Organic dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger has fought with state officials over the right to sell raw milk from his farm near Loganville in Sauk County. Although regular sales of unpasteurized milk products currently are illegal, a new bill would lift that ban. Kyle McDaniel/Wisconsin State Journal

By Natasha Anderson, Steve Horn, Sarah Karon and Rory Linnane
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Carrying a cooler of raw milk, Wisconsin vegetable farmer Brian Wickert climbs the steps of the state Capitol on a sunny April day. He is a man on a mission: to lobby for legislative support for a bill to legalize sales of unpasteurized milk.

“It’s real simple,” Wickert, a member of the lobbying group Wisconsin Raw Milk Association, says in a later interview. “We want the right to choose the food we eat. Why does the government care whether I want to go and drink raw milk? Am I so stupid that I don’t know the risks?”

For Wickert, this bill is about having the freedom to live without interference from the government. But for health officials in America’s Dairyland, it’s about potentially exposing unsuspecting citizens to disease-causing bacteria. At the crux of this debate is the age-old question: How much should government protect its citizens from possible hazards?

That question took on increased urgency this month after bacteria in raw milk from an unnamed farm sickened at least 16 fourth graders and family members at a Racine County event, resulting in one hospitalization. The June 3 after-school party was designed to celebrate Wisconsin food.

“I got very, very sick,” says Melissa Werner, 40, who drank raw milk at the event with her son, Nathan, 10. Both later suffered from nausea, diarrhea, vomiting and high fever. Werner was ill for two weeks, losing 12 pounds.

“Still, even now, when I eat, I can tell things aren’t 100 percent right,” she says.

Cheryl Mazmanian, a health officer with the Western Racine County Health Department, says while the incident in Raymond illustrates the dangers of raw milk, it violated no state laws.

“It’s not illegal to drink raw milk, it’s not illegal to give it to people, but it is illegal to sell it,” Mazmanian says.

Wisconsin is one of 11 states that prohibit regular sales of raw milk, according to the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, a pro-raw milk group.

Raw milk can contain disease-causing bacteria that the pasteurization process is designed to kill. Wisconsin law allows “incidental” sales of raw milk products to farm employees or visitors who buy on an ad-hoc basis. Those products include buttermilk, kefir, yogurt, cottage cheese, ice cream, butter and cheese.

To get around the law, in some cases, farmers create programs in which consumers become part owners of cows or farms to get a regular supply of raw milk. While some of those arrangements were condoned by state officials for several years, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) in 2008 warned that such arrangements were illegal and began cracking down on raw-milk operations.

In other instances, people ignore the law, creating a type of black market in which consumers and farmers keep their transactions quiet to avoid regulatory scrutiny.

One of the customers is Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, one of the co-sponsors of the bill introduced in May that would legalize raw milk sales. He says he gets milk from different farms but would not specify which ones — a common response among raw milk consumers.

“People don’t want to answer those questions because it jeopardizes your farmer. It’s a screwy system,” Wickert says. “You’ve got people’s lives and livelihoods in the balance.”

The measure co-sponsored by Grothman and Rep. Don Pridemore, R-Hartford, would allow farmers to sell raw milk directly to consumers. Pridemore says he’s open to adding testing requirements to the bill, which it currently lacks.

“My main goal is to get a public hearing to present reasons to make it a better bill,” he says.

But one top official, Dr. Jim Kazmierczak, state public health veterinarian, warns that even daily testing cannot detect all contamination. Cows can shed bacteria intermittently, he says, so a negative test in the morning might not mean milk collected from the same cow in the afternoon is safe.

Last year, a similar bill with more health safeguards was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. At the time, the governor expressed concerns about the safety of unpasteurized milk, which some consumers drink for its perceived health benefits.

Like many of the roughly 15 farmers and consumers who came with Wickert to lobby, Grothman and Pridemore drink raw milk regularly.

“I drank it. I drank a lot of it, and I don’t consider it risky behavior,” Grothman says.

Public health officials disagree. In 2010, raw milk products caused 28 disease outbreaks in the United States that sickened 159 people, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Raw milk has caused seven disease outbreaks in Wisconsin since 1998, including the incident in Raymond, state health officials say. The outbreaks sickened at least 277 people; 28 were hospitalized. Six outbreaks were caused by campylobacter bacteria from cow manure that got into raw milk and raw cheese curds, causing illness but no death.

Many officials, including Mazmanian, are particularly concerned about the possibility of children, who are more vulnerable to infection, consuming raw milk.

“They were told there would be ‘whole farm-fresh raw milk,’ ” she says, referring to the Racine County event. “Now, did they understand it was unpasteurized? I don’t know.”

Werner was aware that the milk at the North Cape Elementary School event was unpasteurized but says she did not fully understand the health risks.

“I’m not opposed to the legalization, I just think there should be some testing and standards in place to ensure this doesn’t happen,” Werner says. “Because I do really worry about younger children not being able to handle being as sick as I was.”

A statement from Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s office says he would support legislation allowing the limited sale of raw milk in Wisconsin, provided certain safety provisions are in place.

“The bill would need to contain the appropriate safeguards to protect public health and the integrity of our state’s signature industry, while giving consumers the opportunity to purchase raw milk directly from farmers,” Walker press secretary Cullen Werwie says.

Ethan, foreground, Elly, and their mother, Becky Sell, visit the store at Vernon Hershberger's organic dairy farm near Loganville in June 2010. Hershberger is among those who believe Wisconsin should allow regular sales of raw milk products. He has defied orders by state officials to stop the sales. Kyle McDaniel/Wisconsin State Journal

The next raw milk state?

The raw milk bill introduced in May leaves out many safety regulations recommended in a 261-page report written by the Raw Milk Policy Working Group. Members include 22 Wisconsin dairy experts with a variety of opinions on raw milk, including academics, public health officials, and representatives of DATCP, dairy and cheese producers and agricultural groups.

The working group was appointed by Rod Nilsestuen, then-secretary of DATCP, to recommend safety regulations in case raw milk sales were legalized in Wisconsin. The group’s report, published Wednesday, calls for detailed regulations on storage, testing and sales of raw milk if they were legalized.

Under the 2011 bill, farmers would be required to post signs indicating they sell unpasteurized milk products, but they would not have to place warning labels on raw milk products or warn customers about the dangers of raw milk, as the previous bill required.

Farmers who milk fewer than 20 cows would not need to have a license or grade A dairy permit to sell raw milk. The current bill also would allow farmers to advertise their raw milk products, something the 2010 bill prohibited.

Scott Rankin, chair of the Department of Food Science at UW-Madison and member of the working group, says the latest bill is not based on science.

“This is shockingly simple,” Rankin says of the bill. “It just omits so much of all the concerns around how you handle any food, let alone raw milk.”

Grothman says he is aware the group drafted recommendations, but did not read or incorporate them into his bill. He believes the working group was biased against raw milk, but credits members for trying to be balanced.

“They did a lot of work and we’re certainly going to look at them,” Grothman says. “There’s going to be a compromise.”

Rankin says he hopes legislators will consider the recommendations and amend the bill accordingly.

“We sat for hours and hours contending with these issues and crafting policy. Ignore it at your own risk,” Rankin says. “If you decide to write this in a vacuum, that’s fine, but this is one where you need to do your homework. And the (DATCP) report was intended to be that homework.”

Passions strong on both sides of debate

There is a sharp ideological divide between those who support the legalization of raw milk and those who object. Some advocates argue the government should not limit their food choices. Public health officials, meanwhile, say the risks associated with drinking raw milk require regulation — if not an outright ban.

Vince Hundt, an organic farmer and member of the working group, says he supports the current bill without most of the working group’s suggestions.

