I suspect that, for employers of undocumented workers, the threat of deportation is better than actual deportations. The former provides a minimal but usable incentive to work without protest. The latter provides a higher level of fear, such that workers leave and farm employers lose their workforce.
Reading this reminded me of Tracie McMillan's book The American Way of Eating. She worked in farm fields (as well as at Walmart & Applebee's) to understand how we approach food in America. She found the farm work incredibly back breaking and exhausting and had a hard time keeping up with the immigrant workers. The migrant workers worked largely without complaint, sent money home and shared, prodigiously with Tracie.
And it goes w/o saying that the workers, supervisors and land owners couldn't believe that a white, fair skinned American was working the fields. *Wanted* to work the fields.
Worth commenting - AC has been writing nothing but smart, incisive articles since he's joined the Bulwark. Great to have him writing for them; I learn more about the ins and outs of the immigration issue - political, economic, legal, personal - than just about any other resource (WashPo & NYT still have some 'bangers' on the issue now and again). THANKS!
We’ll all pay the price, but the f*cking as*holes in the Central Valley and the Inland empire voted for this sh*t. I live in CA and can do without their produce for years—I/we will continue growing our own in an expanded garden. Vegetables, citrus, even pomegranates—we’ve got our own. Votes and elections have consequences. Suck it !
If only the MAGA mass could hear about these goings on, necessity of skilled farm labor, MAGArs would flip out. Brown people getting to stay because they are needed. Then you have the construction trades, food processing, restaurant workers, service jobs, manual labor, etc. Trump’s& MAGA’s hypocrisy from day 1
So as long as immigrants remain in servile occupations that pay poverty wages, they can stay, but if they try to go to college and get all uppity then they get snatched off the street by masked goons and put on a plane to a torture dungeon? Got it.
A news update--China today is imposing very high tariffs that will keep all American exports out of China. This is devastating news for American farmers generally and particularly for soybean, corn, wheat and pork producers.
Oh, the Farmers of America, you get what you vote for and what you deserve. No tears from me - they are reserved for those that the Trump regime is oppressing: the people who work your fields and make you money - I will cry for them. NOT YOU.
During the Great Depression farmers let food rot in the field because they could not pay workers to harvest the crop. I remember hearing a song by Woody Guthrie about a plane crash that killed a number of deportees so the current deportation system has been broken for a long time- which is still no excuse for what is going on now. By around 1932 migrant agricultural labor was largely composed of internal migrants fleeing the dust bowl and lack of jobs where they were living. My family left Oklahoma to pick cotton in Texas when that work was available. After December 7, 1941 war work became available and it was our salvation.
People today have no idea what tough times are really like, the T. Rump criminal enterprise is doing its best to educate through experience going forward. Yay.
I, for one, am done handing out fire extinguishers to people throwing gas. So let’s talk about what this article isn’t saying:
1. Trump’s Immigration Policy Is Not a Bug; It’s a Feature
The “oh, maybe we’ll carve out exemptions for farmers” line is not policy nuance; it’s a shakedown. Trump’s trying to run immigration like a mafia don handing out neighborhood passes: “Nice citrus yield you got there, shame if ICE showed up tomorrow.” This isn’t governance. It’s extortion wrapped in jingoism.
2. American Agriculture Has Been Addicted to Exploitation Since Day One
We built our ag system on the backs of enslaved people. Then came the Bracero Program, indentured servitude with a press release. Now, we have undocumented labor that we simultaneously rely on and criminalize. The American food system doesn’t work without exploitation; it’s not broken; it’s designed this way.
3. Farmers Are Not Helpless Victims
Yes, tariffs and deportations are hurting farmers. Yes, Trump’s economic idiocy is slamming them. But let’s not forget who overwhelmingly voted for him twice. The same folks screaming now about losing workers and market access? They were cheering when Trump promised to build a wall and slap tariffs on China like it was a 4-H ribbon. You made your bed under an American flag quilt woven with nationalism and supply chain ignorance. Now you're shocked it’s itchy?
