About 200 Latino immigrants—mothers, fathers, and little children—gathered on the steps of the state capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin, on June 28 to protest legislation that would make the lives of Wisconsin’s mostly Mexican dairy workers harder.
Assembly Bill 190, modeled on similar legislation in Texas, would turn local law enforcement officers into immigration police. It would prohibit any municipality from passing its own rules regarding “illegal aliens” and require local compliance with federal immigration authorities.
Wearing “Got Milk? Now Without Immigrants” t-shirts, speakers addressed the crowd in Spanish and English.
“We defeated this bill last year, with the Day Without Latinos, and now we’re going to do it again!” declared Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera.
Sí se puede!” the crowd shouted back.
By some estimates, 80 percent of dairy workers in Wisconsin are undocumented immigrants.
“Without us, who’s going to work 365 days a year in the cold and the heat?” dairy worker Miguel Estrada asked. “We’re here to fight against hate and racism.”
Dairy farmer John Rosenow described how his great-grandparents arrived in Wisconsin from Germany in the 1800s to start the family farm he now owns. “Society has changed,” he said. “There are fewer and fewer of us willing to milk cows at all hours of the day and night and many of us are getting older.”
“In recent times, the last twenty years or so, we Wisconsin dairy farmer have found someone who wants to do what we love. Their names are Roberto, Armando, Marcos, Gregório, Federico, Erasmo, and others like them,” Rosenow said. “They find the work rewarding, just like I did when I got out of college years ago. They enjoy working with cows. They see nothing wrong with working hard to improve their lives. . . . We dairy farmers love them as if they were family.”
After the speeches, the workers and their allies—members of religious groups, the ACLU, and Voces de la Frontera, walked into the capitol building to visit state legislators’ offices.
They carried half-gallon milk bottles with a picture of an immigrant worker and his child on the label, and the legend “Got Milk? Not Without Immigrants/Keep Families Together/No AB190.”
Margarito Castillo, a member of Voces de La Frontera, wandered the building looking for the office of state Representative Adam Jarchow, a Republican who represents Northwest Wisconsin. Jarchow’s name and office number were written on his milk bottle. Castillo handed the bottle to a staff member, silently pointing to the words written on it. Then he retreated, looking relieved.
Jennifer Estrada, trailed by a group of activists, strode into the office of state Representative Paul Tittl, a Republican from Manitowoc. Estrada told Tittl’s staff how her husband was deported, and the toll it took on their four children. “All they knew was dad went to work one day and didn’t come home,” she said. “My kids will never be the same.”
Already, “dairy workers are leaving because of all these anti-immigration bills,” Estrada said, noting that 13 percent of the state’s dairy production takes place in Manitowoc County, and about 89 percent of the labor there is performed by undocumented immigrants, mostly from Mexico.
“I worry about the future for my kids,” dairy worker Manuel Estrada said in Spanish. “There is a lot of racism. One day my son came home from school and another little boy had told him, ‘I don’t want to play with you any more—my father told me not to talk to Mexicans.’ He is so little. And he felt bad.”
Back in 2007, the Wisconsin legislature made it illegal for undocumented workers to get driver’s licenses. Some farmers responded to that law, and to the increasing fear of immigration raids and deportation, by building housing on the farm so workers would never have to leave, says dairy farmer Sarah Lloyd.
Along with asking legislators to oppose the new bill deploying local police to crack down on immigrants, activists asked friendly legislators to consider co-sponsoring a bill proposed by JoCasta Zamarripa to allow undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses again.
Dairy farmer Rosenow, who runs a 550-cow operation in Buffalo County in western Wisconsin, stood in the hallway as rain fell outside the capitol, watching the dairy workers deliver their milk bottles to legislators.
“I came here because, of our twenty employees, ten of them are from Mexico, and without them we would cease to exist,” he said. “They’re wonderful and they make life good and help us run our industry.”
Rosenow paused for a moment, then added, “I guess we as dairy farmers wonder why the legislature wants to make life more difficult for dairy farms.”
Ruth Conniff is editor-in-chief of The Progressive.