Immigration Crackdown: 'Silent raids' and E-Verify immigration enforcement are destroying US farms

OpEd by Daniel Altschuler, Copeland Fellow at Amherst College, has written extensively on immigration politics.

'Silent raids' and E-Verify immigration enforcement are destroying US farms - CSMonitor.com: "Enforcement-only immigration policies will further devastate immigrant communities, ravage labor-intensive agriculture, and take away countless jobs beyond the farm sector. If elected officials want US fruit and vegetable farms to survive, they need to implement smarter immigration reform. ...

The truth is that, until Congress offers existing workers a legal path to remain and employers a legal means to hire them, increasing enforcement creates more problems than it solves....

Still, the growers’ and farmworkers’ positions are not irreconcilable. In fact, their advocates have been joined at the hip in lobbying efforts since 2003, when they forged a bipartisan compromise bill, which garnered a remarkable 63 Senate co-sponsors, called AgJobs (The Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act). AgJobs would expand H-2A, improve worker protections, and offer legalization for farmworkers already here."