4. Let’s Talk About “Family Farms”
There’s this pastoral fantasy that American farming is wholesome, small-scale, and run by salt-of-the-earth types who want to feed the world. In reality, over 96% of farms are still “family-owned,” but that includes massive corporate-style operations. We’re talking about tens of thousands of acres, huge labor forces, and industrial infrastructure. The "family" is a board of directors, not Ma and Pa with a hoe.
5. The Article Never Utters the Phrase “Labor Rights”
Do you want to stop exploitation? Then, you legalize undocumented workers, give them the same protections as everyone else, and enforce labor laws. Instead, we keep pitting undocumented workers against H-2A guest workers like they’re gladiators in some dystopian economy while agribusiness licks its lips.
The real kicker? Nobody's asking why we’ve created an ag system that depends on poverty to function. Not one whisper about structural change, redistribution, climate-resilient local food systems, or ending our addiction to cheap human labor.
So, no, this article doesn’t go far enough. It tiptoes politely around a fascist immigration regime while whispering "but the oranges!" into a fan.
Ah yes, I’ve heard that hymn, first at funerals then went looking for the lyrics. Doesn’t exactly match my theology but includes some great imagery. And those two questions: “whom shall I send?” …answered by the question “is it I?” At the heart of everything right there. What can I do? Am I the one god/the universe/my brother or sister needs for this situation? Very focusing when thinking about my role in the world, my connection to god & others.
And I love a polka! Polish style from my Cleveland years, Mexican in the southwest, and the wonderful variation here on the O’odham Nation in AZ - everybody waila! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_pYFNacFUng
Still Jerry's wife writing--Should add that almost all of our Hispanic immigrants came to work in the meat and poultry processing plants, not farms, so ours had the advantage of unions. Their children went to the Catholic colleges and met and married Anglos there, in addition to people met in their high schools. Those who did work on neighbors' farms had tried the southwest first, including southern California (bracero-central?), and didn't like it there, so came where we were.
I did data analysis and mapping when out of college. The big dividing line in California pre-1950s was Bay area and northward, things not perfect, but more decent north, while southward were some very bad counties (can't remember, maybe Tuolumne was really bad for awhile?). If you go into the county histories, you see stories of ex-confederates in South Calif. burning newspaper offices (brave editors, I imagined, who editorialized against the brutality and greed brought in?).
Had a roommate in grad school who was Mexicana, very good person overall, exceptionally smart, felt so sad on learning she'd died. She spoke of the difference between Mexicanas and Chicanas, some fight over something she had trouble explaining and I had trouble comprehending. Her family brought her in when she was 5, went from Texas (ag work?) to LA (factory work?), maybe they were at Compton or Fremont, can't remember. She said they were saved from poverty by the Catholic schools, so she was very devout. She was worried about a younger sibling as gangs back home were getting bolder.
She'd had a grandmother who was kidnapped into "marriage", not voluntary, rape as consummation instead of a church service. The grandmother was thus very unhappily married, but the priests stopped that "courting custom" once they learned of it. The women were, thus, VERY grateful for the church, even if the men denied wives by kidnapping were not.
The roommate was pro-education, getting her PhD in that. The liberals on the faculty had let us in, but the conservatives were VERY angry ANY women were there. Didn't matter whether we were farmer, Mexicana, daughter of a biz mogul. Color or class or family story did not matter. Gender did. The conservatives would make sure it took you twice or three times as long to graduate, by making you redo your dissertation over and over and over. Yet, they let the guys they favored "skate" through. The ones who asked good questions? Not so much.
Yes, you are very angry. In anger, we stereotype and lash out. We all do it at times.
The Ma and Pas in the upper midwest did NOT magically evaporate, they had to incorporate to compete, eventually had to sell their cows as town people decided almond milk beat farmer-owned Bordens. I went to the city, for college, a few years after my year of farm child starvation and resolved never to go back except for visits.