“These are recommendations that state health officials, the dairy industry at large and professional food processors would like to see in the bill,” Hundt says. “The consumers of raw milk and producers would like to simplify it very radically and say the only stipulation is that the milk must go directly from the farmer to the consumer.”

The authors of the new bill do not believe legalizing raw milk sales poses a threat to public health.

“Most of us old timers grew up on drinking it anyway,” Pridemore says. “Natural milk tastes a lot better, first of all. Second of all, it’s fresher. The farm that I buy it from, it’s no more than two days old.”

But public health officials warn that freshness does not ensure safety. Kazmierczak says fresh milk can be infected, and the risk of contamination exists at even the cleanest dairy operations.

He says it is impossible to keep floors, milking machines and cows’ udders completely free of manure contamination. Bacteria can enter milk at several stages, including during milking, when it is piped into the bulk tank or during dispensing. Cows may also become infected by grooming one another, he says.

“I think some people … don’t have a good sense of how minute the contamination could be and still result in milk contamination and human illness,” Kazmierczak says.

A man sits at the wheel of a milk truck operated by the Providence Dairy Company, 1916. The location of the photo is unknown, but it might be Brigham, Wis. Photo credit: Wisconsin Historical Society.

Disease prompted pasteurization

Raw milk, by definition, is not pasteurized. During pasteurization, milk is heated to between 145 and 160 degrees Fahrenheit for a short period to kill rapidly growing bacteria.

Concern about unpasteurized milk dates to the late 1800s. As people moved from rural to urban areas, milk was transported longer distances and at higher temperatures. Many city dwellers, particularly children, grew sick and died from drinking contaminated milk.

Public health activists called for reform, and throughout the late 1800s and into the 1900s, state and local governments passed laws requiring pasteurization. The measures were successful. In 1938, about 25 percent of all U.S. food- or water-borne disease outbreaks were caused by contaminated milk. By 2007, that figure was less than 1 percent.

Milwaukee adopted a pasteurization ordinance in 1920, and between 1949 and 1957, the Legislature passed a series of laws requiring milk dealers to have licenses and sell only pasteurized milk, banning raw milk sales by farmers and requiring that milk sold to the public adhere to grade A standards designed to promote sanitary milk production.

The danger: bacterial contamination

Raw milk can contain multiple illness-causing bacteria, including E.coli, salmonella, listeria, brucellosis and campylobacter. One 1992 study found bacterial contamination in 25 percent of samples taken from raw milk stored in bulk tanks.

These pathogens pose infection threats particularly to the young, the elderly and pregnant women. In rare cases, bacteria can enter the bloodstream and cause paralysis, kidney failure and death.

“It’s more than just a stomachache,” Kazmierczak says. “Salmonella in immunocompromised people or children can become invasive. It can cause bloodstream infections and meningitis.”

Adds Rankin, “Healthy adults succumb to these kinds of illnesses every year. It tears your heart out.”

Kazmierczak worries children might consume raw milk without their parents’ knowledge.

“If someone gets really sick and you have a kid that’s on dialysis for six months, who’s responsible for that?” he says. “Frankly, I think that any supporters of this (bill) have to be ready to bear at least partial responsibility for any illnesses that result.”

Consumers of raw milk say it is healthier than pasteurized milk. Health officials warn untreated dairy products can contain harmful bacteria. Wisconsin is one of 11 states that outlaws regular sales of raw milk products. Kyle McDaniel/Wisconsin State Journal

New bill short on restrictions

Although the 2011 proposal requires raw milk distributors to use a sanitary container and to fill it in a sanitary manner, it does not set any standard for cleanliness. Grothman says it will be up to the consumer to find trustworthy suppliers.

“I think people who buy raw milk should familiarize themselves with the farmer,” Grothman says.

David Gumpert, author of the book, “The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights,” believes pasteurization is not as crucial as it once was.

“We understand the importance of sanitation and good animal health, not to mention that we have refrigeration and automated milking equipment, all of which reduce the chances of contamination,” he says.

Tony Schultz, board member of Family Farm Defenders, a Madison-based nonprofit that seeks to create a farmer-controlled food system, believes health concerns about raw milk are overblown.

“Every year you hear about thousands getting sick from some sort of ‘big’ food — beef, spinach, tomatoes,” Schultz says, adding he believes if consumers bought directly from farmers, there would be fewer and smaller outbreaks.

He believes the debate is really about large corporate farms’ desire to control the agricultural sector and the pushback from small farmers and consumers who want to have a closer relationship with their food.

Kazmierczak acknowledges that supporting family farms and local agriculture is “emotionally appealing.” But, he adds, “The bottom line is, the more available you make raw milk, the more people are going to drink it, and the more people are going to get sick.”

Legalization equals right to choose

For raw milk consumers, the heart of the issue is the right to choose their food.

“We want good health. We want to be able to have the choice to drink what we know is good for us,” says farmer and raw milk consumer Melody Morrell, who lives on a community-sustained farm in southwestern Wisconsin. “That makes sense to me. It’s frustrating that someone can say ‘No you can’t,’ even if it’s the healthiest thing.”

Hundt, the organic farmer, says the public should be trusted to make that choice.

“A consumer can walk to the store and buy a quart of gin or a carton of cigarettes, but you can’t buy a gallon of milk from a farmer,” Hundt says. “It’s preposterous and symptomatic of a society that doesn’t trust its citizens and abandoned the idea that people are free and should make these decisions for themselves.”

Kazmierczak responds that government regulates all kinds of risky products.

“You can’t buy your kids lead toys from China, you can’t serve them powdered milk that’s got melamine in it,” he says. “Society and government have decided that there are limits to parental autonomy, and, in my opinion, this should be one of them.”

Morrell, for one, is not worried. Her three children drink raw milk every day. She knows the farmer and the cow that produce it, and she trusts it is safe.

“I knew a lot of people growing up that drank raw milk,” says Morrell, who was raised in rural Minnesota. “And I’ve never met one person who’s been sick from raw milk ever in my life.”

Sarah Karon is a reporter for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Natasha Anderson, Steve Horn and Rory Linnane reported this story in a UW-Madison journalism class taught by Professor Deborah Blum, in collaboration with the nonprofit Center (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The Center also collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and other news media.

All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Immigration “is an issue that has always tapped into great passions,” says Craig Regelbrugge, a lobbyist and co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform. He lobbies for dairy operators who say they need immigrant workers to stay afloat even in a recession. Photo by Staci E. McKee

This report is the fourth part of Dairyland Diversity, an investigation of Wisconsin dairy farms’ growing reliance upon immigrant workers. This report was produced in collaboration with Capitol News Connection. Earlier stories available here.

By Manuel Quinones
For the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

WASHINGTON — A newspaper cartoon above lobbyist Craig Regelbrugge’s desk shows farm workers harvesting lettuce. Two guys wearing American flags on their shirts shout, “Hey, Pedro! Go back to Mexico! But first, can you cut my yard and clean my swimming pool?”
Regelbrugge has spent much of the last decade pushing for an overhaul of America’s immigration laws. The cartoon illustrates the contradictory and often angry rhetoric he’s up against.

“This is an issue that has always tapped into great passions,” Regelbrugge said in his Washington, D.C., office, which has a view of K Street, the artery synonymous with inside-the-Beltway lobbying.

LISTEN: Click to download report broadcast by our partner, Wisconsin Public Radio, on March 12, 2010. Report produced by Manuel Quinones of Capitol News Connection for Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

As co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, Regelbrugge is a champion for dairy operators who say they need immigrant workers to stay afloat even in a recession. He recently spoke in Madison to a group of Wisconsin farmers, who told him they want action from their Washington representatives.

