By Adam Rabiner
The 2017 documentary Los Lecheros (dairy farmers), co-produced by Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.wisconsinwatch.org) and Wisconsin Public Radio, fittingly opens with a morning political talk show and Joe in Madison responding to the comment that Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Wisconsin since 1984. “Well, I voted for Trump. I cannot understand why any American would have a problem with telling people that came into this country illegally that they can’t do that and if you’re gonna do it you gotta leave. I just don’t get it.”
The first alternative perspective is that of a middle-aged dairy farmer named John Rosenow, owner of Rosenholm Farm in Buffalo County, founded in 1857 by his great, great grandfather. John employs ten immigrants and ten locals, and says that when he was growing up everyone working on a farm was the son or daughter of a farmer. However, now that is the last thing most children want to do. In the 1990s, John’s farm was expanding and he was putting in 95 hours per week. Out of desperation, and reluctantly, he turned to immigrants and now asks himself why it took so long.
Wisconsin is the number one cheese and number two milk producer in the United States. Its dairy industry is valued at $43 billion a year. Many dairy farmers faced the same economic and social changes as did John and made similar choices. It is not uncommon for farms to have 20, 25, 30 people working, all undocumented. Farms with immigrant employees produce 79% of the U.S. milk supply. While there is an H-2A Visa program which allows farmers to legally employ workers for seasonal labor, there is no year-round visa program.
Guillermo Ramos Bravo is John’s 40 year old Farm Manager. He’s worked on the farm for 17 years and seen farms grow and prosper with illegal labor. One he observed went from 275 to 1,500 cows. He says that lots of people accuse migrants of stealing jobs from Americans, but he has never seen a person born here come and say to his boss, “You know what, I’m looking for a job...I want to milk cows.”
On Knoepke Farm in Pepi County, Wisconsin we meet Miguel Hernandez, an Assistant Herdsman, his wife Luisa Tepole, and his two young, American-born (and therefore U.S. citizen) children, Liam and Thomas. Miguel and Luisa’s children’s graduation ceremony from kindergarten in a Catholic Church paints an alternative narrative to Trump’s depiction of Mexican immigrants as criminals, rapists, terrorists, and drug smugglers. Tearfully, Luisa explains that “we are just people who want to work in peace...we need the work, but the farmers need us just as much.” She is terrified that the authorities are going to raid the farm, take her kids away, and deport them. In the first year of the Trump administration immigration arrests of people with criminal records increased by 250%. She’s scared for her kids and is worries about the spread of laws like those in Arizona that allow police and others to stop people and ask about their legal status.
Indeed, in Madison, the state Capital, the state legislature is considering an “anti-sanctuary city” anti-immigrant bill, AB 190. At a people's hearing “Stop AB 190” posters lined the walls with drawings of milk cartons and the words “Got Milk? Not without immigrants” and a local child activist denounced the bill, “that’s not liberty, for me that’s oppression.”
But the bill’s co-sponsor, Republican Bob Gannon from West Bend defends the legislation. He argues that the business model of the milk industry is broken. It needs more automation, or to pay employees more, or the dairies should move closer to urban centers where people aren’t working. He reasons that in order to get into this country, you need to do it through a system of checks and balances and that it’s a bad thing that people are hiding and acting like they are not here. He wants everything to be above board and out in the open.
It’s odd to hear a politician touting job-killing automation, advocating raising prices for consumers, or suggesting moving dairy farms nearer to the cities. Indeed, politics is the focus of Twelve Letter Films’ current feature documentary in post-production and due to be released in 2020 about the failing democracy in Wisconsin, which is struggling to emerge from years of gerrymandered maps, restrictive voter ID laws and one-party rule.
John Rosenow provides a less fanciful picture than that of Representative Gannon. If his labor force disappeared his next option would be to find a market for his cows and sell them. “I would not be able to farm any more. It would just about kill me but I have no choice, I know of no other source of labor. The local people would lose their jobs too.” A 2015 dairy industry study predicted that without an immigrant workforce 15% of dairy farms would close nationwide, retail milk prices would rise 90%, and over 200,000 people would lose jobs.
In the end, the pressure on Luisa is just too much. Her husband Miguel voluntarily returns to Mexico by car with four friends from neighboring farms. She and her kids fly there a week later. Self-deportation isn’t just a political laugh line.
Los Lecheros may not change the minds of Trump supporters like Joe from Madison. But it does make real and visceral the more abstract headlines and news stories. The movie focuses on dairy farmers but it could be any slice of the immigrant workforce. Wisconsin dairy farmers are overwhelmingly Republican. It remains to be seen if they will remain that way.
