‘They’re scared’: immigration fears exacerbate migrant farmworker shortage

The pickers range in age from 21 to 65, and all of them are Mexican. As in the rest of the country, growers in heavily agricultural northern Michigan rely overwhelmingly on migrant laborers to work the fields and orchards. According to the farm owners, the workers either came from Mexico on temporary H2A visas or they have paperwork showing they are in the U.S. legally.Farmers from Georgia to California say they have a problem: not enough workers to harvest their crops.It's estimated anywhere from half to three-quarters of farm workers are in this country illegally, and some growers say that President Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric has made a chronic worker shortage even worse.Johnson Farms' owner, Dean Johnson, 67, says it's just about impossible to find Americans to do this work. "We've tried. We really have," he says. "Sometimes people come out on a day like today and they'll pick one box, and then they're gone. They just don't want to do it.""It's really sad," adds Johnson's daughter, Heatherlyn Johnson Reamer, 44, who manages the farm. "They'll come, they'll check it out, and usually they're gone within a day or two."What's behind the farmworker shortage?For one, a stronger U.S. economy that's driving many seasonal workers into better-paying, year-round work, like construction."There's a huge need in the trades," Reamer says, "especially when we have natural disasters like we've seen these last few years with the hurricanes and everything. And we've actually lost workers who said, 'Hey, I got a job. I'm gonna go work for this construction company in Florida.' And they would leave."Another factor: The children of migrants are upwardly mobile, and are leaving the fields behind. Many are going to college and finding better work opportunities in professions outside agriculture.Add to that: Trump's crackdown on immigration, which many growers complain is crimping their labor supply. "As we all know, there's a pretty good number of workers in this country illegally," Dean Johnson says. "They're scared. Those people don't want to travel anymore. They're in Florida and Texas. They won't come up from Mexico.""There wouldn't be food"