Last year, an ice storm in late March knocked down many trees in my area, including around the edges of two fields behind my house. A few weeks later, a work crew showed up to clear downed trees before planting those fields. My husband walked out to say hello to that crew. Nice young men, he said. They were from South Africa.
Our assumption was that those workers were here on H2-A visas, a temporary agricultural work program that helps farmers address workforce needs that can’t be met with labor from the U.S. Similarly, H2-B visa workers come to fill positions in non-agricultural industries, including hospitality and tourism.
We assumed that, after clearing storm damage, those young men from South Africa would spend their months under contract planting, cultivating, baling and harvesting. It never occurred to us that their work would also include driving tankers of liquid manure to be spread on fields in our area.
For those who don’t live near Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), liquid manure is waste produced by and collected from livestock that never see a pasture. That waste can be spread as fertilizer on agricultural ground. It’s transported from storage lagoons to the point of application by semis with tanker trailers. In Wisconsin and probably other states, a Farm Service CDL allows farm workers to operate agricultural equipment, including tank vehicles, on roadways.
The rural roads on which those vehicles operate tend to be narrow with sharp curves. Last fall, a liquid manure truck failed to negotiate one of those curves and rolled over. Response to that incident included two volunteer fire departments, an ambulance, a medical helicopter, law enforcement, the Department of Natural Resources, and a very large wrecker.
We don’t know if that driver was part of the crew that cleared ice storm debris in the fields by our house. But it’s very likely that he was. And my heart hurt to think what it would be like for his family, half a world away, to get word about what happened to him.
Coming To America
My paternal great-great-great-great-great grandfather came to this continent from northern Alsace in 1733. Back then, coming here probably meant you would never again see the people you left behind, and they might never know what became of you. If Jacob and Margaretha had the option to take a one-year contract that included round-trip transportation and good pay for a temporary job nobody else wanted to do, would they have taken that instead? Unlikely. The area they left had passed back and forth between France and Germany as the spoils of war. Their first four children born here were naturalized in 1740. They came to build a new life.
That’s also true for many of my friends whose families emigrated to America. One friend had a framed photograph of her ancestors in their Russian village. Knowing she loved to travel, I asked if she thought she would ever visit there. Her response: Why would I want to visit a place my family fled because people there wanted to kill them?
Another friend was born in the U.S. but her Polish father came here as a displaced person after World War II. His journey included time in a Soviet work camp in Siberia, and time working on the Suez Canal.
Another friend was a small child when his mother brought him to the U.S. as Putin rose to power. He no longer visits family members left behind: There’s a very real possibility that, while there, he would be conscripted into the military and sent to fight against Ukraine. My heart hurts for his Russian grandmother, but I’m happy his talents and work ethic are being applied here.
It took my family seven generations to migrate from Philadelphia to Maryland to Ohio, Michigan and Indiana until I finally ended up in northern Wisconsin. I’ve heard that many churches here conducted services in the native languages of immigrant settlers until World War I. It was no longer safe, then, to take comfort in the familiar cadences of worship in German or Polish or Bohemian.
Do I think the great-great-grandparents of my neighbors came here to overthrow the US government? No. No more than I think Jacob came with the intent to overthrow the British Colonial government (although he and my great-great-great-great grandfather served in the Revolutionary War).
I figure they came expecting to clear fields, raise crops, raise children, and worship in a church they helped build. At that time, I wonder if their neighbors had misgivings about Lutherans? Was their faith still perceived as radical? Quite possibly.
Looking Ahead
After 9/11, the Bush Administration launched what was called the Global War On Terror. It included the creation of organizations tasked with identifying and disrupting financing networks – to deny terrorist groups access to the international financial system, to impair the ability of terrorists to fundraise, and to expose, isolate and incapacitate the financial networks of terrorists. I remember thinking then, that it made sense but… What about every Irish-American who sent contributions to the Irish Republican Army during The Troubles?
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) arose out of the Global War On Terror. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is an agency within DHS. Its mission, I thought, was to conduct criminal investigations, enforce immigration laws, preserve national security, and protect public safety. It’s hard to reconcile that mission with recent ICE activities.
Some believe that all ICE is doing is removing dangerous people who are in this country illegally. That anyone else caught up in those activities is guilty of assaulting, resisting or impeding people just trying to do their jobs. Or that they are paid protesters. That people who obey the law have nothing to fear.
And yet, we teach rural women to not pull over on a dark country road before ensuring that the flashing lights behind them belong to a bona fide law enforcement officer.
We sometimes have difficulty following instructions from traffic control at a rural motor vehicle accident scene. Imagine how confusing it could be for a driver to get conflicting instructions from armed agents. Trouble can be like a caravan of manure tankers: Sometimes avoiding it is harder than it sounds.
The last seven administrations have found that immigration reform is not simple. And it’s easier to stoke outrage than to address difficult questions.
So here’s a question for us to ponder: Are we ready to carry citizenship papers at all times? All of us, all the time? Going to fish fry on Friday nights and to the dump on Saturday mornings? Hauling tankers of liquid manure ourselves because we are accustomed to paying factory farm prices for milk and cheese? How confident are we that the rule of law will protect us and our families? Because there’s an increasing likelihood that anyone can be stopped for the crime of proximity and expected to produce proof of citizenship.
A friend heard this at a family gathering shortly after a fatal shooting in Minneapolis: Native American people had been questioned and in some cases detained by ICE. Some who produced Tribal IDs as proof of citizenship were released, but ICE agents refused to return their Tribal IDs. What happens if they’re stopped again and cannot produce that documentation?
And now, ICE agents are reportedly operating on tribal lands just a few miles from where I live. Families here are frightened – rural families that have been here much, much longer than mine.
There’s also a price tag on this border and interior enforcement program that concerns me. I have questions about why so much investment in detention infrastructure and contracts is necessary for a surge operation that was nominally to remove the so-called “worst of the worst”. ICE enforcement and arrest statistics leave me questioning the methods field agents use to determine reasonable suspicion of who might be a criminal alien or immigration violator subject to detention without a judicial warrant. Who profits from this now, and who profits in the future?
And who pays the tab? Probably the same people who can expect to see food prices rise and supply become more uncertain. Us.
Where will farm labor come from in the near future? If people don’t see a viable path to citizenship, why come here? If even those with legal status are swept up in warrantless removals, why show up to work? If Temporary Protected Status programs that let people live, work and drive here – legally – are terminated, who will do those jobs? And it’s not just agriculture with concerns. At least one in 20 Wisconsin workers is a noncitizen.
Will people like that South African crew still come to the US on H2-A farm workers visas? Or are they and their families hearing reports from the US that make the situation here sound even worse than a manure truck rollover?
Yeah, it’s a mess.
Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin.
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