either because of how much they're asking per hour or what their experience is," Zirbel said.

All workers start at $7.50 per hour — but usually receive a raise to $8.50 after six months and are then eligible for yearly raises.

Despite the number of applicants who are rejected, it's easy to find enough qualified workers to fill the need at Zirbel Dairy Farms — seven of the current nine farmhands are immigrants.

"They're more likely to seek this type of work," Zirbel said. "Why somebody would want to leave Mexico and come to Wisconsin to milk in the middle of winter, I don't know ... but there's a lot of them up here."

Just 10 years ago, 5 percent of workers on Wisconsin dairy farms were immigrants. By 2008, that number jumped to 40 percent, or more than 5,000 workers, according to a 2009 study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Program on Agricultural Technology Studies. Those immigrants are changing the face of the state's signature industry, while bringing increasing diversity and social challenges to the state's rural areas.

As Wisconsin dairy farmers hire more immigrants, they face mounting pressure to ensure their workforce is competent, skilled, and above all, legal.

Experts say farmers are often caught in a "don't ask, don't tell" web of federal employment regulations, with a strong incentive to know as little as possible about the legal status of their workers.

The UW-Madison study didn't inquire about immigration status, but earlier federal surveys have estimated that half of all immigrant crop workers are working in the United States illegally.

Zirbel's cooperative is one of only three Wisconsin dairy farms registered with E-Verify.

Farmers acknowledge that applicants whose numbers don't match often leave without providing another.

U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., is sponsoring a bill to require employers to use E-Verify before hiring.

But some say E-Verify is inconvenient, unreliable and will only make hiring workers more difficult.

Erich Straub, a Milwaukee attorney who specializes in deportation defense, said he thinks there is a high percentage of undocumented labor used in dairy farms, but that there are accuracy problems with the E-Verify system.

"Sometimes those problems are exaggerated by some people who don't want E-Verify. On the other side of the coin, I think E-Verify is promoted as some magic bullet that's going to fix the immigration problem in the United States. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle."

While she's one of the few using E-Verify, Zirbel disagreed with the assumption farmers are trying to manipulate the hiring process to benefit from cheap and illegal labor.

"I would like to assure anybody who doesn't know anything about dairy farming that we're doing everything possible to legally hire (immigrant workers)," Zirbel said. "It's peace of mind. We do our job to make sure we have all the right documentation. Whether or not they give us the right information, that's really out of our hands."


http://www.htrnews.com/article/20091112 ... ocated=rss

Just 10 years ago, 5 percent of workers on Wisconsin dairy farms were immigrants. By 2008, that number jumped to 40 percent, or more than 5,000 workers, according to a 2009 study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Program on Agricultural Technology Studies. Those immigrants are changing the face of the state's signature industry, while bringing increasing diversity and social challenges to the state's rural areas.

That to me says they squeeze the Americn worker out of their jobs. And maybe because the American worker does not want to work with the illegals.