Farmers, factories, at the center of the immigration debate. Trump has vowed mass deportations.

A return of Donald Trump to the White House may present a conundrum for Wisconsin dairy farmers and manufacturers. Many support the Republican nominee's pro-business agenda and pledge to seal the U.S. southern border, but there could be harsh consequences if Trump launched trade wars and ordered mass deportations.

Immigration is high on the list of concerns.

It’s an issue employers in America's Dairyland want addressed in a sensible, non-threatening way as they've filled a large number of job vacancies with undocumented immigrant workers, often in rural areas where the local labor force has been shrinking for decades.

“We need functioning guest-worker visa programs. We need an immigration policy that solves problems,” said Kurt Bauer, president of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business organization.

“The policy we have now is causing problems,” he added.

Trump has pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, the largest such effort in U.S. history. He also would reinstate his “remain in Mexico” program that forces non-Mexican asylum seekers trying to enter the U.S. at the southern border to wait in Mexico for their cases to be resolved.

Wisconsin dairy industry rattled by mass deportation threat

The threat of mass deportations rattles Wisconsin's dairy industry. By some estimates, immigrants provide around 80% of the labor on large dairy operations, and many of those workers are in the U.S. illegally.

Without them, some farms milking cows day and night, 365 days a year, would likely shut down.

"The industry wouldn't exist without immigrants," said John Rosenow, a Buffalo County dairy farmer who has spent years urging the federal government, under Democrat and Republican administrations, to create a legal pathway for dairy farms to hire help from outside the United States.

"It's just so toxic, nobody will touch it," Rosenow said.

"But if the politicians and people in power don't make any sense, we do it our own way," he added.

Even midsize and smaller dairy farms have come to rely upon immigrant employees. “We would not be America’s Dairyland without them,” said Tina Hinchley, a dairy farmer from Cambridge and vice president of Wisconsin Farmers Union, a member-run organization that represents farmers' interests.

However, for milking cows 365 days a year, dairy farms cannnot access the H-2A farmworker program which grants visas for seasonal immigrant employees but not those seeking year-round positions.

“Farmers urgently need access to a stable, legal workforce,” says the National Milk Producers Federation, one of the industry’s largest trade groups.

“Dairy farmers cannot afford to lose their current workers without massive disruption to their farms and to rural economies. Employees who have been working on dairy farms for years should be able to continue working and earn permanent legal status, as should their immediate families,” it says.

Consumers would feel the disruption as around 79% of the U.S. milk supply comes from dairies that employ immigrant labor, according to the National Milk Producers Federation.

"If the U.S. dairy industry lost its foreign-born workforce, it would nearly double retail milk prices and cost the total U.S. economy more than $32 billion," NMPF says.

Farmers want Trump to seal the border, cut regulations

Yet many Wisconsin farmers support Trump's economic agenda and pledge to secure the southern border.

One of them is Cris Peterson with Four Cubs Farms, a 5th generation family-owned dairy in Grantsburg, in northwest Wisconsin. The farm has been in the Peterson family since 1877 when it was homesteaded by her husband Gary's great-grandmother.

In 2020, Cris was at the podium of the Republican National Convention, praising then President Trump for his pro-business policies. Her speech was taped in advance in Washington, D.C. while a scaled-back convention was held in Charlotte, North Carolina, during COVID.

"As a businessman, President Trump understands that farming is a complicated, capital-intensive and risky business. More than any president in my lifetime, he has acknowledged the importance of farmers and agriculture," Peterson, then 67, said in her speech.

In November 2017, the original barn which housed the Peterson farm's milking parlor was destroyed by fire. However the 860 cows were spared, and with help from neighbors, friends and strangers, the cows were sent to different farms to be cared for while Four Cubs recovered.

Peterson credited Trump for the farm's ability to rebound.

The president's "support and focus on negotiating new trade deals gave us the confidence to rebuild our barn and dairy operation. Business was booming again, and business boomed right up until the COVID-19 shutdown," she said in her RNC speech.

Peterson said she would welcome Trump's actions to curb illegal immigration.

"I'm concerned about who has been coming across the border, literally millions of people since Biden took office. I never thought he would be as horrible as he's been," she said in a recent Journal Sentinel interview.

As president, Trump strained trading relationships with Canada, Mexico, and imposed tariffs on the European Union and China. Trading partners pushed back with tariffs on U.S. agricultural products. Markets that took decades to develop were wiped out in months, according to Wisconsin Farmers Union.

The number of Wisconsin dairy farms fell 25% during Trump's four years in office. Yet many in the industry didn't blame his administration's agricultural policies which encouraged the growth of large dairy operations. Also, dairy farm numbers have been in decline for many years.

"Donald Trump became president in the middle of the Great Depression for dairy farmers in Wisconsin...generational farms across the nation were going out of business," Peterson said.

