Cameron Winery -- sustainably farmed, non-irrigated, Oregon pinot noir and chardonnay

The country voted and the man who won garnered 49.8% of the vote.  Of course with less than half of the vote, they have taken this as a “mandate” to rid the country of all illegal immigrants.

And so it goes with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (better known as ICE), swarming the countryside in search of anyone they can arrest.  While we can all agree that the immigration system in this country is seriously broken, I do not believe that even 49.8% of the voters intended to have millions of law-abiding residents simply rounded up without due process and shipped out of country. The terror that is being perpetrated upon millions of Latino Americans is hard to imagine but it is real.

The agricultural sector of our country absolutely relies on these people to produce the food that we eat. In a quote from the esteemed international wine critic, Jancis Robinson: “California is responsible for approximately 81% of the US’s wine production, more than a third of the US’s vegetable production and three-quarters of its production of fruit and nuts. 45% of all US agricultural workers are undocumented – and that number is higher in California, with some estimates as high as 75%. Almost half of the US’s undocumented immigrant population lives in California.”

At Cameron we also rely on the Latino workforce to accomplish many of the tasks in our vineyards.  We simply cannot do it all ourselves.  From pruning to pulling leaves around the fruit to harvesting in the Fall, they are a vital part of the process.  And without them we will not exist.

It does not take a genius to conclude that if you simply terrorize these people (let alone attempt to deport most of them), the production of food and wine will simply collapse in the USA.  For instance, in the recent raids perpetrated upon a citrus packing facility in the Central Valley of California, several dozen “illegals” were arrested. The next day, virtually all of the packing facilities in the Central Valley were forced to close down due to lack of employees.

We in the farming business would love to have immigration solved so that we can hire whoever wants to work for us. But we are hearing absolutely no suggestions from the party in power (or the party out of power for that matter) about how to fix this ridiculous system in which people who actually want to work in agriculture can come here legally to do so.