Some Pres., was it Carter? He arranged things to be better with his big grain deal? Ruined now by T? Things were better after that, but I was in love with cities by then.
My farmer relatives MARRIED ex-immigrants, so we have Hispanic and Asian names, some are teachers now. Lots of their immigrants settled in the upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest (when the worst parts of the South could be outvoted in Congress so staying was permitted). They did do that, became legal in SOME STATES NOT OTHERS, because, as migrant workers, they'd learned where the good schools were, went there, where the hating people were, stayed away from them.
If you went to twenty countries, you had a chance to marry outside your group, or, if not, talk to the people who did. What did you learn, that was not full of vitriol? Thinking about that might help resolve your anger.
Jerry, I appreciate your story, and I hear the pain and complexity. Truly. A cattle rancher raised me; I’ve broken bread with small farmers in the Midwest and farm families in the fields of Romania, Central America, and Botswana. I’ve sat with call center agents in Manila and warehouse workers in the UK, and I’ve seen firsthand how people carry both pride and pain across generations. That tension is real.
But naming systemic exploitation isn’t vitriol; it’s clarity. Anger isn’t the enemy here. Injustice is. And honestly, I trust anger that comes from a love of people more than comfort that protects institutions.
You’re right that Ma and Pa didn’t magically evaporate. They were ground up in the same machinery they thought they could trust. That’s the point. A system that feeds corporate consolidation, strips community ownership, and replaces human labor with cost efficiencies will exploit everyone eventually, white, brown, rural, urban. That’s not a stereotype. That’s the trajectory of unregulated capitalism.
I don’t hate farmers. I hate the systems that chew through them. And if we want something better for farmers, immigrants, and workers, we have to start by being honest about what we built and who it leaves behind.
That’s not lashing out. That’s fighting for a future worth staying for.
On a side note: Tone policing is the favorite tool of the comfortable. It derails valid critique by focusing on how it’s said, not what’s being said. It turns righteous anger into a character flaw and demands civility from the oppressed while ignoring the violence of the status quo.
I agree with nearly every point you make here. BUT I think Adrian did more than tiptoe - please reread the part on UFW leader Antonio De Loera-Brust, for e.g.
Of course we shouldn't create a 21st Century Bracero program at the expense of long-time resident workers. Some current workers would jump at joining a well-run guest worker system (our wacky border policies broke that option decades ago, making it too risky to go back & forth seasonally, thus incentivizing staying north without permission); others would prefer paths to permanent residency or citizenship - why not all options? NOT pitted against each other to create gridlock, but to improve the dignity, predictability & earning potential for workers and farmers alike (even for big agri-biz if they'll play fairly & not just lobby for their own narrow interests).
Since before Woody Guthrie sang Deportee, we've been dodging these issues. "Is this the best way...?" hell no, Woody. We haven't even started on the problem
Excellent , J AZ, you said "why not all options? NOT pitted against each other to create gridlock, but to improve the dignity, predictability & earning potential for workers and farmers alike" Yes! (Like your choice in music.)
Jerry & Jerry's wife - thank you both for sharing so many of your personal experiences & backgrounds. I expect I'd enjoy sitting down with you two & This Woman Votes - I really think we agree on a lot! We have different backgrounds and we come across differently. For sure, typing is NOT my best way to express myself, I'm much more charming in person, LOL! 😊
Over my 70+ years I've always benefitted from music. In my worst, loneliest days, songs carry me. In my (many more!) good days, they ring out the joy around me. On my best days I sing & dance with my loved ones!
From Jerry's wife-- Thinking the same way--things that got me through hard times when younger were Jerry making me laugh and also music. Loved Polish and Mexican polka, certain songs at church, once I decided to go back, made me cry, as they dealt so well with pain.
