It’s peak harvest time for sweet cherries in Oregon and Washington. Growers in the Pacific Northwest are anticipating a strong crop this year, with a higher yield than last year’s harvest. But what they weren’t anticipating was a workforce shortage that’s being driven by the fear of immigration enforcement raids. KUOW reported earlier on how this issue is threatening the livelihoods of cherry farmers in Washington.
The immigration crackdown is also clouding the outlook for cherry growers in Oregon, according to Ian Chandler, chair of the Oregon Sweet Cherry Commission and the co-owner of CE Farm Management, a cherry orchard in The Dalles. Chandler said he’s not aware of any recent immigration enforcement raids on farms in the Columbia Gorge. But he says the fear of potential enforcement activity led to a 50% reduction in available workers for most cherry farmers in the region at the start of harvest two weeks ago.
Some migrant farm workers whose employers obtained H-2A visas for them have also been stuck at the border in Mexico and unable to help with the harvest in The Dalles, according to Tiffany Davis, business manager for K&K Land and Management. Chandler, Davis and Monica Zipprich, an orchard manager at K&K Land and Management, join us to talk about the toll federal immigration enforcement is taking on the Oregon sweet cherry industry.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Jenn Chávez: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Jenn Chávez. Thank you for tuning in. It’s sweet cherry season in Oregon and Washington, and this year’s crop is looking good. But in agriculture, a crop only goes as far as the people there to harvest it. And the region’s cherry growers are facing a workforce shortage. One of the reasons: fear among farm workers of workplace raids or arrests by ICE. That’s the federal agency leading a sweeping crackdown on immigrants for the Trump administration.
Joining me now are three folks from the Columbia Gorge to talk about how this is affecting Oregon’s sweet cherry industry. Ian Chandler is chair of the Oregon Sweet Cherry Commission and the co-owner of CE Farm Management, a cherry orchard in The Dalles. Tiffany Davis is the business manager for K&K Land and Management. Monica Zipprich is an orchard manager for K&K Land and Management.
Ian, Tiffany and Monica, thank you all so much for being with us today.
Ian Chandler: Good afternoon.
Chávez: Ian, I want to start off with you. What is the cherry harvest looking like so far on your orchard this year?
Chandler: So far, so good. We have a really nice crop of cherries. Quality is really good and everything’s looking good. It’s probably bigger than last year. So, so far so good.
Chávez: Well, that’s great to hear. How did you become aware of the impending workforce shortage for you and other sweet cherry growers? And how severe is that shortage?
Chandler: Here in The Dalles, we started our cherry harvest on the 10th of June. And most growers started with about 50% of the workforce they would generally have at this time of year. In our area, we rely on a lot of people who come up from California. They are migrant and seasonal farm workers who follow the crops. And this year we started out with about half of what we would normally have, which has caused some complications for us.
Chávez: You have said that there have not been any workplace raids by ICE on farms in the Gorge that you know of. But OPB recently reported on ICE arrests of a vineyard owner and his employee in Newberg, so this is happening in Oregon agriculture. What was it that made it clear to you that the fear of ICE enforcement, raids, deportations was playing a role in the labor shortage that your industry is facing?
Chandler: We maintain year-round contact with our workforce. These are people who we’ve worked with for years. [They are] good, regular, everyday people, family people. And we keep in touch with them throughout the year just to check in and keep them updated when harvest is going to start.
This year, we had a bunch of people who started saying, “We’re not sure if we want to come up. There’s a lot of immigration raids down here in Southern California.” Many of our workers are immigrants. They have, probably, different situations within their families, but the fear is real. That because of their ethnicity, they are at risk of being picked up by ICE.
Chávez: How is this workforce shortage driving up costs for you and other cherry growers in the region? How is this affecting y’all economically?
Chandler: So cherries are a perishable crop. We have a small window of time to get them off when they’re ripe before they start spoiling, if you will. What happens when you’re starting off at 50% of your workforce, every day you just get farther and farther behind. You have your normal workflow where you’d be able to pick this at this timing.
But we’re getting to the point now where different orchard operations are having to make decisions. What is realistic for me to be able to actually harvest with a smaller labor crew? What am I going to have to leave in the field that’s just going to go to waste due to not having enough workers to get to the different blocks, which are different orchards, in a timely manner?
Chávez: Monica, I want to turn to you now for a few minutes. I know you’re an orchard manager in that role. What’s the workforce shortage looking like on your orchard this year?
Monica Zipprich: It’s similar to what Ian is mentioning. We also have workers who migrate from California. We also have workers from Washington and we’re noticing the same comments about not being able to come up this year for cherry harvest with us. And a big part of that, they spoke about all [being] in fear of driving up here from California just because of the ICE raids that they were all hearing about.
