BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – What impact could potential mass deportations have in Vermont? A large swath of our tourism and agricultural economy relies on immigrant labor, including some undocumented workers.
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to deport potentially millions of undocumented migrants over security concerns.
“I will launch the largest deportation program in American history,” he said.
We don’t know what that would look like, what it would cost or how it would work.
“We want people to get in legally to fill the jobs while not depressing the labor of other concerned citizens in other sectors of the economy,” said Joshua Bechhoefer, a Vermont GOP committeeman.
It’s estimated that 1,000 undocumented migrants work on Vermont dairy farms and more than 400 people have temporary visas to work on vegetable farms and in orchards. That’s a $1 billion impact.
WCAX News has shown you undocumented migrants working on area farms filling critical jobs that would otherwise remain vacant, and sending their earnings home.
“About 20 percent of our food passes through the hands of guest workers in this country. All of our food, it’s impactful in Vermont, across the region and across the country,” said Roger Allbee, who served as Vermont agriculture secretary under Gov. Jim Douglas.
Allbee says attempts to expand temporary work visas to undocumented workers have fallen short.
“It’s a very entrenched issue on both sides, unfortunately,” he said.
As costs on dairy farms rise and commodity prices fall, hundreds of dairy farms have closed over the last decade, many of them small family operations.
For years, immigration reform in Congress has remained elusive.
Experts worry mass deportations would have a chilling effect on people with temporary visas.
“Just as much as the economics, this will affect families,” said Leslie Holman, an immigration attorney who previously served as the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
With Republicans soon to hold the presidency, Senate and likely the House, she is concerned about Vermont’s agricultural economy and families coming across the border.
“This is a population not that is criminal or something we should be afraid of, but also understanding that this is critical for our economic survival,” Holman said.
But there are still lots of questions about how the incoming policy would work, whether immigration officials would visit farms and arrest people, or whether the migrants’ home countries’ would even accept them.