You've picked some beauties, Guthrie, etc, so maybe you'll like this too. It's call-and-answer in style, people at youtube say different variations helped them through cancer and other traumas. I'm not as religious as 20 years ago, but it still moves me:
I appreciate your points, and you're right that Adrian did more than some of them. But the framing still plays it safe. As someone who’s lived and worked in 22 countries on various work visas, white collar, in the BPO space, I can tell you that even those systems offer minimal protection. You're disposable with a polite smile and an airport code. Now imagine that same precarity, but in a lettuce field, without paperwork, and with ICE breathing down your neck.
I get that some folks would choose a well-run guest worker program. But that’s fantasy until we stop treating labor like a commodity and treat workers like human beings. “Let agribusiness play fair” is wishful thinking; their business model is built on not playing fair and hinges on exploitation. Dignity and predictability won’t come from tweaking guest labor pipelines. It’ll come from legalizing workers, enforcing labor rights, and building food systems that don’t require human suffering to function.
The problem isn’t border policy gridlock. The problem is that we’ve normalized exploitation as the cost of doing business. And that’s the part this article, and our entire national conversation, still refuses to name.
Yes, " treat workers like human beings". Agree totally. Need to figure out WHIICH agri-biz is bad, as know for a fact they are not all the same. Regions vary, sectors vary. Can't deal with the world much until we fix here, so must PINPOINT what to prioritize. Need to know which reps in congress perpetuate the worst
You are analytic, good brain. Am confident you can do better than this stereotype: " “Let agribusiness play fair” is wishful thinking; their business model is built on not playing fair and hinges on exploitation."
I appreciate your thoughtful challenge, Jerry. You’re not wrong to push for specificity. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: exploitation isn’t the exception in American agriculture, it’s the blueprint.
From stolen land to stolen labor, this country was built on exploitation. The colonizers didn’t come here to “play fair” but to extract. Enslaved Africans built the plantations. Indigenous people were displaced and massacred to make room for monoculture. The Bracero Program, sharecropping, prison labor, undocumented labor, each “innovation” in agri-business has rebranded the same foundational idea: maximize yield, minimize rights.
Yes, there are individual farms trying to do better. But the system rewards those who cut corners, dodge regulations, and suppress wages. That’s not a stereotype; it’s an economic structure reinforced by policy, lobbying, and indifference. Agribusiness isn’t broken; it’s working exactly as designed.
I’m all for naming names and holding specific players accountable. But let’s not pretend we’re just dealing with a few bad apples. The entire orchard was planted in stolen soil.
If you are "dead" and therefore can't have a social security number - the employer has to hire you "under the table"....are farmer owners now being forced by the mob boss to be part of a "criminal gang"? And I noticed the brief mention of "hospitality workers" in tRumps comments....hmmm. Does that include grounds keepers at the golf clubs, Mara Lardo maids, tRump tower doormen?
If only we could "do unto them" as they are doing unto us!
The Florida/DeSantis plan to replace immigrant workers with teenagers by lowering the work age requirement threshold made me laugh out loud. Yea, good luck getting chronically online teens who shudder at the thought of rough manual labor out there en el campo to cultivate citrus. Lol.
The two CA reservoirs that released billions of gallons of water because of stupid Trump, are now at 53 and 61 percent of capacity. That wasted water should have been saved for the farmers.
And farmers usually have a long relationship with their current workers, and employ people they know are reliable. Aside from what we owe people who contribute to our country, if it ain't broke, don't mess with it.
"The two CA reservoirs that released billions of gallons of water because of [a person who loves to see his name, even if in a bad way], are now at 53 and 61 percent of capacity. That wasted water should have been saved for the farmers"
Told my farmer mother this after she confessed she'd voted poorly. She was appalled. She never would have voted for [a person who loves to see his name, even if in a bad light} had she known he'd do that.
I suspect that, for employers of undocumented workers, the threat of deportation is better than actual deportations. The former provides a minimal but usable incentive to work without protest. The latter provides a higher level of fear, such that workers leave and farm employers lose their workforce.
Reading this reminded me of Tracie McMillan's book The American Way of Eating. She worked in farm fields (as well as at Walmart & Applebee's) to understand how we approach food in America. She found the farm work incredibly back breaking and exhausting and had a hard time keeping up with the immigrant workers. The migrant workers worked largely without complaint, sent money home and shared, prodigiously with Tracie.