So shortage wise, we’re pretty similar to Ian in regards to not having a big workforce here currently. And on top of that, we participate in the H-2A program and we’re also having some complications with that. So we’re kind of short staffed all around.
Chávez: I definitely want to get into the H-2A visa aspect of this conversation. I’m glad you brought it up.
I did want to ask you … You have family members who’ve done farm work in the past. You’re the child of immigrant parents. How does your personal experience and your family’s experience in the workforce inform your perspective on this?
Zipprich: I actually started working in agriculture when I was 14 years old, with the owner that I am working for now here at K&K. I guess I grew up with that fear, just for my personal self and my family, and to this day. It’s something that was put to rest in past years and then starting this year, the fear came back. And it wasn’t just for myself. Obviously, it’s for my family members.
Chávez: I’m sorry that you’re navigating this again. I do want to hear more about the H-2A issue that you brought up.
Tiffany, I know you’re involved with that side of things as well. One of the services you provide at K&K Land and Management is labor contracting – that includes obtaining H-2 visas for migrant farm workers. And to be clear to all our listeners, this is a legal program that’s existed for a long time, but I know it’s a super complicated process. So before we get those updates about what’s been happening this year from you, can you give us a sense of what it usually takes to obtain these visas and contract H-2A workers for Oregon farms?
Tiffany Davis: It’s quite a lengthy process as well as a large added expense. But we start the process about four months prior to when we’re expecting each tree worker to arrive on our farm. We lay out, in a work contract, the tasks that we’re gonna want you to do, how many people we need to come up and help us, the locations we’re gonna work on. [We] kind of spell out what their work life is gonna look like for that whole time that they’re up here on a contract. We also provide housing for them and transportation for them, amongst numerous other amenities.
Chávez: I understand that some workers you obtained H-2A visas for this year were being held up at the U.S.-Mexico border. What can you tell us about that? Do you know why that happened? And what’s the status of that right now?
Davis: We do not know why it happened. We were anticipating getting this group of workers about two weeks ago. We had gone through all the processes. There’s a laundry list of agencies that have to cross-check these contracts, so we had gone through that whole process. They were getting ready to cross the border to make their way up to the farm. At the border is when the hold happened. Our whole contract got put on administrative processing. We were never communicated as to what triggered that administrative processing flag on it.
So we kept all of the workers down at the border crossing and hoped that this would be a short-term deal. But finally at that 10-day mark, we decided to send them back to their home location in Mexico, so they could be with their family until we can get this all straightened out.
As of right now, we still have no idea when those workers are going to come. We did learn recently that we’re definitely not the only ones in this boat. It seems to be a trend that farm labor contractors are getting flagged for these administrative processings, putting a huge delay in getting the workforce up here.
Chávez: And like I mentioned before, the H-2A visa program for agriculture is a long established and legal pathway for agricultural workers and employers. This is not the kind of illegal entry or things that you might hear about when in conversation about immigration. Why do you think this program is being subjected to additional scrutiny and holdups now?
Davis: There are probably a lot of different angles you can come from for that question. I don’t know, everybody wants ag, right? That’s how we see the world. But when it comes down to it, I think there’s also a lot of people who don’t want agriculture here. And we have a perishable crop that we have to hand harvest. There is no mechanical way to harvest that fruit. So to take away our only legal option to have the workforce that we need, I mean, they’re squeezing out the small farmers. That’s what they’re doing. And maybe the big guys will survive. I don’t know. It’s really a scary time in the business side of agriculture too.
Chávez: Ian, turning back to you now. Someone might see ICE raids happening on farms or in other workplaces and think, “OK, good. They should give those jobs to local workers anyway.” But what I’ve heard from many folks in agriculture is that it’s not that easy. How do you respond to hearing something like that?
Chandler: What I would say is that in this day and age, there’s not a lot of people born here in the United States who are interested in doing the skilled but physically demanding labor that we need to harvest our crops. It’s a tough job. The people who do it are professionals, who are very good at what they do. But it’s not for everybody. A lot of people want the secondary jobs that are a result of agricultural activity. They want to be the truck driver, they want to sell the chemicals, they want to do other stuff. But very few people actually want to be the farm worker, because it is a tough job.
Chávez: Not long after ICE raids in LA first made the news a couple weeks ago, President Trump appeared to do an about face on some workplace raids, directing ICE to put a pause on immigration arrests at farms as well as in restaurants and hotels. He wrote online, “Our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good longtime workers away from them.” So it sounds like a response specifically to what he’s hearing from the agriculture industry. But then days later, he switched it up again, reversing the order pausing ICE raids on farms. How did you react to that? What has this back and forth been like for you and/or the growers you work with?
