Wisconsin Dairy Farms Weigh Immigration Crackdowns Against Labor Realities

By Shereen Siewert

Amid stepped-up immigration enforcement, Wisconsin’s dairy industry is confronting a familiar tension: farms rely heavily on immigrant labor to keep cows milked around the clock, even as policymakers, advocates and producers disagree over how to balance workforce needs, labor protections and the rule of law.

The debate has sharpened calls to modernize visa rules for year-round agriculture while scrutinizing working conditions on large farms.

Francisco Guerrero, with the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service, works directly with Latino workers on dairy farms throughout central Wisconsin. In a conversation on WPR’s “Morning Edition,” he said that while many of these employees do not have permanent legal status, they have become indispensable to the industry over time.

“There would be no dairy industry without these workers,” Guerrero said.

The growing labor shortage, along with stepped up immigration enforcement, is prompting renewed calls for reform of the federal H-2A visa program — a system that allows foreign nationals to fill temporary farm jobs in the U.S.

Growers have long argued that the program is cumbersome, expensive, and poorly suited to the year-round demands of dairy production. Many see the current crisis as a potential turning point, one that could finally push Congress and federal agencies to modernize the process and make it more responsive to the realities of the industry.

“We’re doing everything we can right now, within the statute, to make it better, easier, more efficient, and cheaper for our producers to use that program,” said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, speaking in Kansas City in September.

That unrelenting schedule also means any disruption in the workforce can have an immediate and costly impact. Guerrero said he hopes policymakers will recognize the value of immigrant labor to Wisconsin’s economy and identity.

“The dairy industry is the pride of Wisconsin,” Guerrero said. “We need that heart to keep beating.”

The following interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

Shereen Siewert: Some people might assume that migrant workers are in this country illegally. What is the reality?