“The level of anxiety in the industry there and elsewhere is as high as I have seen it in my years working on this issue,” said Regelbrugge, vice president for governmental affairs for the American Nursery and Landscape Association.

Dairy farmers say they want access to workers without getting into legal trouble. Many say they would go out of business without immigrant labor, and consumers would likely end up paying more for milk.

But many lawmakers on Capitol Hill are running away from the issue. They worry tackling immigration could hurt them at the ballot box this November, and they appear to lack the legislative bandwidth to focus on much besides the ailing economy, joblessness and health care reform.

A cow on the Wisconsin dairy farm of John Rosenow, who relies heavily upon immigrants to keep the cows milked and fed. Photo by Robert Gutsche Jr.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin dairy producers John Rosenow and Loren Wolfe said they’ve had trouble finding enough locals willing to get dirty and work the long hours it takes to run their operation.

“We need (immigrants) to milk cows or we’d barely be in business,” Wolfe said of the Hispanics who work for the farm near Cochrane.

Immigrants now make up about 40 percent of the state’s dairy labor force, up from 5 percent a decade ago, according to a 2009 study by the UW-Madison Program on Agricultural Technology Studies. Many of the workers  are in the United States illegally.

Regelbrugge said the status quo creates economic instability and the risk that employers will exploit immigrant workers. He said it’s also putting dairy farmers in jeopardy.

“Frankly it poses a challenge to farmers who wonder whether they can pass their business to the next generation,” he said.

Bush tried, failed to change immigration

The last time Congress passed major immigration reform legislation was in 1986. It was supposed to fix the nation’s illegal immigration problem by granting amnesty to millions of people and beefing up enforcement. But the effort failed to properly control the future flow of immigrants and the demand for immigrant workers.

President George W. Bush gave it another try during his second term in office. It ended in a crushing defeat in the Senate in 2007.

Bush’s plan included a path to legalization and measures to strengthen border security and create a temporary guest worker program. Opponents called it an unacceptable amnesty. Many also doubted the government’s ability to fulfill the lofty promise of finally fixing the illegal immigration problem.

U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Menomonee Falls, was one of the Republicans blasting Bush for his immigration proposal. For years, Sensenbrenner has been a thorn in the side of advocates of so-called comprehensive immigration reform.

“The American public is opposed to granting amnesty to illegal immigrants,” Sensenbrenner said.  “And no matter how they try to spin it by calling it comprehensive immigration reform, earned legalization, whatever, the public gets what it really is.”

Sensenbrenner said he hasn’t forgotten the concerns of dairy farmers. He said he may be willing to support some sort of temporary guest worker program. Yet his top priority is stopping illegal border crossings and the hiring of undocumented workers.

“And that means vigorously enforcing employer sanctions, fining those who break the law by hiring illegal immigrants,” he said.

Another Wisconsin Republican, U.S. Rep. Thomas Petri of Fond du Lac, considers himself a champion of the industry. But he cringed when asked about immigration reform and its impact on Wisconsin dairy producers. Petri didn’t want to go into detail but said he supports making sure producers have the workers they need while being tough on illegal immigration.

“We really need to make sure we get a handle on people coming into the United States illegally, both in fairness to those who come here legally and to give people confidence that there is just not going to be another wave of uncontrolled immigration,” Petri said.

U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, whose district relies heavily on the dairy industry, worries that too much of a strong hand from Washington may hurt farmers.

“They told me that if Congress were to do something too Draconian it would put them out of business,” Kind said.

Wisconsin dairy farmer John Rosenow says immigrant workers are an important part of his farm's operations. Photo by Robert Gutsche Jr.

U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen, D-Appleton, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, didn’t comment for this story despite attempts to reach him through his office and in person. Kagen recently signed on to a resolution calling for tough enforcement against illegal immigrants.

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, said, “I don’t want to talk about that,” when approached just outside the House floor. He walked away.

U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., told this reporter, “You’re a good man,” when pressed about immigrants in the dairy industry. He then jumped into an elevator. In response to questions submitted to his office, Kohl said he supports reform.

“I understand there can be some apprehension about foreign workers and guest worker programs, especially as we face job losses and high unemployment figures in the United States,” Kohl wrote. “But it is important to balance the need to provide farmers with access to the workers they need, with the need to protect American jobs.”

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., sits with Kohl on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over immigration issues. He called congressional inaction on the issue “irresponsible.”

Dairy producers say Congress can help by at least passing the so-called AgJobs bill. The legislation would overhaul the agricultural foreign worker program and create a path to legalization for certain farm workers.

Jaime Castaneda with the National Milk Producers Federation said dairy farmers currently are worse off than other agricultural producers because they can’t take advantage of the existing guest worker program, which only covers temporary and seasonal workers. Milk production requires a year-round workforce.

“Dairy farmers cannot have access to any visa system to bring foreign labor,” Castaneda said.  “Dairy farmers have access to nothing.”

Several Wisconsin lawmakers have signed on to the AgJobs legislation in the House and Senate, including Kohl, Feingold, Kagen, Petri, Ryan and Kind. But progress on the measure has stalled.

“Democratic leaders are weighing how many votes they win by doing immigration reform and how many votes they lose by doing immigration reform,” said Marc Rosenblum, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

Congress dodges, immigrants flow in

In the years since lawmakers last passed significant reform legislation, the number of illegal immigrants has grown dramatically, now estimated at about 12 million.

Rosenblum said lawmakers and government officials helped exacerbate the immigration problem through lax enforcement policies going back decades and tacit support for the growth of immigrant labor.

A study issued in December by Rosenblum’s group concluded that “policy inaction is a result not only of a partisan divide in Washington, but also of the underlying economic reality that despite its faults, illegal immigration has been hugely beneficial to many U.S. employers, often providing benefits that the current legal immigration system does not.”

In a November speech, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said immigration reform should be a “three-legged stool” including “serious and effective enforcement, improved legal flows for families and workers, and a firm but fair way to deal with those who are already here.”

While Congress fails to address the last two legs, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has continued to pursue enforcement against illegal workers and employers. Last year, federal agents started going through tens of thousands of employment documents from businesses around the country, including dairy farms, as part of a new compliance campaign. ICE officials won’t release details but say businesses in Wisconsin are part of the investigation.

In a separate enforcement action in February, 49 foreign nationals were arrested in 11 central and western Wisconsin counties in a fugitive roundup. Some were charged with non-immigration-related crimes, and others had been ordered deported for violating immigration laws, ICE spokeswoman Gail Montenegro said.

While some celebrate the tough stance taken against illegal immigrants, dairy producers see it as a major threat to their business.

Said Regelbrugge: “People came here, we needed their labor, and we didn’t provide the legal means to do it.”

Strange bedfellows

The immigration reform debate is unlike any other in Congress. Members of both parties support fixing U.S. immigration laws. And the issue creates unusual alliances: Some labor unions have united with social conservatives in opposing generous immigration policies while the business community and political liberals have come together to call for more relaxed rules, Rosenblum said.

U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have been working together to fashion a compromise expected to be introduced this year. U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, said she’s hopeful Congress will act.

“The partisanship that has stalled other reforms may not come into play in the same way with immigration reform, so I think we have some prospects,” she said.

But just because immigration reform has bipartisan support doesn’t mean Congress will resolve or even take up the issue in the coming weeks or months. Members from both parties killed immigration reform the last time around. And the wounds of failure are still too tender for many lawmakers.

“My colleagues recall the last unsuccessful attempt and feel a little burned by that,” Baldwin said. Kind said the issue “has become such a political football, unfortunately.”