And it goes w/o saying that the workers, supervisors and land owners couldn't believe that a white, fair skinned American was working the fields. *Wanted* to work the fields.
Hotel business, eh? Wonder who that benefits?
Worth commenting - AC has been writing nothing but smart, incisive articles since he's joined the Bulwark. Great to have him writing for them; I learn more about the ins and outs of the immigration issue - political, economic, legal, personal - than just about any other resource (WashPo & NYT still have some 'bangers' on the issue now and again). THANKS!
We’ll all pay the price, but the f*cking as*holes in the Central Valley and the Inland empire voted for this sh*t. I live in CA and can do without their produce for years—I/we will continue growing our own in an expanded garden. Vegetables, citrus, even pomegranates—we’ve got our own. Votes and elections have consequences. Suck it !
If only the MAGA mass could hear about these goings on, necessity of skilled farm labor, MAGArs would flip out. Brown people getting to stay because they are needed. Then you have the construction trades, food processing, restaurant workers, service jobs, manual labor, etc. Trump’s& MAGA’s hypocrisy from day 1
So as long as immigrants remain in servile occupations that pay poverty wages, they can stay, but if they try to go to college and get all uppity then they get snatched off the street by masked goons and put on a plane to a torture dungeon? Got it.
These stories (and reliable facts) behind the headlines are critical . Thank you Bulwark for keeping reality "real".
These are the heros. Let's see Trump, Musk, Vance or any of the doughie DOGE incels work a day like these people. I know who I respect and thank.
A news update--China today is imposing very high tariffs that will keep all American exports out of China. This is devastating news for American farmers generally and particularly for soybean, corn, wheat and pork producers.
Oh, the Farmers of America, you get what you vote for and what you deserve. No tears from me - they are reserved for those that the Trump regime is oppressing: the people who work your fields and make you money - I will cry for them. NOT YOU.
During the Great Depression farmers let food rot in the field because they could not pay workers to harvest the crop. I remember hearing a song by Woody Guthrie about a plane crash that killed a number of deportees so the current deportation system has been broken for a long time- which is still no excuse for what is going on now. By around 1932 migrant agricultural labor was largely composed of internal migrants fleeing the dust bowl and lack of jobs where they were living. My family left Oklahoma to pick cotton in Texas when that work was available. After December 7, 1941 war work became available and it was our salvation.
People today have no idea what tough times are really like, the T. Rump criminal enterprise is doing its best to educate through experience going forward. Yay.
I, for one, am done handing out fire extinguishers to people throwing gas. So let’s talk about what this article isn’t saying:
1. Trump’s Immigration Policy Is Not a Bug; It’s a Feature
The “oh, maybe we’ll carve out exemptions for farmers” line is not policy nuance; it’s a shakedown. Trump’s trying to run immigration like a mafia don handing out neighborhood passes: “Nice citrus yield you got there, shame if ICE showed up tomorrow.” This isn’t governance. It’s extortion wrapped in jingoism.
2. American Agriculture Has Been Addicted to Exploitation Since Day One
We built our ag system on the backs of enslaved people. Then came the Bracero Program, indentured servitude with a press release. Now, we have undocumented labor that we simultaneously rely on and criminalize. The American food system doesn’t work without exploitation; it’s not broken; it’s designed this way.
3. Farmers Are Not Helpless Victims
Yes, tariffs and deportations are hurting farmers. Yes, Trump’s economic idiocy is slamming them. But let’s not forget who overwhelmingly voted for him twice. The same folks screaming now about losing workers and market access? They were cheering when Trump promised to build a wall and slap tariffs on China like it was a 4-H ribbon. You made your bed under an American flag quilt woven with nationalism and supply chain ignorance. Now you're shocked it’s itchy?
