By Jennifer Bamberg
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to begin his second term with the largest mass deportation in history, making the jobs held by undocumented workers available to U.S. citizens.
Undocumented immigrants make up only 5% of the total labor force, according to the most recent federal data from the U.S. Census Bureau and analysis from the Pew Research Center. However, the share of undocumented workers across the nation’s food supply chain is at least 16%.
A significant portion of food- and agriculture-related jobs are filled by immigrants, which include naturalized citizens, green-card holders, permanent residents, people on long-term temporary work visas, refugees, people who have received asylum, and undocumented immigrants.
In some industries, the number is much higher. In Idaho, the third-largest dairy-producing state in the country, the Idaho Dairymen’s Association estimates that nearly 90% of the state’s on-site dairy workers were born outside of the U.S. Nationally, undocumented people made up …