Editorial: The immigrants may go. But the work won't

The Editorial Board, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Feb 12, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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In 2023, most Americans were spending $438 per month on groceries that five years ago cost them $335. If experts on Pennsylvania farming are to be believed, consumers need to brace themselves for prices to continue to rise. The reason is not just the global avian flu pandemic. It's the federal government's immigration policies.

As stories circulate about the worst, and smallest, percentage of undocumented immigrants, it's important to consider how crucial undocumented laborers have been to keeping Pennsylvanians well-fed and their kitchens well-stocked.

Given the ongoing ICE raids happening throughout the state, as well as the overall labor shortage in that sector, farmers are right to worry. Many are already feeling the effects of the federal government's immigration crackdowns. So are restaurants and the shopping public. Flour is more expensive. Dog food is more expensive. Vegetables are more expensive.

According to the American Immigration Council, Pennsylvania is home to approximately 155,000 undocumented immigrants, with 20% specifically employed in agriculture. But those 30,000 make up half the workforce who pick our produce, process our poultry and enable our thriving dairy industry.

The H-2A visa program, which is designed to allow farmers to fill temporary jobs with foreign workers (like coming to pick apples for a few weeks), should create enough avenues to employ folks who want to perform the tough duties of farmwork. But the numbers don't bear that out — and there are not enough Americans applying — so an industry that needs workers, and contends with chronic labor shortages, has come to depend on undocumented immigrants to get the job done.

"The labor shortage will only get worse as folks are swept up in raids — and even documented workers may decide that the risk is not worth it and leave agricultural jobs," Lerae Kroon, an attorney at the Pennsylvania Farmworker Project, told the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

Fruit can rot in fields if not picked at the right time, whether the hands that pick it are here legally or not. Fewer crops being picked, fewer cows being milked, fewer chickens being slaughtered means higher prices, but also an unnecessary scarcity of very necessary foods, which is unusual for Americans, accustomed as we are to fully-stocked grocery stores.

We must all acknowledge the important work undocumented immigrants have done for Pennsylvania, even as we acknowledge the illegality of working in the United States without permission. But the work won't disappear or lessen, and Pennsylvania agriculture deserves a solution that benefits us all.

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