Farmers Struggle to Cope with Alabama Immigration Laws

NBC’s Rock Center recently reported on how Alabama’s new immigration law is affecting farmers in the region, where stricter enforcement measures for undocumented workers have apparently left agricultural communities struggling to find workers. As cucumber farmer Jerry Danford explained to correspondent Kate Snow, the new rules have drained the seasonal labor pool and made it difficult for Alabama producers to compete with neighboring states. “Since the bill was signed into law, Danford has watched many of the immigrant workers he relied on leave. He worries that none of them will return for the spring harvest, when a provision requiring that employers check the immigration status of workers will be in effect,” reports Snow.

Although Alabama Governor Robert Bentley (R) defended the law as necessary to uphold federal standards and secure jobs for Americans, the domestic workers interviewed by Snow preferred other kinds of work over field jobs, which typically pay $10 per hour. Any higher, said Danford, and the pickle company “won’t buy from you then. They’d turn to suppliers in other states where labor is cheaper— states that allow undocumented immigrants to continue working under the radar.”

“Americans lose sight about how we get our pickles in a pickle jar in a grocery
store,” opined the farmer, who is considering more row crops harvested by
machine next season. “People are not informed about what it takes to do these
special crops. Now a lot of people aren’t interested. The lawmakers that passed
this law, they didn’t come out here and interview people. If they had done their
homework, they would have realized.” See Rock Center, November 14, 2011.