In December, several dozen Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, introduced a so-called comprehensive immigration reform legislation package. The proposal includes a path to legalization for many illegal immigrants and the provisions for immigrant workers contained in the AgJobs legislation. Some Republicans have labeled the bill dead on arrival.

While Congress debates, Wisconsin dairy farmers wait — stuck between following the rules and staying in business.

“We sat down at a partner meeting looking at the threats to our livelihood, and the No. 1 threat that we could envision was to lose our employees,” Rosenow said. “There is no way we can manage that. There is just no way.”

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) developed this report in collaboration with the nonprofit Capitol News Connection in Washington, D.C.  Manuel Quinones, who produced this report, is a reporter for Capitol News Connection. WCIJ collaborates with its partners — Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication — and other news media.

Victoria, an undocumented immigrant, works at a dairy farm east of La Crosse -- and gets there by driving, although she lacks a license. WCIJ/Robert Gutsche Jr.

By Andy Szal and Jacob Kushner

Drivers beware: There’s a woman driving a stretch of Interstate 90 between Sparta and Tomah — without a license or any training about Wisconsin’s traffic laws.

Her name is Victoria. She’s a 23-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico who works on a Tomah dairy farm with other undocumented immigrants whom  she says “all understand our boss through signals” because of language barriers.

Victoria, who arrived in Wisconsin 13 months ago, hasn’t taken any drivers’ training in the United States because Wisconsin law prohibits her from obtaining a license. She says she hasn’t had any run-ins with police, but requested that her last name be withheld out of fear she might be pursued as an illegal immigrant.

She is among a growing number of illegal immigrants who are finding work on Wisconsin dairy farms, located in rural areas where the only way to get to work is by car.

Immigrants now account for about 40 percent of the state’s dairy labor force, up from just 5 percent a decade ago, according to a 2009 study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Program on Agricultural Technology Studies.

These 5,000 immigrants have become a critical part of the state’s signature industry at the same time that some are calling for a greater crackdown on undocumented immigrants. While there are no estimates on how many of Wisconsin’s immigrant dairy workers are here illegally, federal surveys have estimated that half of all immigrant crop workers nationwide lack immigration papers.

The debate over undocumented immigrants spilled into the state budget this summer as lawmakers debated a proposal that would have allowed them to get licensed.

The measure, backed by some dairy farmers and law-enforcement officers, would have reversed part of a 2005 state law passed to comply with the federal Real ID Act, which required applicants for a driver’s license to submit proof of citizenship or legal resident status.

Opponents argue Wisconsin shouldn’t be in the business of ignoring state and federal immigration laws, regardless of the limitations on state agriculture and driving enforcement.

“There’s a tendency to sometimes accept the fact that we have people here breaking the law,” said state Rep. Robin Vos, R-Caledonia.

Still, the measure’s failure came as a blow to immigrant advocacy groups, which have long petitioned for the right of undocumented immigrants to drive legally in the state.

“It shows that neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party in Wisconsin or nationally have the intention to fix the problems that are most urgent to our people,” said Alex Gillis, co-founder of the Madison immigration rights group Immigrant Workers’ Union.

No one knows how many undocumented immigrants are driving without licenses in Wisconsin. But state Department of Transportation data show that after the law requiring applicants to submit proof of legal residence took effect in 2007, the number of people taking the Spanish-language version of the road skills knowledge test plummeted 91 percent — from 42,500 in 2006 to fewer than 4,000 in 2008. The number of applicants taking the English version of the test also declined during the period, but by just 23 percent.

Patrick Fernan, the agency’s operations manager, acknowledged the possibility that the decrease represents a drop in the number of undocumented Hispanic immigrants applying for licenses, but cautioned it’s impossible to say for sure.

Driving a necessity for many immigrant agricultural workers

According to a 2008 study by Paul Dyk, a livestock agent at University of Wisconsin-Extension in Fond du Lac County, 78 percent of Hispanic workers at Eastern Wisconsin dairy farms arrive at work in their own car, but only 44 percent of Hispanic dairy workers have a driver’s license.

Mario Garcia, youth coordinator at the Madison-based nonprofit agency Centro Hispano, says driving legally in Wisconsin has become impossible for many of the state’s agricultural immigrant workers since the federal government passed the Real ID Act. The 2005 federal law was crafted to shore up the security of the state driver’s licenses, although deadlines for compliance have been pushed back amid complaints from states about its requirements and costs.

Garcia said the inability of immigrant workers to drive legally makes Wisconsin roads dangerous for all.

That was one reason a number of law enforcement officials came out in support of the license provision this summer during the budget debate. Police chiefs in Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Appleton and Beloit each backed the provision, along with support from chiefs of smaller departments such as Whitewater, Shorewood and Dorchester. The Wisconsin State Troopers Association was also on board.

“Regardless (of whether) these cards are issued or not, undocumented individuals are going to be driving motor vehicles throughout the state,” Whitewater Police Chief James Coan said this summer. “Our traffic safety efforts will be enhanced by providing them with an opportunity to obtain a limited driver’s license.”

Tom Hochstatter, a Milwaukee attorney who practices immigration law, says giving immigrants driver’s licenses would increase safety and reduce the burden on law-enforcement officials to act as de facto immigration enforcement agents.

The potential downside is just that if you’re showing a law enforcement officer your document, then they know that it’s really a second-class driver’s license,” Hochstatter said. “If you have an agenda about immigration, you could end up pursuing your questioning … to a point where you find they are undocumented.”

The budget proposal would have required the limited-use licenses to appear “distinctive” from standard driver’s licenses and would also have required language on the new licenses to stipulate they could be used for driving only. Cardholders could not have used their cards for other identification verification purposes, such as cashing a check or boarding a commercial flight.

The measure also would have stipulated that law enforcement may not press cardholders on their immigration status if the limited-use license was presented for its intended purpose.

Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s office indicated he would be opposed to the bill’s provision on checking immigration status “to the extent these proposals limit the ability of law enforcement to work together at the federal, state and local levels.”

Debate in the state budget

The governor did not include the provision on driver’s licenses in the original budget for the 2009-11 biennium that he proposed in February. But state Rep. Pedro Colón of Milwaukee persuaded fellow Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee to add the measure during its deliberations on the budget.

The Assembly then approved the measure in its version of the budget.

Under Colón’s proposal, drivers unable to prove their legal residence could obtain a limited license provided that some key conditions were met, including establishing Wisconsin residency, providing proof of identity, being ineligible for a Social Security number and passing all relevant driving tests.

Colón said undocumented immigrants “were just in a panic. … They couldn’t go to work, they couldn’t go to the store,” and the issue was critical to his constituents.

At a December meeting of the Dairy Business Association, a group of large dairy farm owners, Colón told farm owners that the right to a driver’s license represents “the most basic of what we call the American dream, this basic attainment of what we call happiness.”

“Happiness to people in my district,” he said in a Madison speech, “is going to take grandma to the doctor and not being stopped by a police officer for four hours while they determine your identity because there is no way for you to get a driver’s license.”

Vos, a fellow member of the Joint Finance Committee, introduced a motion to eliminate the license provision during debate over the Department of Transportation budget.

“The entire idea … flies in the face of what common sense should be,” Vos said of the proposal, arguing that both dairy farm employers and potentially undocumented employees should be facing stiff state and federal penalties rather than being allotted a loophole in the state’s driving laws.

With Democrats in the majority in both houses, Republican opposition wasn’t enough to derail Colón’s proposal. Once the budget moved onto the Senate, however, some Democrats expressed concern about the measure, citing their constituents’ opposition.

Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, told a constituent in an e-mail that he was “able to convince” his caucus to drop the driver’s license provision. He represents a sizable Latino population and became the subject of intense scrutiny from the immigration advocacy group Voces de la Frontera.

