Mary Jo Dudley

Director of the Cornell Farmworker Program

Mary Jo Dudley, Director of the Cornell University Farmworker Program and a faculty member in the Department of Development Sociology, says that immigration policies need to change both to protect the rights of farmworkers and to support the struggling dairy industry.

Dudley says: 

“The controversy surrounding the arrests in Rome, New York is whether ICE violated the law by not producing a warrant for its raid on a privately-owned farm. Given agriculture’s reliance on undocumented farmworkers, the recent rise in immigration enforcement in New York state is of concern to immigrant communities as well as farmers. It is important that Governor Andrew Cuomo has condemned ICE’s actions and other state leaders should follow his lead. The key will be how this is implemented.

“It is critical that we focus on how immigration reform can be achieved to accommodate the needs of agriculture and the current immigrant workforce. In the meantime, our program supports farmworkers by helping them plan in advance of an emergency (such as farm and automobile accidents or an immigration event) and assist them in attending to the needs of their U.S. born children, including assigning temporary guardianship when appropriate.

“Dairy farmers are in a particularly difficult situation regarding immigrant labor – the costs of production are currently higher than the federally controlled price for milk and immigrant workers help fill the gap when U.S. workers are unable or unwilling to take jobs in dairy. The economic repercussions of removing current skilled workers from already stressed dairy farms are significant.”