4. Let’s Talk About “Family Farms”
There’s this pastoral fantasy that American farming is wholesome, small-scale, and run by salt-of-the-earth types who want to feed the world. In reality, over 96% of farms are still “family-owned,” but that includes massive corporate-style operations. We’re talking about tens of thousands of acres, huge labor forces, and industrial infrastructure. The "family" is a board of directors, not Ma and Pa with a hoe.
5. The Article Never Utters the Phrase “Labor Rights”
Do you want to stop exploitation? Then, you legalize undocumented workers, give them the same protections as everyone else, and enforce labor laws. Instead, we keep pitting undocumented workers against H-2A guest workers like they’re gladiators in some dystopian economy while agribusiness licks its lips.
The real kicker? Nobody's asking why we’ve created an ag system that depends on poverty to function. Not one whisper about structural change, redistribution, climate-resilient local food systems, or ending our addiction to cheap human labor.
So, no, this article doesn’t go far enough. It tiptoes politely around a fascist immigration regime while whispering "but the oranges!" into a fan.
Ah yes, I’ve heard that hymn, first at funerals then went looking for the lyrics. Doesn’t exactly match my theology but includes some great imagery. And those two questions: “whom shall I send?” …answered by the question “is it I?” At the heart of everything right there. What can I do? Am I the one god/the universe/my brother or sister needs for this situation? Very focusing when thinking about my role in the world, my connection to god & others.
And I love a polka! Polish style from my Cleveland years, Mexican in the southwest, and the wonderful variation here on the O’odham Nation in AZ - everybody waila! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_pYFNacFUng
Still Jerry's wife writing--Should add that almost all of our Hispanic immigrants came to work in the meat and poultry processing plants, not farms, so ours had the advantage of unions. Their children went to the Catholic colleges and met and married Anglos there, in addition to people met in their high schools. Those who did work on neighbors' farms had tried the southwest first, including southern California (bracero-central?), and didn't like it there, so came where we were.
I did data analysis and mapping when out of college. The big dividing line in California pre-1950s was Bay area and northward, things not perfect, but more decent north, while southward were some very bad counties (can't remember, maybe Tuolumne was really bad for awhile?). If you go into the county histories, you see stories of ex-confederates in South Calif. burning newspaper offices (brave editors, I imagined, who editorialized against the brutality and greed brought in?).
Had a roommate in grad school who was Mexicana, very good person overall, exceptionally smart, felt so sad on learning she'd died. She spoke of the difference between Mexicanas and Chicanas, some fight over something she had trouble explaining and I had trouble comprehending. Her family brought her in when she was 5, went from Texas (ag work?) to LA (factory work?), maybe they were at Compton or Fremont, can't remember. She said they were saved from poverty by the Catholic schools, so she was very devout. She was worried about a younger sibling as gangs back home were getting bolder.
She'd had a grandmother who was kidnapped into "marriage", not voluntary, rape as consummation instead of a church service. The grandmother was thus very unhappily married, but the priests stopped that "courting custom" once they learned of it. The women were, thus, VERY grateful for the church, even if the men denied wives by kidnapping were not.
The roommate was pro-education, getting her PhD in that. The liberals on the faculty had let us in, but the conservatives were VERY angry ANY women were there. Didn't matter whether we were farmer, Mexicana, daughter of a biz mogul. Color or class or family story did not matter. Gender did. The conservatives would make sure it took you twice or three times as long to graduate, by making you redo your dissertation over and over and over. Yet, they let the guys they favored "skate" through. The ones who asked good questions? Not so much.
Yes, you are very angry. In anger, we stereotype and lash out. We all do it at times.
The Ma and Pas in the upper midwest did NOT magically evaporate, they had to incorporate to compete, eventually had to sell their cows as town people decided almond milk beat farmer-owned Bordens. I went to the city, for college, a few years after my year of farm child starvation and resolved never to go back except for visits.
Some Pres., was it Carter? He arranged things to be better with his big grain deal? Ruined now by T? Things were better after that, but I was in love with cities by then.
