US (WA): Growers troubled by Trump's impact on foreign labor

In the Yakima Valley, nestled east of the Cascades, the fruit trees are waking up. At the Doornink Fruit Ranch in Wapato, expert hands prune hundreds of acres of cherry, apricot, pear and apple trees.

Phil Doornink represents the fifth generation of his dad’s family to grow tree fruit. He and his wife, Karen worry about the weather, the bills, the fruit. They worry about getting enough workers and paying everyone fairly.

Now they wonder about Donald Trump. Like many farmers in the state, the Doorninks voted for Trump. While Trump didn’t talk about ag policy during his campaign, farmers liked his broad promises to cut federal regulations.

But Trump’s ideas about immigration seem out of touch with the demands of the nation’s agriculture industry. Orchards up and down Central Washington, from Okanogan to Benton County, rely on Latino workers whose documentation status covers the spectrum. Trump’s promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and crack down on immigration broadly, could shake the industry to its core.

Doornink says orchardists are already seeing a shortage of farm workers this year. Those who are here, busy readying orchards for the season, feel anxious amid executive orders and hostile rhetoric on immigration, illegal or otherwise.

“With any new administration, whether it’s Democrats or Republicans, we always get nervous about what’s going to happen in the following years,” he says. But this year is especially tense.

Any “deportation scheme” that targets agricultural workers would devastate the tree fruit industry, says Christian Schlect, president of the Northwest Horticultural Council, which lobbies at the federal level on behalf of growers and shippers in Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

“There’s a lot of labor that’s needed. We don’t find that labor in the domestic pool right now,” Schlect says. “We’re certainly trying to follow what the president is going to do in terms of immigration enforcement.”

source: crosscut.com