Farm Bureau Calls For Legal Amnesty, End to Racial
Profiling For Migrant Farm Workers
Glenmont, N.Y. New York
ers must recognize and accept
the realities of present-day labor
economics on the farm, and work
to improve them, say officials at
New York Farm Bureau.
“Many of our farms could not
stay in business without the valu
able contributions of migrant
workers, most of whom travel
regularly from Mexico, Guate
mala, and Jamaica,” says John
Lincoln, president of New York
Farm Bureau.
A recent “farmworker advoca
cy day” at the state capitol was
set against a backdrop of Farm
Bureau’s long history of advoca
cy for migrant workers, includ
ing active lobbying for improved
housing, health care, and bi-lin
gual “whistle-blower” hotlines by
which workers can report unsafe
or illegal working conditions.
“Full-time residents of the
state rarely want to work in New
York’s relatively short harvest
season, which offers only tempo
rary employment,” says Lincoln.
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“So New York farmers have to
compete to attract a seasonal
work force by offering a package
of incentives that includes im
proved housing and high farm
wages.”
Racial profiling
Most troublesome now for
New York’s migrant farm work
ers are racial profiling and zeal
ous pursuit of workers by the Im
migration and Naturalization
Service (INS), says Julie Suarez,
New York Farm Bureau’s senior
associate director of public poli
cy.
“The INS routinely sets up
blockades around grocery stores
and laundromats in rural New
York and detains only Hispanic
looking customers as they try to
leave. This is nothing more than
racial profiling. Whether it oc
curs in New York City or in
western New York, it is morally
indefensible. It ends up hurting
the workers, hurting farmers,
and hurting rural New York’s
economy.”
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“We need the enforcement
dogs called off,” says Brandon
Mallory, founder and director of
Agri-Placement Services, Syra
cuse, N.Y., and a specialist in
placing migrant workers on
farms.
Addressing a recent Farm Bu
reau conference, Mallory esti
mated that 85 percent of the
farm workers in the Finger Lakes
region are Hispanic migrantsa
New York Requires Location On Milk Labels
ALBANY, N.Y. The New
York Assembly recently passed
legislation sponsored by Agricul
ture Committee Chairman Bill
Magee requiring the placement
of the name of the city, village or
hamlet and zip code upon the
packages of all milk processed
and packaged in the state.
“More and more, consumers
are saying that they want to buy
locally grown, raised and pro
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huge change from a decade ago
and that “perhaps half of them
are not here legally.
“If New York’s farmers are to
retain what many have come to
see as a vitally important pool of
dependable labor, New York
needs to get behind a move to le
gitimize the current work force,”
added Mallory.
While Farm Bureau supports
Mallory’s call for “legitimiza
cessed agricultural products, so
we should be doing everything
we can to assist them in that ef
fort,” Magee said. “All this legis
lation does is make it easier for a
New York consumer to identify
if, in fact, the milk they are pur
chasing was processed by a New
York company.”
This legislation came about
from a personal experience
Magee had while shopping. He
picked up a gallon of milk in a
grocery store near his home only
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tion,” says Suarez, “It needs to
be pointed out that the typical
Farm Bureau-member farmer
does not knowingly hire illegal
workers.
They arrive with seemingly
valid documentation and there is
only just so far you can go in
checking before you cross the
threshold into illegal racial dis
crimination.”
to discover that there was no
simple way to tell if the milk had
been processed by a New York
processor.
Magee noted that he is also
working on similar legislation
that would require retailers to
display the country of origin on
all meat and veal products as
well as all vegetables and pro
duce with, once again, one of the
goals being to raise consumer
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