Immigration reform could be costing legal migrants jobs working blueberry fields in Maine

The push for immigration reform, and the fear of hiring illegals, could be costing legal migrant workers jobs. Seasonal jobs picking blueberries in Maine is break-backing work that pays as much as $20 an hour, but few Americans apply, leaving the jobs to migrants. Wanting to avoid the hassle of trying to weed out illegal immigrants in the hiring process, more companies are turning to machines to replace hand pickers, Dave Sherwood reports for Reuters. The number of seasonal Maine blueberry pickers has dropped nearly 80 percent in the past 15 years, to fewer than 1,000 last year.

Unemployment in Maine is 6.9 percent, but is as high as 10 percent in Washington County, "a poor, sparsely populated corner of Maine where the economy revolves around agriculture, forestry and tourism," Sherwood writes. "The problem is acute throughout the oldest, whitest state in the nation. Despite that, the seasonal jobs, which offer a short period of intense physical labor, found few takers among area residents and were traditionally filled by migrants."

But it's not Americans workers that have migrants worried. It's tractors. "Jobs previously filled by those with dubious documents haven't transferred to Americans, as some proponents of E-Verify anticipated," Sherwood writes. "Instead, many of Maine's largest growers have pushed to mechanize the harvest, eliminating many of the once-coveted seasonal jobs. It is an unexpected consequence, observers said, of decades of uncertainty and political wrangling over immigration reform."

In 2001, Whitney Blueberries, a smaller grower with 300 acres, partnered with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to ensure its seasonal staff of handpickers are legal, Sherwood writes. Spokesperson Durand Cercone told Sherwood, "We want to do things right. But every year its a gamble. You never know if enough people are going to show up to get the job done. You can see why people are going towards mechanization. It's a tough call when you've got berries rotting in the field." (Read more)