Vermont Governor Admits Ignoring Federal Immigration Law

By Joe Guzzardi
September 19, 2011

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin deserves a hat tip for his honesty. When Vermont state police learned that two passengers detained during an 88 miles per hour speeding chase were Mexican aliens, Shumlin said the state’s illegal immigrant policy is “to look the other way as much as we can.”

Shumlin may be the first high office holder to acknowledge what’s really gone on for decades. When it comes to illegal immigrants, few in authority have the courage to take action against them.

The Vermont case underlines some of the reasons why. When a trooper notified the U.S. Border Patrol that he had two suspected illegal immigrants in custody, ICE ordered the officer to hold them until federal agents could transfer them to another facility for processing.

Activists from the Vermont Migratory Workers Solidarity Project immediately charged the police with racial profiling. When their protests grew unruly, they were arrested for disorderly conduct which generated unwarranted sympathetic publicity for them and their cause.

Then, Shumlin intervened. Falling back on the old saw that without illegal immigrants the Vermont dairy production would collapse, Shumlin ordered an internal police investigation into whether the officers’ action was “bias-free”.

Shumlin said, “farmers can’t survive” without illegal immigrants. His misleading claim about agriculture dependent on an immediate infusion of cheap labor has been repeatedly proven false. According to a recent University of California Davis crop yield analysis, even the most labor intensive crops like cherries and strawberries increased by more than 20 percent in the last five years.

The Vermont situation, looked at from a rational perspective, should be open and shut—aliens identified, appropriate officials summoned and aliens deported. Instead the case foolishly prompted Shumlin to ask police officers to “look the other way”. Vermont’s governor, sworn to uphold the law, wants his police force (also under oath to enforce the law), to ignore it. To call Shumlin’s request ludicrous is an understatement.

During recent years, Vermont’s illegal immigrant dairy workers’ population has increased sharply. Half is foreign-born, mostly Mexican.

For dairy farmers, cheap labor is great. But what happens to the rest of Vermont? Do illegal immigrants make an effort to learn English or to assimilate? Will they pay taxes? Does their illegal presence create a net benefit to Vermont? Or will many eventually collect welfare benefits and live in poverty?

With Vermont unemployment rising, many local residents would be willing to do dairy work, assuming they’re paid fair wages—something the farmers appear unwilling to do. But if the dairy industry prefers to hire non-Americans, they can bring all the foreign-born workers they need to Vermont under the little known but highly effective H-2B visa program which can be valid for 364 days. Although agriculture lobbies insist that the H-2A is too cumbersome, Mexican workers receive their documents the same day they apply.

In the meantime, the two detained Vermont aliens have been released with orders to return to court at a later date. They’ll most likely never be seen again. While it’s impossible to project what will become of them, one thing is certain: they’ll never appear in court.

Joe Guzzardi has written editorial columns, mostly about immigration and related social issues, since 1986. He is a Senior Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and his columns are syndicated in various U.S. newspapers and websites. Contact him at [email protected].