My farmer relatives MARRIED ex-immigrants, so we have Hispanic and Asian names, some are teachers now. Lots of their immigrants settled in the upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest (when the worst parts of the South could be outvoted in Congress so staying was permitted). They did do that, became legal in SOME STATES NOT OTHERS, because, as migrant workers, they'd learned where the good schools were, went there, where the hating people were, stayed away from them.
If you went to twenty countries, you had a chance to marry outside your group, or, if not, talk to the people who did. What did you learn, that was not full of vitriol? Thinking about that might help resolve your anger.
Jerry, I appreciate your story, and I hear the pain and complexity. Truly. A cattle rancher raised me; I’ve broken bread with small farmers in the Midwest and farm families in the fields of Romania, Central America, and Botswana. I’ve sat with call center agents in Manila and warehouse workers in the UK, and I’ve seen firsthand how people carry both pride and pain across generations. That tension is real.
But naming systemic exploitation isn’t vitriol; it’s clarity. Anger isn’t the enemy here. Injustice is. And honestly, I trust anger that comes from a love of people more than comfort that protects institutions.
You’re right that Ma and Pa didn’t magically evaporate. They were ground up in the same machinery they thought they could trust. That’s the point. A system that feeds corporate consolidation, strips community ownership, and replaces human labor with cost efficiencies will exploit everyone eventually, white, brown, rural, urban. That’s not a stereotype. That’s the trajectory of unregulated capitalism.
I don’t hate farmers. I hate the systems that chew through them. And if we want something better for farmers, immigrants, and workers, we have to start by being honest about what we built and who it leaves behind.
That’s not lashing out. That’s fighting for a future worth staying for.
On a side note: Tone policing is the favorite tool of the comfortable. It derails valid critique by focusing on how it’s said, not what’s being said. It turns righteous anger into a character flaw and demands civility from the oppressed while ignoring the violence of the status quo.
good explanation, thanks!
I agree with nearly every point you make here. BUT I think Adrian did more than tiptoe - please reread the part on UFW leader Antonio De Loera-Brust, for e.g.
Of course we shouldn't create a 21st Century Bracero program at the expense of long-time resident workers. Some current workers would jump at joining a well-run guest worker system (our wacky border policies broke that option decades ago, making it too risky to go back & forth seasonally, thus incentivizing staying north without permission); others would prefer paths to permanent residency or citizenship - why not all options? NOT pitted against each other to create gridlock, but to improve the dignity, predictability & earning potential for workers and farmers alike (even for big agri-biz if they'll play fairly & not just lobby for their own narrow interests).
Since before Woody Guthrie sang Deportee, we've been dodging these issues. "Is this the best way...?" hell no, Woody. We haven't even started on the problem
Excellent , J AZ, you said "why not all options? NOT pitted against each other to create gridlock, but to improve the dignity, predictability & earning potential for workers and farmers alike" Yes! (Like your choice in music.)
Jerry & Jerry's wife - thank you both for sharing so many of your personal experiences & backgrounds. I expect I'd enjoy sitting down with you two & This Woman Votes - I really think we agree on a lot! We have different backgrounds and we come across differently. For sure, typing is NOT my best way to express myself, I'm much more charming in person, LOL! 😊
Over my 70+ years I've always benefitted from music. In my worst, loneliest days, songs carry me. In my (many more!) good days, they ring out the joy around me. On my best days I sing & dance with my loved ones!
Paz, amigos y amigas
From Jerry's wife-- Thinking the same way--things that got me through hard times when younger were Jerry making me laugh and also music. Loved Polish and Mexican polka, certain songs at church, once I decided to go back, made me cry, as they dealt so well with pain.
You've picked some beauties, Guthrie, etc, so maybe you'll like this too. It's call-and-answer in style, people at youtube say different variations helped them through cancer and other traumas. I'm not as religious as 20 years ago, but it still moves me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcxOkht8w7c
ONE OF THE CALLS:
I, the Lord of snow and rain,
I have borne my people's pain.