But Carpenter was not swayed by the effort from law enforcement, labor groups and religious organizations, noting this summer that 90 percent of his constituents who had contacted his office were opposed to the measure.

Carpenter was also unhappy the provision was stuck into the budget during late-night deliberations and without a public hearing.
“I wasn’t the only one who had concerns,” Carpenter said of his discussions with fellow Democrats in the state Senate.

Colón said federal legislation left room for states to address the problem of undocumented drivers in the Real ID Act, and his staff analyzed two states that have implemented similar laws — Utah and Tennessee.

Tennessee, however, suspended its two-tier license program after the state found undocumented immigrants from neighboring states were attempting to acquire the licenses. Before the suspension of the program, the National Immigration Law Center estimated that Tennessee issued some 51,000 driving certificates to citizens who could not authenticate their legal status.

Vos said that while the public generally is not comfortable condoning what is seen as illegal activity, the economic issues surrounding the state and the country could also color voters’ views on immigration issues.

If the unemployment rate stays at current levels heading into the 2010 election season, Vos asked, “Will they be angry that you’re giving benefits to people here illegally?”

State fix likely to depend on Washington

Lawmakers on both sides of the driver’s license issue are united in one aspect: The Wisconsin Legislature shouldn’t be in the position of dictating immigration policy.

For now, Colón says he has no plans to reintroduce the plan as a stand-alone bill. In addition to the already difficult path it faces in the Legislature, Colón believes federal lawmakers are ready to make the state’s job easier by reforming how the nation deals with illegal immigrants.

“As a legislator in Wisconsin, I don’t want to be messing in immigration law,” Colón said, adding that federal lawmakers forced his hand with the mandates in the Real ID Act.

Vos acknowledged that he doesn’t have a say in the ultimate answer on immigration because, “I’m not in Congress.”

Andy Szal is a reporter for WisPolitics.com. Jacob Kushner is a reporter for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The two organizations collaborated on this report for Dairyland Diversity, an ongoing project with The Country Today newspaper examining how immigration is reshaping Wisconsin’s dairy industry.

]]> http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2009/12/16/while-wisconsins-immigration-politics-remain-stalled-undocumented-immigrants-drive-without-licenses/feed/ 0 http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2009/11/11/a-delicate-existence-undocumented-and-living-on-a-wisconsin-dairy-farm/ http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2009/11/11/a-delicate-existence-undocumented-and-living-on-a-wisconsin-dairy-farm/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:01:53 +0000 WisconsinWatch http://wisconsinwatch.org/?p=2105

José is one of an estimated 5,000 immigrant dairy workers in Wisconsin. WCIJ/ROBERT GUTSCHE JR.

Immigrants cope with isolation, grueling hours.

But there’s room for family life, too.

By Jacob Kushner
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Yawning, the man pulls on his grimy work pants, then boots, then sweatshirt, releasing smells of animal waste and hay into the air.  The October morning is cold enough he’d see his breath if the farm wasn’t consumed by darkness, the moon hidden behind heavy clouds.

The woman calls out in broken English as she walks up and down the aisles of the barn: “Come on, let’s go. Come on, come on.” The cows glare at her before, one by one, they begin their familiar stroll toward the milking parlor.

The daily routine is not unlike the one experienced by generations of Wisconsin farm families. But unlike those farmers, this young Mexican couple, José and Victoria, said goodbye to their families and traveled 1,720 miles to work long hours on a dairy farm in Western Wisconsin among people who do not speak their language and in a place where their presence is illegal.

José says most Americans don’t like immigrants. “They think that we are here invading their territory. But we aren’t left with any other option because the situation in Mexico is very, very difficult.”

Despite the ever-present threat of deportation, José and his wife have a sort of job security they never found in Mexico: Their employment is all but ensured by the need for cheap labor at larger dairy farms that are increasingly common across Wisconsin’s rolling pasture lands.

The couple’s story is representative of roughly 5,000 immigrants who have become the labor backbone of Wisconsin’s signature industry. Immigrants now account for about 40 percent of the state’s dairy labor force, up from just 5 percent 10 years earlier, according to a 2009 study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Program on Agricultural Technology Studies. While that study didn’t explore immigration status, earlier federal surveys have estimated half of all immigrant crop workers nationwide are working illegally.

José and Victoria requested their real names be withheld out of fear they might be identified by law enforcement and pursued as illegal immigrants. Though interviewed in Spanish, José and Victoria have learned enough English to understand directions on the farm and to function daily in Western Wisconsin while raising two bilingual children.

The work

To say José and Victoria work from sunrise to sunset would be inaccurate – their day starts in darkness before the sun rises, and ends in darkness, well after the final rays have been blocked by the hills to the west.

José drives his pickup truck to and from work, even though he’s ineligible to obtain a driver’s license. WCIJ/JACOB KUSHNER

With empty stomachs, save for a large mug of fresh milk from the cows, mixed with instant coffee and honey, Victoria and José climb into their pickup truck and drive the five-minute stretch of highway to the dairy farm.

While Victoria begins herding the cows into the milking parlor, José prepares the milking equipment.

The work is not altogether unskilled. In addition to directing animals using shouts, whistles and movements, immigrants also learn tasks such as operating farm machinery and monitoring the milk pumping system.

“Sometimes I come tired and there’s something I forget to do,” says José, recalling one morning a few months ago when milk began spewing on the floor from an overhead pipe because he forgot to correctly prepare the pump. “There’s a lot to remember.”

Once the cows walk into the parlor, José sanitizes their teats before attaching suction cups. The mooing crescendos as remaining cows grow impatient. Ten at a time, the cows are milked and led back to the barn.

By the time the cows return, Victoria has cleaned the barn and filled the stalls with feed. When finished, Victoria comes to the parlor to help her husband finish milking.

The couple talks sparingly as they focus on work, an old radio crackling out Mexican Maríachi and ranchera songs to the background noise of industrial-sized fans. By the time the sun rises, the work has become mechanical, routine.

Ask Victoria if it’s boring, and she laughs: “I don’t have time to be bored.”

Four hours after the morning milking began, the last cows head back to the barn, and José and Victoria clean the parlor.

At 11, the couple returns home to cook lunch – already six hours into the workday. Victoria, who works about 40 hours a week, usually spends the rest of the day doing chores or running errands. José averages 70 hours a week.

A couple of days a week, José will not return to work until it is time for the second milking from 5 to 9 p.m. José calls those his “easy days.” But on full days he works the entire afternoon, harvesting and transporting crops from the fields or feeding milk to calves out of oversized baby bottles.

“On a farm there is little rest,” José says. “It’s nothing but work and more work.”

Each autumn, José harvests the green peppers, jalapenos, tomatoes, corn, onions, potatoes and cilantro he grows in his garden outside their house. “Just think how much we save by not buying vegetables for three months,” he says. WCIJ/JACOB KUSHNER

For their labor, José earns $11 per hour and Victoria earns $8 per hour, and their combined take-home pay is about $1,900 every two weeks. Little remains after their employer deducts taxes (including Social Security, which they are ineligible to receive) and they cover their rent, truck payments, gas, utilities and groceries — plus the $200 per month they send to help support families back home in Mexico.

The family life

The work at the farm finally over, José and Victoria return to their modest but comfortable home, an old  two-bedroom farmhouse they rent from their boss for $330 a month. Awaiting them are their 13-year-old daughter María and 8-year-old son Antonio. The children have already finished their homework for the following day (there’s no TV until it’s all done).

It’s dinner time. Antonio and María run around the large kitchen, excited as mom prepares their favorite dish: Italian spaghetti, pasta cooked in a rich tomato-cream sauce with a Mexican twist (corn and jalapeños). The meal is indicative of the family’s lifestyle, a mix of Mexican traditions and rural Wisconsin comfort.

