If Americans Want a White Nation Then By God They Will Pay For It
By 
Over the years, Peter and his family have found ways to manage the declining value of milk. They’ve built fences out of recycled oil pipes, used brewers waste for cow feed, rented fields to grow their own alfalfa. They hedge the price of milk in futures markets and purchase revenue insurance. But the biggest cost that they can control is the cost of labor. And the productivity of his dairy — and of almost every successful dairy in America — now depends overwhelmingly on immigrants.
Peter refused to let me write about his dairy or his employees until I promised that I would not use the full legal name of anyone I met there, including him. A growing number of Idaho’s elected officials want to revoke the operating license of any business caught employing undocumented workers. Such bills, if they pass, could ruin farmers like Peter and kneecap the state’s economy: The Idaho Dairymen’s Association estimates that 89 percent of the state’s on-site dairy workers are foreign-born. Nationally the number may be closer to 51 percent, according to a survey published in 2015 by Texas A&M. And research by academics in New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Vermont suggests that the majority of these immigrants are undocumented.After November’s elections, a reckoning for the dairy industry could quickly become a national concern. At the Republican National Convention in July, attendees waved signs demanding “mass deportation now!” — signaling their enthusiasm for former President Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of undocumented residents if voters return him to the White House. His longtime adviser on immigration, Stephen Miller, told The Times that a second Trump administration would conduct large-scale workplace raids and sweeps of public places. Democrats, for their part, have met these threats with relative silence, a sign of the public’s growing intolerance for migrants: At the Democratic convention in August, a panel discussion about the future of comprehensive immigration reform drew fewer than two dozen people. The party that once championed the idea of granting permanent legal status to undocumented minors now speaks more often of reducing applications for asylum.
Peter himself does not actually know Rosa’s immigration status. He estimates that more than 90 percent of his employees were born in Mexico, but the documents that these men and women presented when they were hired appeared legitimate. Under current law, Peter is not required to do much more than glance at them. Like the rest of the dozen dairy owners I spoke with in Idaho, he preferred not to question employees too closely about their immigration status. A Social Security number written on a hiring form was enough.
What Peter does know, however, is that without foreign-born workers, his dairy could not stay afloat. Americans are understandably reluctant to perform dirty, dangerous and demanding work — what economists call 3-D jobs — as long as they have better alternatives. Unemployment in southern Idaho has averaged 3.4 percent for a decade; wages for entry-level workers on Peter’s farm are competitive with those for cashiers at fast-food franchises. He can’t pay much more, he insists, and still break even.
As a point of fact, one things that bugs me about the rhetoric around immigration is that people are sort of pro-immigrant often talk about punishing the employer for hiring undocumented workers. See, I don’t think we should stem the flow of immigrants at all. In fact, I think we should vastly increase it. Sure, in an ideal world, this would all be nice and legal with paperwork and all of that. But we don’t live in that world. We live in the one where Donald Trump has a 50/50 chance of being elected next month. Americans have no idea how their beloved low food prices are entirely reliant on undocumented labor. They are quite likely to find this out and if you think bird flu leading to a brief price hike in eggs was an issue, wait for this one.