Organic Farmers Speak Out on Immigration
As farmers who are dedicated to the health of the soil and of the people who eat our crops, we are also concerned about justice and equity. For our farms to thrive, we need many hands – most of us share the work with the people we hire because we know it is healthy, dignified labor with a deep social purpose. Like conventional farmers, many of us depend on immigrant labor. It is painful to hear immigrants attacked as criminals when we know the hard-working people without whose labor there would not be food on many tables in this country, and the new entry farmers who overcome daunting obstacles to establish outstanding farms and farm networks.
The immigrants who come here make enormous sacrifices, separating from their families for long stretches, missing important family milestones, even sickness and death, to work for OUR food system at jobs that many citizens are unwilling to do.
Undocumented immigrants contributed $96.7 billion in taxes in the United States in 2022 and paid higher state and local tax rates than the top 1% of households in the vast majority of states, according to a study published in August by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The study further found that undocumented immigrants paid $59.4 billion in federal taxes and contributed an additional $37.4 billion to state and local tax coffers in 2022. Per capita, they paid $8,889 in total taxes, and one-third of this money went for programs from which they are excluded because of their immigrant status.
Jessica Culley, the General Coordinator of CATA, the Farmworker Support Committee in New Jersey, writes:
“Legislation and executive orders addressing piecemeal immigration issues are not the answer, and focusing only on issues at the border and asylum is not the answer. The last real immigration reform law was passed in the 1980s. Since then, Congress has failed to do anything to fix the current broken immigration system and instead now has resorted to just using immigrants as a pawn in their political games to hold onto power.”
As organic farmers, we are a strong, diverse, entrepreneurial, and innovative community. Among us, immigrants have contributed significantly to the advancement of organic, and regenerative agriculture that is grounded in ancestral indigenous ecological knowledge, and enhanced by the hard-working descendants of the original people of these lands from Canada throughout Central America who now have to migrate across their own ancestral lands to make ends meet and to support their families.
As Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, a first generation Guatemalan immigrant and leader in the Regenerative Agriculture Movement in the US writes: “many of us, like other immigrants before us, came to this country ready to give it all, to contribute to the social, economic, and ecological well being of the nation, and we will keep doing this despite the apathy and lack of respect and often outright discrimination from Government at all levels, educational institutions, and the system as a whole. Public figures must be held accountable for how they portray immigrants, documented or not; when a leader makes a statement, it has a ripple effect. We come together to seek accountability for those using immigration as a political game. Words have tremendous power that can traumatize and lead to violence against first generation US citizens, their families, and the millions who, through no fault of their own, have had to leave their homelands to survive.”
The current US immigration system is dysfunctional and continues to get worse as more people are forced from their homes by extreme poverty, wars, and rampaging climate change. As people who ourselves are the children and grandchildren of immigrants, we want comprehensive immigration reform established by legislative action that creates fair and humane immigration policies, with a path to citizenship for the undocumented, and recognizes the humanity and dignity of all immigrants. We welcome the many farmers among the tide of immigrants, and want them to receive land, and resources for farming it. We demand an end to targeting and blaming the millions of people who come to our country seeking to contribute their work and provide a better life for their families. A fully sustainable system of food and farming is not possible without justice for all the people of the earth.
Signed by:
Elizabeth Henderson, Peacework
Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, Salvatierra Farms
Julie Davenson, Osgood Ridge Farm
Leah Penniman, Soul Fire Farm
Petra Page-Mann, Fruition Seeds
Anne Schwartz, Blue Heron Farm
Dru Rivers and Paul Muller, Full Belly Farm
Elizabeth Bragg, Long Hearing Farm
Nancy Vail and Jered Lawson, Pie Ranch
Laura Davis, Long Life Farm
Mary-Howell Martens, Lakeview Organic Grain
Klaas Martens, Klaas and Mary-Howell Martens Farm
Michael Sligh, Vineyard Creek Farm
Regeneration International