At the Republican National Convention, speakers explained that a second Donald Trump administration would carry out the “largest deportation in history,” NPR reported. Trump has said that if re-elected, he would deport up to 20 million undocumented immigrants. (In 2021, the Pew Research Center estimated that there were approximately 10 million undocumented immigrants in the US)
If that were to happen, Idaho would feel the impact acutely, experts say. Foreign-born workers, including illegal or undocumented workers, play a crucial role in the state’s dairy industry, said Phil Watson, an economist at the University of Idaho’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
Milk prices across the country have been stable for years, The New York Times reported in October, making difficult, dangerous manufacturing jobs low-paying and unattractive to many Americans. Foreign-born workers end up filling “jobs that Americans don’t take,” according to a February study from the University of Idaho’s McClure Center for Public Policy Research.
In dairy and other industries, “companies are hiring unauthorized workers to meet their labor needs because authorized workers cannot be found,” the study summary said. Without this labor, “companies adapt…by missing opportunities for business growth, cutting production or even closing.”
How many of Idaho’s dairy workers are undocumented?
In a departure from national trends, Idaho’s illegal immigrant population remained stable at about 35,000 people between 2005 and 2021, the University of Idaho reported in June.
According to the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, there are approximately 4,400 dairy workers working locally in Idaho, nearly 90% of whom are foreign-born.
It’s difficult to know how many of these workers are in the U.S. illegally, Watson told the Idaho Statesman by phone. Industry leaders are convinced that “nobody (they) hire is undocumented,” he said, but “whether or not those documents are legitimate or not… they would say, ‘That’s not up to us.’”
“The industry doesn’t want to be in the business of checking documents,” he said.
In a 2012 study, Watson and his colleague Hernan Tejeda found that the foreign-born labor force was much larger than the census and other government population data suggest, although precise figures were difficult to obtain.
Rick Naerebout, the CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, estimated that unauthorized workers fill up to 30,000 jobs in Idaho.
Watson and Tejeda’s research found that if Idaho were to reduce its supply of foreign-born, less-skilled workers by 50%, the state’s GDP would drop by more than $900 million. By 2024, that number would only have grown, he told the Statesman.
Consequences of deportation of dairy workers
Without foreign-born workers in Idaho’s dairy industry, Pete Wiersma, president of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, told the Times he didn’t think there would be milk. “I just don’t think we can get it done,” he said.
Watson said that claim may be a bit “bombastic,” but without these workers, the state’s economy would take a major hit. Dairy cows must be milked at least daily. If other states were to adopt more lenient immigration policies than Idaho, “you will definitely see herds moving,” he said.
“People don’t stop milking cows, but they do change hands,” he said.
But given the abruptness of the proposed policy, Naerebout said the effects may be more widespread. Idaho is the third-largest dairy state in the country, he said, “so what happens here would impact the entire industry.”
There simply aren’t enough workers in Idaho to replace the foreign-born workers in the dairy sector, he said. And if cows are not milked on time, they can quickly become ill or stop milking altogether.
Idaho could feel the impact beyond the roughly 4,000 dairy farm workers. The industry brings billions of dollars in revenue to the state, Watson has found, creating jobs for both milk producers and processors. Even residents with no apparent connection to the industry can feel the effects.
“Dairy farmers and movie theaters are connected,” he said. “Milking cows pays workers. Employees go to the movies… There are many jobs where they don’t realize it, but work indirectly for the dairy sector.”
Rural Idaho, where dairy farms are most common, would “absolutely” be “disproportionately impacted” by the loss of these workers, Naerebout said.
Politicians who advocate harsh policies that bar unauthorized workers know there can be negative consequences, Watson said, but they may believe that their approach is valid anyway — that the state or country must enforce the rule of law.
He drew a comparison to a state tax on carbon emissions in Washington that, The Washington Post reported, has driven up gasoline prices in an effort to force major greenhouse gas emitters “to pay for their pollution.” Politicians in the state “understand that they are hurting Washington’s economy … but they’re doing it because they think it’s the right thing to do,” Watson said.
Idaho’s dairy industry has long advocated for immigration reform and is fighting for changes to the country’s guest worker visa program to create a “qualified, reliable workforce” and “provide security for farmers and their workers,” according to Talking Points of the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation. shared with the Statesman.
The association supports the legal status of existing agricultural workers and their immediate families and access to a year-round worker visa program for agricultural employers. The website states that verification of employees’ legal status is “the responsibility of the U.S. government, not employers.”
Idaho’s dairy industry has been particularly outspoken on this issue because it faces particular challenges in reaching foreign-born workers. The industry is excluded from the user country’s H-2A visa program, which brings workers into the country on a temporary basis and is intended to cover seasonal peaks in labor needs, rather than the year-round work that dairy farms require.
“But make no mistake,” said Naerebout. “Any reasonable estimate is that 50% of the agricultural workforce is unauthorized. So this is much bigger than just a dairy problem, especially for a state like Idaho where agriculture is the backbone of our economy.”
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