TWIN FALLS, Idaho — As the incoming Trump Administration prepares to take office next month, there are a lot of unknowns about how he will make good on campaign promises to deport millions of illegal immigrants.
- If mass roundups of all undocumented workers in Idaho's ag and dairy industries were carried out, it would be devastating to the state economy
- The Idaho Dairymen's Association has been advocating for immigration reform that would allow undocumented workers who pass a background check and pay a fine to remain in the country and work at the jobs they've already been doing.
- They also propose a longer-term H1 Visa for dairy, which would let workers continue to work year-round instead of seasonally
- By securing the southern border, Rick Naerebout is optimistic that immigration reform can be taken up by the incoming congress and administration.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
"We don't have enough domestic workers to fill all the jobs that we need to support our economy of this country,” Rick Naerebout from the Idaho Dairymen’s Association said.
Naerebout told me a story about a major agricultural producer who had 6,000 jobs to fill this year.
"They had 23 domestic applicants for over 6000 jobs — of the 23 applicants that were domestic only 12 resulted in interviews, and of the 12 interviews, two individuals were hired. Neither of the two made it to harvest,” Naerebout said.
Domestic workers are simply not covering all the work in agriculture that needs to be done, and Naerebout has been lobbying for several years for congressional immigration reform.
We will soon find out how serious President-elect Trump is about his campaign promises to deport millions of illegal immigrants.
"But if you start to look at having mass deportations, or an effort to identify every single unauthorized individual in our community and remove them, you would devastate the agricultural industries in our state,” Naerebout said.
Naerebout said he doesn't expect that worst-case scenario, based on previous experience with the first Trump administration.
"Going into his first administration, there was a lot of strong rhetoric during the campaign, and you know, during the first part of his administration,” Naerebout said. “But then we did not see the agricultural workforce targeted, the focus was really on bona fide criminals and trying to remove individuals that we really don’t want to see our communities.”
And as they continue to work for reform that would allow AG the workers they need, Naerebout said that Trump's focus on border security could lead to the reforms that would keep Idaho's dairy industry chugging along.
"Look at the incoming Trump administration, they very much have a focus at getting their arms around what's happening at our southern border,” Naerebout said. “And our hope would be, with some assurances and understanding that the border is being addressed, that that would create space that we could talk about reforms and provide legal pathways so that we can bring workers into support our economy.”