Chandler: From a business perspective, obviously we want our good trained workers. But from a moral standpoint, these are our friends, neighbors and family members. And for them to be targeted for just going to do their job, that is something that’s deeply heartbreaking. My wife is originally from Mexico. She lived the first half of her life here in the country undocumented and knows the fear. She and I have been married and somehow magically now she has papers because we were married.
But it didn’t change the person she was. So I think we’re doing a disservice to our farm workers and our immigrant communities by somehow labeling them as not being OK. They are valued members of our communities, they’re family members. And that should be the underlying message here. Now, they also work with us in our industry and that is important for our industry to survive. But everything that’s going on is a really tough time and puts a lot of fear into our communities. It’s just really unfortunate.
Chávez: You’re kind of talking about this already, but I’m wondering how this environment of fear is affecting you personally. I mean, as an employer, you basically have longtime employees who are afraid to come to work. And that’s not really because of you. How are you grappling with that?
Chandler: Well, what we have to do is maintain the trust with our workforce. These are not just our workers. These are our friends and family members, like I’ve stated. And words are cheap. We can say, “Oh don’t worry, everything’s going to be OK.” We don’t know how things are going to be. All we can do is try to live our lives as normal as possible, provide a great place for them to work where they can earn a living to support their families, and try to be as supportive as possible. And if anything comes from this interview, I want our workforce to know and immigrants, just in general, to know that they are respected and cared for by the vast majority of this country despite the ugliness that’s going on right now in the media. It’s just … it’s sad times.
Chávez: You are the head of the Oregon Sweet Cherry Commission, so you’re in a role where you’re representing a lot of different folks in your industry. From that viewpoint, I’m wondering what do you want to see happen, either at the federal level or at the state level, to address these workforce shortages that you’re seeing in your industry and basically help out the folks that you’re working with in agriculture in Oregon?
Chandler: What I would hope for is that all political sides can lower the temperature on this type of thing and just recognize that we’re talking about normal people who are just trying to earn a living. We’re not talking about horrible criminals doing horrible things. We’re talking about regular people who are just trying to provide for their families. And if we first recognize that these are good people and don’t label them as being illegal, they are good people, and we recognize humanity in this, then the business part will take care of itself.
But we can get tied into knots about whether they should work or not work. Well, our country needs this workforce. Our country needs the contributions that these immigrants give in many different ways, both in work and just by being great members of the community. And I would just hope that our politicians can see that these are just normal people, just like anybody else. And they just need to be respected and taken care of.
Chávez: Thank you so much, Ian.
I want to ask the same question of Tiffany and Monica. What would you hope to see Congress or members of the federal administration do to address this issue and how it is affecting your work on the business side and the personal side?
Davis: Honestly, I would love to see a whole reform on how you obtain your legal documentation here, but also the H-2A program. The H-2A program is extremely complex. So to have that legal option to bring workers up from Mexico, if we had a more streamlined process, I think that it would just be easier and more cost effective. Everything would be more efficient about it, so maybe more growers would be attracted to the program.
As far as everything here domestically, before I worked in this industry, I was extremely naive as to how hard it was to get your legal status here in the United States. So hearing some of those stories has really opened my eyes. This isn’t something that you can just walk down to an office, fill out a couple forms, pay a couple bucks and get it. It’s super hard and really expensive, and they’re contributing to society. The whole thing needs a work over in my opinion.
Chávez: And Monica, do you have any last words or anything to add before we wrap up with y’all today?
Zipprich: I’m in the same boat with Tiffany. Ideally, we would want to see a reform. I mentioned previously, I am the daughter of immigrant parents who came here 30-plus years ago, who have spent more than half of their life here. And to say that there’s no legal way for them to be here, it’s pretty crazy to me. Like Tiffany says, they are contributing to the economy here. They’re doing everything the right way. But they legally can’t be here?
In regard to the workforce, I have personally been here with the owner of this company for 15 years. I’ve known him. And again, I was also in that boat where, five years ago, I was able to get my papers. Like Ian’s wife, I had to marry somebody that is a U.S. citizen in order for me to obtain my legal status here. And to think that that is the only way for us to be here legally is kind of mind blowing. I guess I’m in the same boat. We’re all here to make a living. We’re all here to support our family. If it wasn’t for my parents, my dad coming here 30 years ago, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have obtained the education that I have here. I wouldn’t also be a part of this community.
I’m here, I guess, speaking for everybody else who does live in the United States in fear. I think we’re all in agreement that we just want to see something happen and try to find some legal pathway for everybody that has been doing things correctly.
Chávez: Monica Zipprich, Tiffany Davis, Ian Chandler, thank you all so much for joining us today and sharing about what you’re facing in your industry.
All: Thank you.
Chávez: Ian Chandler is chair of the Oregon Sweet Cherry Commission and the co-owner of a cherry orchard in The Dalles. Tiffany Davis and Monica Zipprich are with K&K Land and Management.
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