The children speak fluent Spanish and English, and their conversations switch almost randomly between the two. They always speak Spanish to their parents, who understand English well but are still uncomfortable speaking it.

After dinner, the children watch impatiently as dad navigates the Dish Latino channels. They want to watch “The Hulk,” but he prefers a Spanish-language soap opera. At a suspenseful moment in the show, José and the children watch with worried looks on their faces. Meanwhile, Victoria is curled up in a blanket, lying on the sofa – exhausted from the day’s work.

It’s a home life not unlike that of other families in rural Wisconsin. But the difference is, their home life is almost all they’ve got.

The family doesn’t usually go out to dinner, movies or bowling like other local families.

Twice a month, when they get their paycheck, they drive into town for a Domino’s pizza – Hawaiian with jalapeños. But as soon as it’s ready, they jump back in their pickup truck and drive out of town to eat their meal back at home.

Anticipating a twice-monthly treat, immigrant dairy worker José and his children await their takeout order at a Domino's Pizza. The family's discomfort among locals keeps them from venturing far from the farm where they work and live. WCIJ/JACOB KUSHNER

Sometimes they all drive into town to go shopping, but out of hesitation to communicate with store employees, their trip differs from that of most families. “Sometimes we eat out together, or go to the mall – only to look, nothing else,” José says.

It is less a fear of leaving the house than a sense of discomfort among a population that does not speak their language and, according to José, sees them as outsiders.

Coming to America

José, Victoria, María and Antonio each hold distinct memories of their life in Mozomboa, Mexico, their hometown of 3,000 located near the Gulf of Mexico, 175 miles east of Mexico City. While José took whatever daily jobs he could find on a local farm, the children sold snacks and water to locals as street vendors.

They all agree the hardest part was when José and eventually Victoria went to work in the United States, leaving their children behind.

“We couldn’t see them growing,” says Victoria, who tears up as she recalls leaving to create a new life for her children in America. After two years of separation, she returned to Mexico in 2007 to bring her children across the border.

José and Victoria don’t like talking about their journey into America – that episode in their life is over. But the kids can’t keep from recounting the story, and the memory of the blisters on their feet walking north through the desert with their mother.

Ask José why he came here, and he will say he wanted a job with a wage that could support his family. He entered the U.S. legally with a work visa, but decided not to return after it expired.

Ask him why he stayed, and the undocumented Mexican sounds more like a patriot than an alien.

“I love this country because there are many opportunities, many jobs — not like in Mexico,” José says. “And it’s more beautiful. Wherever one goes, one sees beautiful pastures.”

A traditional Mexican Sunday brunch is one reminder of the family's life before they moved to Wisconsin. A UW-Madison study estimates that 90 percent of the immigrant dairy workers are from Mexico. WCIJ/JACOB KUSHNER

But opportunity is not the same as security. That’s because a couple of state-issued photo IDs and Social Security numbers they purchased illegally for $400 each is all the documentation they have. Neither can get a driver’s license. Neither can get subsidized public health insurance in Wisconsin.

The cost of medical treatment is a problem José and Victoria know all too well: Three months ago, Victoria was rushed to a hospital for appendicitis. A $20,000 hospital bill on their kitchen table is a reminder of the challenge of being without insurance.

As María listens to her mom retell the story of the late-night hospital trip, a worried look creeps across her face. She knows her parents don’t have the money to pay the bill, and she’s scared about her future.

But, in her usual manner of making a lesson out of their challenges, Victoria turns to María, wipes away her own tears, and smiles: “If I were dead, how could I pay the bill then? Life is more important.”

A future through their children

José and Victoria seldom miss an opportunity to encourage their children to become educated and create a better future for themselves.

“Nothing is difficult, and nothing is impossible,” José says to María, telling her that not money, but dedication is the only real obstacle to overcome toward receiving a university education. He hopes the meager savings he hides away after each paycheck prove him right.

María is sometimes discouraged. At middle school, she sits alone at lunch because other children tease her and call her ugly. They hurl their insults just out of the earshot of the teacher, whom María says is oblivious to it all.

“Americans don’t like me,” she says. “It’s really hard to make a best friend.”

José and Victoria treat their kids like adults — they talk in goofy, ‘kid’ voices to the dog and cats around the farmhouse, but never to their children. They tell jokes and stories, challenging Antonio and María with trivia and word tricks.

“What weighs more, a kilo of cotton or a kilo of stone?” Victoria asks.

“Stone,” Antonio responds. “Cotton,” María says.

José strums a guitar as the family sings along to their favorite Mexican artists. They spend their evenings together in the living room, also watching television and playing games. WCIJ/JACOB KUSHNER

With such a close family life, it is easy to forget José and Victoria spend almost as many hours working as they do otherwise. They spend long hours milking cows not because they enjoy it, but because it’s their way of creating a better future for their children.

Ask José what his aspirations are, and the undocumented foreigner from Mexico describes a vision with a distinctly familiar tune. He hopes, against the odds, he and his family can become legal citizens. Some might recognize it as the American Dream.

“That my children continue with school and learn English well. That they become somebody in life, that they be important people here in the United States. Imagine, [Barack] Obama is an African American and he is president of the United States. It would be best for my children if next a [Latino/a] could be president, or secretary of state. One cannot lose hope.”

Editor’s note: This is the second part of Dairyland Diversity, a special report on Wisconsin’s growing reliance upon immigrant dairy workers. The stories are a joint project of several media organizations, including The Country Today, a weekly newspaper focusing upon agricultural and rural issues, and the nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The Center collaborates with its partners — Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television and the UW-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication — and other news media.

To see earlier Dairyland Diversity coverage, click here.

Dairy farmer John Rosenow says immigrant workers are "so much more capable than what we could find before" with local workers. WCIJ/ROBERT GUTSCHE JR.

By Jacob Kushner
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Like many Wisconsin dairy farmers, Tim Servais needed help and he reluctantly faced the facts.

After he expanded his farm operation outside La Crosse in 1995, Servais relied on local adults, teenagers and farm kids to do what work he couldn’t handle himself.

“I’ve always tried to hire people who were local so I had some background on them,” Servais said.

About three years back, Servais found the locals had stopped coming to his barn door. “I just couldn’t find people to do the work,” Servais said.

But he found Spanish-speaking foreigners eager to take their place. “I tried not to go that way because I didn’t know how it was going to work out,” he recalled.

Now immigrants do much of the field work and almost all of the milking for his 240-cow dairy herd.

“It worked out really well,” Servais said.

Servais is one of a growing number of Wisconsin dairy farmers relying on immigrants to milk their cows and keep their farms running smoothly.

Just 10 years ago, 5 percent of workers on Wisconsin dairy farms were immigrants — but by 2008, that number jumped to 40 percent, or more than 5,000 workers, according to a 2009 study by the UW-Madison Program on Agricultural Technology Studies. Those immigrants are changing the face of the state’s signature industry, while bringing increasing diversity and social challenges to the state’s rural areas.

As Wisconsin dairy farmers hire more immigrants, they face mounting pressure to ensure their workforce is competent, skilled, and above all, legal. Experts say farmers are often caught in a “don’t ask, don’t tell” web of federal employment regulations, with a strong incentive to know as little as possible about the legal status of their workers. The UW-Madison study didn’t inquire about immigration status, but earlier federal surveys have estimated that half of all immigrant crop workers are working in the United States illegally.

An immigrant worker milks cows in the parlor at John Rosenow's dairy farm in Buffalo County. Rosenow employs eight Mexican immigrants. WCIJ/ROBERT GUTSCHE JR.

