(06/04/2009) “This is the most contentious, most divisive issue that faces our community,” Southampton Town Councilwoman Anna Throne-Holst said
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 Morgan McGivern Photos
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at an immigration forum in East Hampton last Thursday.
The event at Guild Hall, focusing on the impact of immigration on the East End economy, was the second in a series organized by Ms. Throne-Holst, Representative Tim Bishop, and State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.
Mr. Bishop said the forums were designed to “share the same set of facts,” so that people on all sides of the issue could begin with some points of common knowledge. “I remain convinced that anger isn’t going to solve this problem. Emotion isn’t going to solve this problem,” he said.
The facts Mr. Bishop spoke of were presented by Joe Gergela of the Long Island Farm Bureau, Judy Brink, an M.B.A. fellow at Dowling College, David Dyssegaard Kallick of the Fiscal Policy Institute, Melinda Rubin, an immigration attorney, and Elvira Sochacki of the Department of Labor.
“We’re trying to get information out there,” Mr. Thiele said in his welcoming remarks. The goal, he said is to “work with each other and listen to each other.”
Although there were some angry outbursts from audience members who did not agree with the evening’s speakers, the moderator, Southampton Town Justice Andrea Schiavoni, kept the tone civil as speakers responded to questions that people had written on index cards.
The speakers addressed immigrants’ role in the state and county economy, their specific value to the agricultural industry, and problems with current immigration laws that cause difficulties for both employers and foreign workers seeking temporary visas.
“This is an issue that is not partisan,” said Mr. Gergela, who was also speaking on behalf of the New York Farm Bureau. According to him, agriculture makes up 6 percent of the gross product of Long Island and employs 7,000 people. “The agricultural industry on Long Island is grossly underestimated in value,” he said. He believes it is “near $1 billion in its value.” Immigrants, legal and illegal, form a big part of the agricultural labor force, but Mr. Gergela stressed that it’s impossible to tell “by looking at someone” whether they are documented or undocumented.
“A farmer must complete an I-9 form. Once they have done that, they have done their due diligence,” he said. However, undocumented workers are vulnerable to deportation, and last fall, he said, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers raided farms in upstate New York, it “put a number of farmers out of business.” Without people to harvest the produce, it was left to rot in fields, he said.
“We need a reliable, legal, safe work force,” Mr. Gergela said. The question America has to ask itself, he said, is “Do we want to import workers or do we want to import food? Thirty-seven percent of food in this country is already imported.”
The farm bureau has been pushing for an improved guest worker program in addition to overall immigration reform. Even if the millions of undocumented workers in the United States received amnesty, “in agriculture, we’re still going to be deficient,” he said. “Common sense needs to prevail. The idea that we’re going to have planes, trains, and automobiles take these people and have them go home,” is unrealistic, he said. Rather, he believes that the country needs to find a way to make undocumented immigrants “part of our society. . . . If we don’t have workers, it’s a $10 billion immediate hit on the fruit and vegetable sector.”
Judy Brink
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In the summer of 2008, Ms. Brink and other graduate students helped the farm bureau study how farming on Long Island would be affected by a lack of immigration reform. Last Thursday, she discussed the findings of their study. Of the 297 farmers surveyed, 42.5 percent responded. Eighty-two percent of the farms responding had been in business for more than 20 years; 24 percent had been operational for more than 100 years, and 71 percent of them were 100 acres or less.
Because smaller farms employ fewer people, many said that losing even a few workers “would be devastating,” Ms. Brink said. “Most of the vegetables and fruits on Long Island must be handpicked and don’t lend themselves to automation.” More than 80 percent of the farmers who responded to the survey were concerned about their ability to maintain their labor force three or more years down the road if there is no change in immigration rules; 68 percent are already having difficulty under the existing visa programs.
“If they could not sustain their business due to lack of immigration reform,” Ms. Brink said, 6.7 percent would leave Long Island, 36 percent said they would sell land for development, and 34.7 percent said they would close their business.
Statewide, she said, there are $3.1 billion in agricultural sales. Should the farmers’ predictions about their business come to pass, “it would mean a $700 million loss in agricultural production and 750,000 farm acres vulnerable to development.” In Suffolk County, it could mean a loss of $45.5 million and 34,000 acres vulnerable to development.
The Fiscal Policy Institute did research on the role of immigrants in the New York State economy and on Thursday, Mr. Kallick talked about their role in the five Downstate counties outside of New York City. In conducting the research, he said, there was broadest agreement that “the immigration system is broken, but there is intense disagreement about what the solution should be.”
New York’s gross domestic product is $1.02 trillion and a quarter of that is “the result of the output of immigrants,” who also make up about the same percentage of the population.
In the five downstate counties outside of New York City, 18 percent of people are foreign born; they make up 23 percent of the working age population and 23 percent of the labor force, and earn 20 percent of the wage and salary income, Mr. Kallick reported. There are 183,360 foreign-born people in Suffolk County, with the largest number — 15 percent — coming from El Salvador. Another 7 percent are from the Dominican Republic, 5 percent hail from India, and 4 percent each hail from Poland, Italy, Peru, the Philippines, Jamaica, Guatemala, and Ecuador. In Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester Counties, Mr. Kallick said, about 20 percent of immigrants are estimated to be undocumented.
“Day laborers attract a lot of attention, but they are a tiny portion of the immigrants. . . . even of the undocumented immigrants.”
Ms. Rubin handles H-2A visas for agricultural workers, and H2-B visas for seasonal workers for hotels, restaurants, and other seasonal businesses. She is a big proponent of legal immigration, she said, but current laws make it “so hard to do the right thing. It’s so expensive. It’s so time consuming.”
“There is a huge backlog of people who try to do it legally, but if you do it illegally, it’s much faster,” she said, and the result is that many people choose to come to the U.S. through illegal channels. She said that 53 to 73 percent of farm workers are undocumented.
She quoted a report from the Congressional Budget Office that said that the 2007 immigration reform bill would have generated $48 billion in new revenue from income and new payroll taxes.
Audience members’ questions focused mainly on illegal immigration. They asked the panelists to discuss ways to “bring undocumented workers to legal status so they get a fair wage and pay fair taxes.” They wanted to hear “Why are people upset with the influx of illegal immigrants?” and one person asked a blunt, if misplaced question: “How come you keep refusing to enforce the law?”
“How do you put a number on the underground economy?” Mr. Gergela wondered. He sympathized with businesspeople who are frustrated. “If you’re a businessman and you’re doing everything right, it can put you out of business and it’s not right.”
“It’s not like every American citizen pays their taxes,” Ms. Rubin said.
Mr. Kallick said that the underground economy creates a big problem with workers’ compensation. Because fewer people are paying into it, costs are higher for those that are.
Ms. Rubin, quoting a study by the Center for American Progress, said it would cost $41.2 billion to send 10 million illegal immigrants home, while the budget for the Department of Homeland Security is $47 billion.
“You can’t realistically estimate what the cost would be,” Mr. Kallick said.
More forums on immigration are planned in the coming months.