Georgia farmers have mixed feelings about Trump's immigration proposals

ATLANTA — Georgia farmers have had a rough go for the past few years.

They were just recovering from 2018′s Hurricane Michael when Hurricane Helene hit in September, damaging thousands of acres of crops throughout the state. That’s on top of financial devastation left in the storm’s path, which can severely stress their mental health.

“Fertilizer, fuel, labor, anything that’s farm related — all of our inputs are way up. I mean, through the roof,” said Josh Simpson, who farms cotton, hay, peanuts and cattle in Brooks County, just west of Valdosta on the Georgia-Florida line.

Losing a large portion of their workforce, for farmers such as Simpson, would be the sour cherry on top of an already hard-to-chew cake. But that’s the reality many could be facing if President-elect Donald Trump’s administration begins mass deportation of immigrants living in the country without permission.

Farmers will still be reeling from the storm devastation when Trump takes office in less than a month. He has pledged that deportations will be at the top his agenda.

Georgia farmers live in areas that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. For some, his proposed immigration policies bring conflict to their politics. On one hand, they support the rule of law and want a fair system of entry. On the other, they’re keenly aware of how challenging farm work is and how few native-born Americans want to do it.

“Managing labor on a farm is very difficult. Most farmers are just looking for anybody who is willing and able,” said Sam Martin, a farmer in the Dixie community near Quitman who grows winter vegetables and raises beef cattle. “Illegal immigrants don’t have a lot of options, and so they are more willing to do harder work that doesn’t pay real well.”

The challenge

Finding farmworkers can feel futile.

Agriculture is t he No. 1 industry in Georgia, and most farmers would prefer to use workers who are American citizens. The challenge, they say, is that domestic laborers are more expensive and less interested in farming work. So they turn elsewhere.

“Latinos, at large, are doing, right now, the jobs that many would not want to do,” said Adelina Nicholls, the executive director of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights.

Martin believes that’s because U.S. residents can qualify for unemployment benefits and the federal government has made it too easy to “pretend” to look for work.

“This type of work has never been high paying, and it’s always been hard,” he said. “It’s much easier to go fill out some paperwork and sit on the porch all day and collect a check. Most people will just choose that option.”

However, in practice, the inverse is often true: It’s hard to receive unemployment benefits. Many don’t qualify because their income isn’t high enough, and some exhaust their payments after 14 to 26 weeks have passed. The maximum amount Georgia permits per week is difficult to live on for an extended period of time.

Farm work is also seasonal, and many U.S. residents would likely choose a consistent job throughout the year rather than temporary outdoor work involving heavy labor.

That’s where migrant labor comes in, and Martin and Simpson have taken different approaches.

Simpson said he doesn’t ask the immigration status of his workers. “At one point, anybody that was breathing, that had a heartbeat, that had any interest in farming, we hired,” he said.

Martin obtains workers through the federal H-2A program, which allows U.S. employers to bring in foreign nationals to supply temporary agricultural work. He said the program has solved a tremendous problem: It assures him a labor force.

“When I have to harvest vegetables, I can’t wait. I can’t be searching for labor. We have to do it now,” he said.

Under the federal program, he’s responsible for providing immigrant workers a wage set by the government — which can be nearly twice the minimum wage — and a contract for a certain number of hours, and the only way they can be in the country legally is to work for Martin. “We’re tied to each other through that contract,” he said.

The downside, he said, is that the program is expensive and cumbersome.

“Not only is the hourly wage very high, there are also a lot of fees involved to get the process done, on top of providing housing and travel to and from Mexico,” he said.

In January, Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper asked the state’s congressional delegation to freeze a wage hike for farmworkers that had risen to $14.68 he said would hurt both farmers and consumers.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff had unsuccessfully sought to temporarily freeze the H-2A minimum wage to 2022 levels last year, citing a “sudden and massive increase in costs.”

But for now, H-2A workers beat the alternative, Martin said.

“Prior to me using H-2A, when I used domestic labor, those guys could be here today, gone tomorrow,” Martin said. “You may have a crew harvesting squash on Monday, and your crew may not show up the following day.”

How politics play in

Both farmers understand the value of migrant labor but see the issue of illegal immigration separately.

Simpson said he doesn’t have a problem with deporting migrants who have been found guilty of committing crimes, but he doesn’t see a reason to remove the others.

“The ones that are acting up, that are up to no good, I am fine shipping them back tomorrow. But, I mean, there’s good people in all walks of life,” he said. “They’re giving back to society, too.”

But Martin said allowing migrants who are in the country illegally to stay in the United States is unfair to others.

“If you come here illegally, and you’re allowed to stay, you’re jumping ahead of every honest person who tried to do it the right way,” he said. “We can’t support illegal immigration in any way because it just encourages more illegal activity.”

Nicholls, with the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, said farmers want to skirt immigration laws while supporting Trump’s deportation plans. That’s hypocritical, she said.

“With one hand you are hiring agricultural workers, with or without documents. On the other hand, you’re playing politics, and you hide. You’re not defending your own people that are farming for your life,” she said.

Migrant workers are also often underpaid, Nicholls said, but because some are not living in the country legally, they are afraid to take their claims to court. On top of that, many migrant families cannot afford a lawyer to fight these claims anyway.

“It is a mess in terms of abuses,” Nicholls said. “I think it’s a moral obligation for the farmers to stand up and push back” against Trump’s policies.

Simpson and Martin agree on one thing — they are fed up with current immigration and agricultural policy under Democratic President Joe Biden.

“This administration that we’ve had the past four years, I felt like we’ve had less support than we ever had at any time that I’ve been farming,” said Simpson, who has been farming since 2005.

Varying measures can challenge that claim. For example, Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided loans and financial assistance to farmers. And net income for farmers grew at a higher rate under Biden than Trump, according to Politico.

The U.S. government did pay farmers $28 billion during Trump’s time in office, but it was to compensate for the farmers harmed by his trade war with China.

Some farmers supported Trump because they thought he would push back against environmentally conscious policies they believe would be hard to execute.

Harper, the state agriculture commissioner, urged Biden to swiftly sign into law a temporary funding bill Congress approved this past weekend that, among other things, gave farmers affected by recent natural disasters relief. Democrats unanimously supported it, but there were 34 Republicans, including Georgia U.S. Reps. Andrew Clyde and Rich McCormick, who voted against the bill. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp had pushed federal lawmakers to pass a package that would provide urgently needed disaster aid.

Simpson will be watching the next four years closely in regard to how Trump’s administration affects his business.

“I really can’t tell you off hand, but all I can say is that it can’t be much worse than what we’ve had right now,” he said.