Orlando, Florida – Fruit and vegetable growers are joining with farm workers to raise the alarm about a lack of pickers for Florida’s crucial crops, a dearth blamed on increased security along the border with Mexico and other measures deemed “anti-immigrant” by Hispanic activists.
Recent raids carried out by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and new regulations that local authorities are seeking to implement to punish rental property owners and businessmen who rent to or employ undocumented immigrants have caused a “flight” of labor to other regions, activists say.
“The pressure on undocumented people as a result of the marches in favor of immigration reform has been felt very strongly among agricultural workers in Florida, who due to the raids and measures to punish them are being forced to go to other areas where they are better treated,” Tirso Moreno, the coordinator of the Farm Workers Association of Florida, told EFE.
He said that the fact that the majority of the farm workers in Florida are undocumented has put them in a “more vulnerable situation.”
According to FWAF estimates, there are more than 300,000 agricultural workers in Florida, most of them Hispanics, of which more than 80 percent are undocumented.
“Many cities like Avon Park have pending (the task of) approving regulations to make life even more difficult for the undocumented and that is chasing them” from the area, he said.
Authorities in Avon Park, an agricultural community southeast of Tampa, have proposed fining the owners of properties they rent to undocumented people and denying permits to businesses that hire them.
Moreno said that this situation also affects growers in the area, who have seen the chances diminish of finding workers to help out during the harvests.
“The situation in the area has come to the point where many producers are not finding ‘pickers’ for their harvests and are losing them (i.e. the harvests),” the activist said.
Ray Gilmer, the spokesman for the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, acknowledged that there was a lack of workers in the fields and warned that it was a problem that could worsen by the autumn.
“We have received information that on several orange and tomato farms there was a scarcity of workers that kept the harvests from being gathered in the fields on time and it’s worrying because it’s a sign that for next season, which starts in the fall, Florida producers will have an even more difficult time finding field workers,” he told EFE.
Gilmer expressed his concern that the problem would worsen if immigration reform that includes temporary worker permits is not approved.
“If Congress approves a law that … (does not) include a temporary worker program, we know that Florida producers will see themselves affected by a lack of farm workers,” he added.
The citrus industry, which generates $9 billion annually for the Florida economy, has been one of the sectors most affected by the lack of workers, both organizations agree.
