DUNGENESS — Washington state’s fields and forests are missing a key element during this fall’s harvest, say two well-seasoned statesmen of agriculture.
Migrant farm workers “are just not here,” said Nash Huber, owner of Nash’s Organic Produce, an operation that produces scores of crops on 400 acres across the Dungeness Valley.
“I know of farmers around Washington who are having tremendous problems finding help,” added Roger Short, owner of Valley View Dairy in Chimacum and a member of the Washington Farm Bureau board of directors.
“I know people who’ve lost their milking crews.”
Short suspects the U.S. Border Patrol’s intensified presence on the North Olympic Peninsula — what he calls “harassment” — has frightened immigrant workers off the farms.
The workers are scared because they’re undocumented, Short said.
There is no process for those who have crossed into the United States illegally to obtain legal documents.
Short knows of at least two Mexicans who came to Jefferson County, found work on farms, sought legal residency, couldn’t navigate the paperwork and were deported back to Mexico.
Mexican farm workers, both Short and Huber say, are highly skilled, grateful for their jobs — and very hard to replace now that they’ve largely disappeared from the North Olympic Peninsula.
Few native-born people can or want to spend long days hoeing, bunching spinach or cutting cabbage, Huber said. “It takes focus,” and a disciplined mind as well as a strong back.
“We gave up wholesale spinach,” Huber added, “because that requires the skilled workers who aren’t here.”
He’s also considering other changes to his product line, and this year introduced more grain crops since those can be managed mostly with machinery.
Short gave up dairying five years ago and now runs beef cattle and a new composting business, Magical Dirt, on his 350 acres.
Back when he was hiring dairy workers, “the native-born people didn’t want to do what we were doing. They don’t want to deal with the fact that a dairy is 24-seven-365.”
Strawberry fields
Arturo Flores, manager of the 1,100-acre Graysmarsh Farm north of Sequim, tells a similar story of teenagers who come to work in the strawberry fields.
Many of these Sequim-grown workers cannot keep up with their migrant counterparts.
There are some, Flores said, who don’t expect the job to be a leisurely lark like last summer’s family outing to the you-pick patch.
When the berry fields are ready, “we work seven days a week, 12 hours a day,” and the fastest hands can make up to $17 an hour.
Flores pays minimum wage plus a 45-cents-per pound bonus for strawberry pickers.
Still, he said, many teens would rather work in a restaurant or any place where the weather doesn’t beat down on their bodies.
Flores, who immigrated legally from Mexico in 1986, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1996.
He’s run Graysmarsh for 12 years, working with a year-round crew of Hispanics he said are likewise legal immigrants.
Produce lost
But he also believes that a lot of produce from Washington’s farms could be lost if undocumented workers continue to stay away due to the Border Patrol’s presence.
The border agents “are just doing their job,” of searching for narcotics traffickers and terrorists as well as illegal immigrants, Flores acknowledged.
Yet it’s clear to him that “most of the people working on farms are not drug dealers, and they are not terrorists.”
Huber and Short, who have a combined 85 years of farming on the North Olympic Peninsula, agree that the nation’s borders should be secure.
But they want to see some sort of path for immigrant workers to gain legal status once they’ve proven their value in the workforce.
They have done that in spades, the farmers say.
“We should treat them as equals,” said Short. “We should treat them like they are people.”
The Border Patrol “is harassing immigrants,” he added, “and that isn’t solving the problem.”
The farm-labor shortage “was created by Congress,” Huber added.
Federal lawmakers have failed to reform immigration policy since “certain parties have chosen to demonize the immigrant.”
Huber pointed out that over the decades, Hispanic, Japanese and Chinese immigrants have come here to plant and harvest Americans’ food. All have been demonized.
Questions roadblocks
Dan Fazio, director of employment services for the Washington Farm Bureau, said this week that the Border Patrol road blocks set up on the North Olympic Peninsula this summer and fall violate the state Constitution.
The Border Patrol, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, says the need for national security supersedes such state laws.
“That rubs our [farm bureau] members the wrong way,” Fazio said.
“We believe the states should be able to decide if they want to have a higher level of rights” for their residents.
“If these road blocks are going to stop terrorists, we’re obviously going to have to support them,” he said.
But Fazio believes Border Patrol road blocks — and what he suspects is a focus on Hispanic migrant farm workers — could make Washington feel like a police state.
U.S. Border Patrol agent Michael Bermudez, spokesman for the Blaine sector that includes the north Peninsula, said the agency does not profile Hispanics whether they’re on city streets, on farms or pulling into checkpoints near Forks, Discovery Bay or the Hood Canal Bridge.
Gain control of borders
The Border Patrol’s mission is to “gain control of our nation’s borders,” and apprehend foreigners seeking illegal entry, Bermudez said.
This spring, the agency increased its force to 16,371 agents along the northern U.S. border from Washington to Maine; he declined to say how many of those are assigned to the Peninsula.
“We restrict ourselves from enforcing immigration laws in schools and churches. But if we see an individual who looks suspicious, we will stop that individual,” Bermudez said.
“We don’t differentiate,” based on ethnicity or age, he added.
“I arrest people who have broken the law.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailyews.com