I have wept for love of them. They turn away.
I will break their hearts of stone, Give them hearts for love alone.
....
ANSWER
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord,
if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.
(From Isaiah, Put to music in 1981 by Dan Schutte, a St Louis Jesuit. Sung at many college campuses, above link from 14 years ago.)
I appreciate your points, and you're right that Adrian did more than some of them. But the framing still plays it safe. As someone who’s lived and worked in 22 countries on various work visas, white collar, in the BPO space, I can tell you that even those systems offer minimal protection. You're disposable with a polite smile and an airport code. Now imagine that same precarity, but in a lettuce field, without paperwork, and with ICE breathing down your neck.
I get that some folks would choose a well-run guest worker program. But that’s fantasy until we stop treating labor like a commodity and treat workers like human beings. “Let agribusiness play fair” is wishful thinking; their business model is built on not playing fair and hinges on exploitation. Dignity and predictability won’t come from tweaking guest labor pipelines. It’ll come from legalizing workers, enforcing labor rights, and building food systems that don’t require human suffering to function.
The problem isn’t border policy gridlock. The problem is that we’ve normalized exploitation as the cost of doing business. And that’s the part this article, and our entire national conversation, still refuses to name.
Yes, " treat workers like human beings". Agree totally. Need to figure out WHIICH agri-biz is bad, as know for a fact they are not all the same. Regions vary, sectors vary. Can't deal with the world much until we fix here, so must PINPOINT what to prioritize. Need to know which reps in congress perpetuate the worst
You are analytic, good brain. Am confident you can do better than this stereotype: " “Let agribusiness play fair” is wishful thinking; their business model is built on not playing fair and hinges on exploitation."
I appreciate your thoughtful challenge, Jerry. You’re not wrong to push for specificity. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: exploitation isn’t the exception in American agriculture, it’s the blueprint.
From stolen land to stolen labor, this country was built on exploitation. The colonizers didn’t come here to “play fair” but to extract. Enslaved Africans built the plantations. Indigenous people were displaced and massacred to make room for monoculture. The Bracero Program, sharecropping, prison labor, undocumented labor, each “innovation” in agri-business has rebranded the same foundational idea: maximize yield, minimize rights.
Yes, there are individual farms trying to do better. But the system rewards those who cut corners, dodge regulations, and suppress wages. That’s not a stereotype; it’s an economic structure reinforced by policy, lobbying, and indifference. Agribusiness isn’t broken; it’s working exactly as designed.
I’m all for naming names and holding specific players accountable. But let’s not pretend we’re just dealing with a few bad apples. The entire orchard was planted in stolen soil.
Let’s fix it from the roots up.
If you are "dead" and therefore can't have a social security number - the employer has to hire you "under the table"....are farmer owners now being forced by the mob boss to be part of a "criminal gang"? And I noticed the brief mention of "hospitality workers" in tRumps comments....hmmm. Does that include grounds keepers at the golf clubs, Mara Lardo maids, tRump tower doormen?
If only we could "do unto them" as they are doing unto us!
The Florida/DeSantis plan to replace immigrant workers with teenagers by lowering the work age requirement threshold made me laugh out loud. Yea, good luck getting chronically online teens who shudder at the thought of rough manual labor out there en el campo to cultivate citrus. Lol.
The two CA reservoirs that released billions of gallons of water because of stupid Trump, are now at 53 and 61 percent of capacity. That wasted water should have been saved for the farmers.
And farmers usually have a long relationship with their current workers, and employ people they know are reliable. Aside from what we owe people who contribute to our country, if it ain't broke, don't mess with it.
"The two CA reservoirs that released billions of gallons of water because of [a person who loves to see his name, even if in a bad way], are now at 53 and 61 percent of capacity. That wasted water should have been saved for the farmers"
Told my farmer mother this after she confessed she'd voted poorly. She was appalled. She never would have voted for [a person who loves to see his name, even if in a bad light} had she known he'd do that.