The 2017 documentary Los Lecheros (dairy farmers), co-produced by Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.wisconsinwatch.org) and Wisconsin Public Radio, fittingly opens with a morning political talk show and Joe in Madison responding to the comment that Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Wisconsin since 1984. “Well, I voted for Trump. I cannot understand why any American would have a problem with telling people that came into this country illegally that they can’t do that and if you’re gonna do it you gotta leave. I just don’t get it.”
The first alternative perspective is that of a middle-aged dairy farmer named John Rosenow, owner of Rosenholm Farm in Buffalo County, founded in 1857 by his great, great grandfather. John employs ten immigrants and ten locals, and says that when he was growing up everyone working on a farm was the son or daughter of a farmer. However, now that is the last thing most children want to do. In the 1990s, John’s farm was expanding and he was putting in 95 hours per week. Out of desperation, and reluctantly, he turned to immigrants and now asks himself why it took so long.
Wisconsin is the number one cheese and number two milk producer in the United States. Its dairy industry is valued at $43 billion a year. Many dairy farmers faced the same economic and social changes as did John and made similar choices. It is not uncommon for farms to have 20, 25, 30 people working, all undocumented. Farms with immigrant employees produce 79% of the U.S. milk supply. While there is an H-2A Visa program which allows farmers to legally employ workers for seasonal labor, there is no year-round visa program.
Guillermo Ramos Bravo is John’s 40 year old Farm Manager. He’s worked on the farm for 17 years and seen farms grow and prosper with illegal labor. One he observed went from 275 to 1,500 cows. He says that lots of people accuse migrants of stealing jobs from Americans, but he has never seen a person born here come and say to his boss, “You know what, I’m looking for a job...I want to milk cows.”
On Knoepke Farm in Pepi County, Wisconsin we meet Miguel Hernandez, an Assistant Herdsman, his wife Luisa Tepole, and his two young, American-born (and therefore U.S. citizen) children, Liam and Thomas. Miguel and Luisa’s children’s graduation ceremony from kindergarten in a Catholic Church paints an alternative narrative to Trump’s depiction of Mexican immigrants as criminals, rapists, terrorists, and drug smugglers. Tearfully, Luisa explains that “we are just people who want to work in peace...we need the work, but the farmers need us just as much.” She is terrified that the authorities are going to raid the farm, take her kids away, and deport them. In the first year of the Trump administration immigration arrests of people with criminal records increased by 250%. She’s scared for her kids and is worries about the spread of laws like those in Arizona that allow police and others to stop people and ask about their legal status.
Indeed, in Madison, the state Capital, the state legislature is considering an “anti-sanctuary city” anti-immigrant bill, AB 190. At a people's hearing “Stop AB 190” posters lined the walls with drawings of milk cartons and the words “Got Milk? Not without immigrants” and a local child activist denounced the bill, “that’s not liberty, for me that’s oppression.”
But the bill’s co-sponsor, Republican Bob Gannon from West Bend defends the legislation. He argues that the business model of the milk industry is broken. It needs more automation, or to pay employees more, or the dairies should move closer to urban centers where people aren’t working. He reasons that in order to get into this country, you need to do it through a system of checks and balances and that it’s a bad thing that people are hiding and acting like they are not here. He wants everything to be above board and out in the open.
It’s odd to hear a politician touting job-killing automation, advocating raising prices for consumers, or suggesting moving dairy farms nearer to the cities. Indeed, politics is the focus of Twelve Letter Films’ current feature documentary in post-production and due to be released in 2020 about the failing democracy in Wisconsin, which is struggling to emerge from years of gerrymandered maps, restrictive voter ID laws and one-party rule.
John Rosenow provides a less fanciful picture than that of Representative Gannon. If his labor force disappeared his next option would be to find a market for his cows and sell them. “I would not be able to farm any more. It would just about kill me but I have no choice, I know of no other source of labor. The local people would lose their jobs too.” A 2015 dairy industry study predicted that without an immigrant workforce 15% of dairy farms would close nationwide, retail milk prices would rise 90%, and over 200,000 people would lose jobs.
In the end, the pressure on Luisa is just too much. Her husband Miguel voluntarily returns to Mexico by car with four friends from neighboring farms. She and her kids fly there a week later. Self-deportation isn’t just a political laugh line.
Los Lecheros may not change the minds of Trump supporters like Joe from Madison. But it does make real and visceral the more abstract headlines and news stories. The movie focuses on dairy farmers but it could be any slice of the immigrant workforce. Wisconsin dairy farmers are overwhelmingly Republican. It remains to be seen if they will remain that way.