Immigrants get the job done in dairy

The advent of the second administration of 47th US President Donald Trump is today, which is kind of ironic as it is also Martin Luther King Jr Day in the US. I will not watch it, but on the other hand, I’m a bit more sanguine than I was the last time he was elected. We have already seen a signal of a more mature executive this time, where Trump’s negotiators and Biden’s crew worked together to sort out the Israel-Gaza conflict. That shows a good grace on the part of both administrations, and hopefully people have learned from the last time they were in government.

So, I suspect the idea of tariffs may be a bit different to what was on the election campaign, or at least I hope so. Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, seems a very sensible person and they may discover that the issue of immigration may be sorted more wisely through cooperation, rather than just blanket tariffs and removing people working and living in the US, back to Mexico and Latin America.

As we know dairy is a diverse, international business, with many of its American employees being from the countries that Trump would deport them to. A report from the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) reveals that immigrant workers account for 51 per cent of all dairy labour in the US. Moreover, dairies that employ immigrant labourers produce a staggering 79 per cent of the US milk supply, according to Dairy Herd Management.

These folks are not eligible for the seasonal workers permits, and if the US dairy industry were to lose its foreign-born workforce, it would likely result in a doubling of retail milk prices and inflict economic losses exceeding US$32 billion on the US economy as a whole, the article says.

This makes for sobering reading, and more of this needs to be said to the incoming administration. As the song from Hamilton goes, immigrants get the job done.

 

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