In rural Maine, farmers worry migrant workers will be too afraid to show up for work and crops will rot in the fields

Blueberries burst forth during Maine's early summer,
but they need to be harvested quickly. (Adobe Stock photo)

As the Trump administration steps up its immigration and deportation efforts, Maine farmers who rely on immigrant labor to harvest seasonal crops such as wild blueberries are concerned about labor shortages. Some farmers worry that no matter how legal their past immigrant employees may be, fears about deportation will keep them from "showing up to rake [blueberry] fields — out in plain sight," reports Joyce Kryszak of The Maine Monitor. Without immigrant workers, Maine farmers say they can't bring in all their fields within the short window to harvest before crops begin to rot.

Harry Ricker and his wife, Nancy, own Ricker Hill Orchards in the small town of Turner, Maine. Each year the couple pays to participate in the H-2A visa program to employ "dozens of hard-working apple pickers each harvest season, mostly from Jamaica," Kryszak writes. They don't think they can hire enough non-immigrants to complete their apple harvest. Harry Ricker told Kryszak, "There are a lot less local people that want to do it, so we have to have [the H-2A] program. Without it, we’ll just be out of the industry. We go away.”

Meanwhile, state officials are working to help Maine businesses stay on top of visa program requirements and changes. "Patrick Woodcock, the executive director of the Maine Chamber of Commerce, told Kryszak, "Regardless of the merits of the polic[ies], we really do want to ensure that employers understand how to be in compliance. There may be employees that were authorized to work that may be affected by changes and may not be authorized to work now or in the coming months.”

Local apple and blueberry farmers aren't the only ones worried. "Agricultural farmers of all types . . . and fisheries. . . have come to rely on the largely Latino migrant and year-round immigrant communities," Kryszak reports. "A 2015 Maine Department of Labor . . . survey, the most recent report available from the Department, found that 56% of migrant farm workers were from Mexico, with others from Haiti, Canada, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Philippines."