Goodbye farm kids, hello immigrants

Servais remembers a time when the children of dairy farmers used to work on the farm, learning the ropes with the goal of one day inheriting it as their own.

Those days are disappearing for many families. Servais said farmers today simply have fewer children, and the remaining children don’t always share the traditional vision of taking on the family business.

It’s not hard to understand why children are choosing to go to college or pursue other industries over farm work.

“It’s labor intense,” Servais said. “When you’re (on) a dairy farm you’re on call 24-seven, 365, no matter if you’re on vacation or you’re down at the local store or what.”

Unsure of the aspirations of his own three children and in need of more workers after expanding his farm a few years back, Servais turned to local high school students, but found them generally unreliable in a business that requires timely and skillful milking at unusual hours.

“There are all kinds of people that want to come around and work, but it’s to their convenience,” Servais said. “It’d be Friday evening and they call at 5 o’clock and they’re supposed to be there at 5 o’clock – ‘I’m not going to make it tonight, something came up.’ Well you know what came up, something more fun than working.”

Servais said local teenagers come by his farm wanting work for the summer, but after spending a day in the parlor and seeing how messy and physically grueling the work is, most soon quit.

In need of a workforce he could depend on and afford, Servais turned to immigrants, and he now employs three of them.

“They don’t get paid a lot now, but that’s one thing I’m working on is paying them more because I really appreciate the fact that they’re helping me out, and they’re very good,” Servais said.

Servais is just one of many dairy farm owners increasingly relying on immigrants to keep operations running smoothly.

“We need them to milk cows or we’d barely be in business,” Loren Wolfe, co-owner of a 575-cow dairy farm near Cochrane, said of the Hispanic immigrants he employs.

The need for immigrant workers is exacerbated by low milk prices, as farmers depend upon cheap labor to remain profitable. Wolfe’s business partner, John Rosenow, estimated the pair would have to pay native workers twice the rate his Hispanic immigrants are willing to work for – $7.25 an hour, according to one of their immigrant employees.

Rosenow, who employs eight Hispanic workers, said even if he could find local workers who were dedicated to farm life, the increased salary costs would bankrupt his business.

Plus, Rosenow said, farmers hire immigrants because they are “excellent,” hard workers. In fact, they are “so much more capable than what we could find before” with local workers.

The hiring process

While locals are hard to find, immigrant applicants are numerous.

Sandi Zirbel, co-owner of a 635-cow dairy cooperative outside of Green Bay, said the influx of immigrants is evident in her company’s staff.

Zirbel said immigrants frequently come looking for work, and as many as 19 out of 20 applicants are immigrants. Two-thirds of those applications get tossed.

“Some of them simply just don’t fit into the system, either because of how much they’re asking per hour or what their experience is,” Zirbel said. All workers start at $7.50 per hour — but usually receive a raise to $8.50 after six months and are eligible for yearly raises thereafter.

Despite the number of applicants who are rejected, it’s easy to find enough qualified workers to fill the need at Zirbel Dairy Farms: Seven of the current nine farmhands are immigrants.

“They’re more likely to seek this type of work,” Zirbel said. “Why somebody would want to leave Mexico and come to Wisconsin to milk in the middle of winter, I don’t know … but there’s a lot of them up here.”

Tim Servais used to employ locals to milk cows on his mid-sized dairy farm in Vernon County near Stoddard. Now he hires immigrants to fill the spots, because locals no longer come around looking for work. WCIJ/ROBERT GUTSCHE JR.

The rules

Although dairy farm owners go through the same legal hiring process as all employers, many say the process is complicated by the assumption many Hispanics are undocumented, meaning they don’t have the proper work visas or have come to the United States illegally.

“In my opinion there is a high percentage of undocumented labor that is being used in dairy farms,” said Erich Straub, a Milwaukee attorney who specializes in deportation defense. Straub said because of contradictory immigration laws, it is in the best interest of farmers not to know if their workers are illegal.

“See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I don’t think they want to know,” Straub said. “I think they’re in a very difficult position where they have a need for labor, they have a declining labor pool in their community … it’s a very challenging environment for farmers to run a business.”

While most farmers will tell you they follow the rules, Straub said the larger problem is employment law is vague enough to allow some undocumented workers to slip through the cracks.

Employers must require all job applicants to fill out a federal I-9 employment eligibility form and show multiple forms of identification to prove they are authorized to work. Employers send the applicant’s Social Security number to the Social Security Administration for tax purposes. Unless they receive a “no-match” letter stating the Social Security number does not match a known worker, applicants are cleared for employment.

Undocumented immigrants often evade the issue by guessing at a valid number, or by paying someone to provide them with a Social Security number of an eligible worker, immigrants and experts said.

Employers must examine a worker’s identification documents and make a good faith decision as to their validity. The confusion arises with the notion of “constructive knowledge,” which states that employers who have an indication an employee may not be eligible must take further steps to ensure their eligibility or terminate the employee. This constructive knowledge could arise from a document that looks false, a “no-match” letter, or even overhearing the worker say a visa expired.

But Tom Hochstatter, a Milwaukee attorney who specializes in immigration law, said the constructive knowledge provision creates unique problems for dairy farmers.

“Dairy farmers,” he said, “are freaked out because their situation is such that, while they might not know that any particular person is legal or illegal, they know statistically that if they have 15 dairy workers … statistically the chances are that some don’t have genuine documents. There’s this fear.”

Rosenow, the Cochrane farmer, said the constructive knowledge provision gives farmers an incentive to know as little about the legal status of their workers as possible.

“If a reasonable person could look at the documents and would make the assumption that they’re legit, then you accept them,” Rosenow said.

A sign on the office door at John Rosenow's Cochrane Dairy farm reads "Don't enter with boots" in Spanish. WCIJ/ROBERT GUTSCHE JR.

E-Verify and the future of hiring

While dairy farmers admit it is possible undocumented workers slip through, they maintain they do everything within their power to ensure their own employees are documented. Not everyone is so sure.

For example, Zirbel’s cooperative outside Green Bay is one of only three Wisconsin dairy farms registered with E-Verify, a voluntary federal Web-based system allowing employers to instantaneously validate Social Security numbers of job applicants. Farmers acknowledge that applicants whose numbers don’t match often leave without providing another.

U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., is sponsoring a bill to require employers to use E-Verify before hiring.

But many say E-Verify is inconvenient, unreliable and will only make hiring workers more difficult. “I don’t see the downside of the system we’re using now,” Rosenow said.

“I know that there are accuracy problems with the database,” Straub said. “Sometimes those problems are exaggerated by some people who don’t want E-Verify. On the other side of the coin, I think E-Verify is promoted as some magic bullet that’s going to fix the immigration problem in the United States. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.”

While she’s one of the few using E-Verify, Zirbel disagreed with the assumption farmers are trying to manipulate the hiring process to benefit from cheap and illegal labor.

“I would like to assure anybody who doesn’t know anything about dairy farming that we’re doing everything possible to legally hire (immigrant workers),” Zirbel said.

“It’s peace of mind,” Zirbel continued. “We do our job to make sure we have all the right documentation. Whether or not they give us the right information, that’s really out of our hands.”

Coming Nov. 11: A delicate existence: A look into the life an undocumented Mexican family, working and living on a Wisconsin dairy farm.

Editor’s note: This special report on Wisconsin’s growing reliance upon immigrant dairy workers is a joint project of several media organizations, including The Country Today, a weekly newspaper focusing upon agricultural and rural issues, and the nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The Center collaborates with its partners — Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television and the UW-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication — and other news media.

