Undocumented Immigrants on Wisconsin's Dairy Farms

Immigrant Labor is Important to Wisconsin’s Dairy Farmers

I read with interest the views of immigration reform expressed in the Post-Crescent on February 4, 2013 by members of our community. Several different points of view were represented, but I was struck by the fact that none of the writers said anything about the importance of immigrant labor in Wisconsin’s dairy industry.  Immigrant labor is very important in this industry, which would have difficulty surviving without it.  Immigrants account for about 40% of the hired labor on Wisconsin dairy farms according to reports published by the University of Wisconsin’s Program on Agricultural Technology Studies (PATS) in 2009, and the percentage is higher on larger farms. 

In the past, most of the labor on Wisconsin’s dairy farms was performed by family members, but that is no longer the case.  Farms are much bigger now than they used to be, and farm families are smaller.  There are many opportunities for farmers’ children in other occupations.  For all these reasons, much of the labor on dairy farms today is performed by hired labor.  At the same time, native-born workers have not been available to do the work, and therefore, many immigrant workers have been hired.  88.5% of these workers are of Mexican origin, and almost all the rest are from Central America.  The farmers interviewed by the researchers insisted that the immigrant workers were not displacing American citizens.  Rather the situation was that the farmers could not find American citizens who wanted to do the work. One family farmer said, " So, as our last two children entered high school, and I realized that soon I would have no family labor to rely on, we moved our farm to all hired labor.  I have not been able to hire an American citizen since 1997.  I have tried!  The way I see it, if we didn’t have Hispanics to rely on for a workforce, I don’t believe I could continue farming. "

Immigrant Laborers Are Full-Time Permanent Residents of the Communities Where They Live

Dairy farm workers are not seasonal workers because cows must be milked every day.  So the workers are permanent residents of the communities where they live.  Moreover since they are not migrants, they often have families living with them.  The PATS studies report that 63% of the workers are married, and of these 85.5% are living with their spouses in Wisconsin. So, when we speak of immigrant workers on dairy farms in Wisconsin, we are speaking of full time, permanent residents with families, who are an important part of the communities where they live

How many people are we talking about?  According to the PATS studies, there were approximately 12,551 hired workers working on dairy farms in Wisconsin in 2009.  Of these, about 40% or 5316 were immigrants.  The researchers say that they believe these numbers to be conservative because some farmers did not wish to report the presence of workers who had been hired “under the table” and because data were not available for small farms.  How many of the immigrant workers were undocumented?  It is of course difficult to obtain reliable statistics on the number of  undocumented workers, but the studies estimated that approximately 50% of the immigrant workers were undocumented, which would give us 2658 undocumented workers.  If we add to that the members of their families living with them, we can conservatively estimate that undocumented dairy farm workers and their families number perhaps 8000 in Wisconsin.[i]

Immigrant Workers Are Taxpayers and Consumers

These 8000 people pay taxes in our communities. They shop in our stores.  You can see them at the Fox River Mall. How much do they spend?  Well, the average hourly wage for the workers surveyed was $10.06, and the typical worker works 57 hours per week, which gives $573.42 per week. If we subtract approximately 30% for various taxes, that gives us $401.39 of spendable income per worker per week. There are 53 weeks in a year and 2658 undocumented workers. So, they earn about $56.5 million in total. Of course, some of that is sent home to parents in Mexico or Central America, and perhaps a little of it is saved, but we can conservatively estimate that at least $45 million is spent in Wisconsin each year by undocumented dairy farm workers and their families. The local impact of this money is larger than its statewide impact because the money is not spread evenly across the state.  It is concentrated in the communities where the undocumented workers live, including some communities in the Fox Valley.

Are We Stupid Enough To Expel People Who Make Important Contributions To Our Economy?

In short, we can say that as workers, the undocumented are crucial to the dairy industry, which is one of our most important industries, and as consumers, they play a large role in the economies of the communities where they live.  These are facts that we need to consider when we think about changes in the immigration laws.  Some of those who responded to the Post-Crescent’s question said that the undocumented immigrants should be sent back to their home countries.  Are we really stupid enough to expel thousands of people who make a large contribution to our economy?

---

[i] This is not a precise estimate, but it is probably conservative. If we assume that a typical family has 4 members, we get 10,632 people (4 x 2658), but that is probably too high because some families may have two members working on dairy farms. To account for them, I reduced the number by 2658, which gives 7974. I rounded that number up to 8000.