The struggling dairy industry in New York is under economic threat due to current immigration policies in the US, according to Mary Jo Dudley, a farmworker program director at Cornell University. Dudley claims that the gridlock in Washington over the issue of immigration reform is causing extra stressors on dairy farmers in New York. They are already paying more to produce milk than the price they can charge for it, which is controlled by the federal government.
There are temporary guest worker US visas for immigrants working on dairy farms, unlike many other workers in the agricultural industry. Dudley says that a way to document immigrant workers or provide them with a pathway to US citizenship would a better direction to take than the current stalemate where enforcement rather than solutions is the focus.
Dudley made the observations in the wake of an undocumented immigrant worker having recently been arrested on a dairy farm in New York, an incident that has resulted in controversy. The arrested 31-year-old, Marcial de Leon Aguilar was previously convicted of reckless aggravated assault by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The ICE also alluded to the fact Aguilar had unlawfully re-entered the U.S on three separate occasions following his deportation.
Dudley says anecdotal reports about the arrest of farmworkers in New York have increased since the beginning of the Trump administration in January 2017. Agricultural immigrant workers, both document and undocumented, are offered workshops about encountering federal immigration authorities by the Cornell farm worker program.