At a glance:

Wisconsin’s immigrant workforce

• In 2008, immigrants represented 40 percent of the estimated 12,551 hired workers on Wisconsin dairy farms. Of the immigrants, 89 percent are from Mexico.
• In total, Wisconsin is home to an estimated 85,000 undocumented immigrants.  Federal estimates have said that 50 percent of immigrant agricultural crop workers nationwide are not authorized to work in the United States.
• Immigrant laborers on dairy farms worked an average of 57 hours per week and took off about 4.8 days per month.
• 91 percent of dairy workers surveyed said they want to advance and learn new skills like animal health care or machinery operation.
• 68 percent of dairy workers surveyed have children. Of those, 74 percent live with their children in the United States, and 83 percent of these children attend school.
• 80 percent of dairy workers surveyed said they felt accepted as part of their community here.
• Some Mexican-born persons seeking permanent resident status may wait up to 18 years for their cases to be approved.

Sources: UW-Madison Program on Agricultural Technology Studies, based in part on survey of 267 immigrant workers on Wisconsin dairy farms; U.S. Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey; Pew Hispanic Center, U.S. Department of State.

Want more? Click here to view all Dairyland Diversity coverage.

"My goal has been to teach the (immigrant) children there's something better for them to do than what their parents are being forced to do because of the economy," Iowa County resident and bilingual volunteer Martha Boyer, left, told attendees at a Rural Immigration Summit sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Extension. Dodgeville School District English language teacher Michelle Meier, Darlington police Sgt. Tony Ruesga, Voces de la Frontera executive director Christine Neumann-Ortiz and Iowa County dairy farmer Dan Patenaude joined Boyer for a panel discussion on Oct. 17 in Dodgeville. WCIJ/KRYSSY PEASE

By Kryssy Pease
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

DODGEVILLE — Rapid increases in the Latino population of Wisconsin’s rural areas are reshaping work, school and social life, but also are raising concerns that Spanish-speaking immigrants are often isolated and mistrusted, experts and residents said at an event aimed at fostering better connections between newcomers and long-time residents.

Dan Patenaude, an Iowa County dairy farmer who employs two immigrant workers, told about 60 people attending the Oct. 17 Rural Immigration Summit that Hispanic immigrants in rural Wisconsin are an “invisible community.”

“I think a good part of the reason is because we’ve created a system that doesn’t encourage them to be a part of our society,” Patenaude said. “We can’t fix international problems in Dodgeville but maybe we can work on this community problem. We can find whatever ways we can to assist the foreign workers to participate in the community or to feel as comfortable as they can day in and day out going about their daily business.”

The event at Plymouth Congregational Church was sponsored by University of Wisconsin-Extension. Similar events were held in other parts of rural Wisconsin in 2007 and 2008.

Wisconsin’s Hispanic population was heavily concentrated in the urban, Southeastern parts of the state in 1990, but now is increasingly dispersed in rural areas. Iowa County experienced a 262-percent increase in its Latino population from 1990 to 2007.

The impact on the workforce of the state’s dairy farms is dramatic. A decade ago, immigrant workers held 5 percent of the jobs on Wisconsin dairy farms. Now the figure is 40 percent, according to a survey by the UW-Madison Program on Agricultural Technology Studies.

Iowa County resident Kent Mayfield helped organize the event after attending one of the previous summits and noticing changes in the makeup of his community over the past several years.

“I wanted to find an opportunity for the community to learn from each other, to build awareness, to become more sensitized,” Mayfield said.  “I wondered what we could do in our own community to change the quality of life for the people with whom we are living and for ourselves as well.”

Presenters covered demographic, political, social and historical issues related to Latino immigration in rural Wisconsin.

Rep. Pedro Colón, a Puerto Rican immigrant and Democrat from Milwaukee, discussed the frustrations he’s faced regarding immigration policy. This year, the Legislature passed a law that makes some undocumented students eligible for in-state tuition. But the Legislature rejected a measure from Colón that would have allowed undocumented residents to obtain a driver’s identification card.

“Undocumented people aren’t going to stop taking their kids to school, they’re not going to stop grocery shopping, they’re not going to stop visiting the doctor. These things are going to happen so we do need this driver’s license bill,” Colón said. “Unfortunately, politically, the conversation doesn’t allow policymakers to do the things that we need to.”

One attendee, Dodgeville resident Michael Langer, tried to broaden the summit’s local focus by raising questions about national immigration policy — particularly the fact that many undocumented immigrants entered the United States illegally.

“The issue that’s being ignored today is the part about our laws,” Langer said. “These people broke the law and did not play by the rules, and that is a source of a lot of anger.”

After some debate, Paul Ohlrogge, a community resource development agent at UW-Extension in Iowa County, steered the panelists back to discussing immigration in Southwestern Wisconsin.

Mayfield and several people interviewed after the event said it succeeded in bringing immigrants out of the shadows.

“These people are not going to go away,” Mayfield said. “If we keep them in this invisible, isolated situation, we won’t gain from the opportunity they afford us and they won’t gain from us. It will be a win-win if we can find the mechanisms for bringing them into our community, and that’s what I hope people got out of today.”

Editor’s note: The Country Today, a weekly newspaper focusing upon agricultural and rural issues, and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism are collaborating on a project exploring Wisconsin’s growing reliance upon immigrant dairy workers. The news organizations are seeking story tips and perspectives. The first stories will be published in November.

Click to watch Wisconsin Public Television, a partner with the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, talk with state  farmers about the role of Hispanic immigrant workers in the dairy industry, as part of a new investigation launched by the Center.

View the Center’s Dairyland Diversity coverage

]]> http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2009/07/26/video-farmers-discuss-immigrant-workers/feed/ 0 http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2009/07/26/doyle-on-dairy-immigrant-worker-role-increasing/ http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2009/07/26/doyle-on-dairy-immigrant-worker-role-increasing/#comments Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:36:03 +0000 WisconsinWatch http://wisconsinwatch.org/?p=1246 Originally posted July 21, 2009

By Lexie Clinton and Jacob Kushner
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

WATERLOO — Top Wisconsin officials acknowledged Tuesday that Wisconsin dairy farmers increasingly rely upon immigrant workers, including large numbers who may be undocumented — a result of demand for labor and the nation’s porous borders.

“It is true in agriculture in some areas of the state more than others, that the need for agricultural workers is very strong and that increasingly the number of people working are immigrants,” Gov. Jim Doyle told the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism at Farm Technology Days, one of the state’s largest annual gatherings of farmers.

Today, about 40 percent of the workers in the state’s dairy industry are Latino immigrants, according to a UW-Madison Program on Agricultural Technology Studies report.

The high concentration of immigrants in the dairy industry, Doyle says, means “we have a lot of jobs and we need to hire a lot of people.”

Read the full story

Originally posted July 20, 2009

By the Staff of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

The face of America’s Dairyland is changing, as growing numbers of immigrants run the milking parlors and feed the herds across Wisconsin.

Just this month, the UW-Madison Program on Agricultural Technology Studies released studies of immigrant labor, which now accounts for 40 percent of the dairy work force in Wisconsin.

Among other things, the studies conclude that immigration policies and enforcement “reinforce language barriers and limit immigrants’ abilities to pursue their claims and seek legal protections, thus contributing to inequalities in the workplace.” National estimates indicate that half of immigrant dairy workers lack immigration papers.

The state tax system continues to offer enticements to dairy farmers who modernize their facilities — which in turn leads to growth in herd sizes and compels dairy farmers to boost staffing levels at their expanded farms.

These sweeping changes within one of Wisconsin’s signature industries — and their impacts across the state — are the focus of a new collaborative reporting project of The Country Today, a statewide agricultural and rural newspaper, and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, a nonprofit organization probing government integrity and quality of life issues.

Read the full story and see how you can help