Manufacturers say they need immigrants

Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, in Manitowoc, has sought immigrants to fill jobs which otherwise would have gone vacant. The company says 35% of the employees at one of its plants in Iowa are immigrants.

The 115-year-old company, with locations in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and Indiana, has hired people from Mexico, Cuba, Kenya and Laos. Some of them are fluent in English but many are not. To ease their way into the workplace and new lives in America, the company offers English classes.

“We celebrate diversity. But we also recognize that our workplace is dangerous, and that our safety depends on being able to speak with each other,” said CEO Sachin Shivaram.

The foundry’s starting wage is around $25 an hour. Employees can earn shift premiums and bonuses based upon performance and the company’s finances. A benefits package includes $400 a month for childcare.

But it's challenging finding people to work in a hot, dusty environment where molten metal is poured into castings for products in the automotive, marine, agriculture, medical and other industries.

Not long ago, the company had a 100% turnover rate among new hires, according to Shivaram. Now, with immigrants, it’s kept positions filled and grown the business.

His parents came to Wisconsin from India in the 1970s during a labor shortage stemming from the Vietnam War. They had 45-year careers and raised three children in the United States.

“There is a world full of skilled and eager people who would love to work here,” Shivaram said.

The foundry has benefited from immigrants who initially settled in states like Florida and then relocated to Wisconsin where higher-paying manufacturing jobs were more plentiful.

“Housing is relatively affordable here,” Shivaram said. “And one thing that makes a difference in immigrant communities is their social networks…when you hire one person, they tell their extended family and friends."

One of those employees is Lilliam Torrente, originally from Nicaragua. She’s worked at the foundry for around two years, and like many immigrants, sends money home to support her grandparents and other family members.

In Nicaragua, the employment rate for women is only around 57%, substantially lower than the rate for men. In 2023, poverty, measured on an income of $3.65 U.S. per day, was more than 12%.

“Here I have more opportunities for my family. I can help,” Torrente said.

Ron Johnson says we need Trump again

In July 2019, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson disputed then President Trump's claim that Wisconsin farmers struggling to remain in business were "over the hump" and doing well.

"No. They're suffering," Johnson said, surrounded by dairy farmers in the conference room of a De Forest company that sold frozen bovine semen for artificial insemination of dairy cows.

Trump had downplayed the harmful effects of his tariffs on farmers and manufacturers.

"I'm making the administration well aware of the pain being felt in Wisconsin," Johnson said.

Still, five years later, he's remained a Trump supporter and sides with the former president on immigration.

"It has to start with securing the border. We're not going to be able to establish a functioning legal immigration system while we have this catastrophe, and it is a catastrophe, particularly on our southwest border," Johnson said in a recent Journal Sentinel interview.

The senator said he envisions an immigration system tied to the U.S. economy, in which individual states would decide how many immigrants they needed to fill job vacancies.

"If one state doesn't want more workers, fine, it's not going to participate. In another state, like Wisconsin, who definitely needs workers in manufacturing and dairy, we'd obviously be more open to it," he said.

Johnson said he's not anti-immigration.

"There certainly are good people seeking the opportunity that America affords. I've been down to the border. I'm highly sympathetic with people who want to improve their lives, but it has to be a legal process," he said. "So many of these people, whom I have a great deal of sympathy for, are being horribly abused in this illegal system...and that's a travesty as well."

Making everything political isn't helping

The problem with politicizing issues like immigration is nothing may ever be resolved. Solutions will require compromise, according to the National Association of Manufacturers, a business group with more than 14,000 member companies.

"There is a common sense approach to this," said Bauer with Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

"Both sides will have to compromise some...that's the glue that holds a democracy together," he added.

Bauer's priorities would be to secure the border, vet guest-worker visa applicants for needed skills in the U.S., further vet them for public safety and national security, then issue visas accordingly.

"I realize there are other issues, such as refugees who face persecution in their home countries and what to do with the millions who are already here. But I think this is a good starting framework. We need a process that rewards people who want to work and contribute to our economy, society and culture," Bauer said.

In June, President Joe Biden took executive action which could shield many undocumented immigrants from deportation. The new rule will allow undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens to stay in the United States and work for up to three years while they seek permanent legal status. Under the criteria, they cannot have posed a threat to public safety or national security.

The rule could shield about 500,000 undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens from deportation, according to the White House. It also would provide protections for about 50,000 people under age 21.

The change is a step in the right direction even if it doesn’t go far enough, according to some advocacy groups.

“We’re going to see people come out of the shadows a bit and thrive,” said Jennifer Estrada, co-founder of  Crusaders for Justica, an immigrant rights group in Manitowoc.

“It’s not a nice thing watching them be scared every single day, worried about their families being torn apart. Having lived through that, I know the feeling. When it happens, it’s like a complete bomb that goes off in your life,” Estrada said.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin dairy farmers, factories depend heavily on immigrant workers