Dustin Machia was excited to vote for Donald Trump for president last year, in part because he pledged to crack down on illegal immigration.
“We had a border problem,” Machia said. “We don’t want bad people in here. We don’t need the drugs and the gangbangers.”
But following high-profile deportations of migrant farmworkers in northern Vermont, Machia, a fifth-generation dairy farmer, said he feels misled.
“All the dairy farmers who voted for Trump were under the impression they weren’t going to come on farms and take our guys,” said Machia, 37. “It’s happening more than we’d like. It’s scaring the farming community and we’re like, ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen.’”
Farm owners and workers alike in this agricultural region near the Canadian border have been on edge in the month since US Border Patrol officers detained eight Mexican men on Vermont’s largest dairy operation, Pleasant Valley Farms, about 20 miles east of Machia’s barns. Two weeks before that, another Mexican national, Arbey Lopez-Lopez, was detained while bringing groceries to workers at Pleasant Valley, according to his attorney.
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“I think our farmers are concerned about the well-being of their workers. That’s foremost,” Tebbetts said. “They’re also concerned if (the workforce) was to go away, who’s going to do the work? Who’s going to milk the cows?”
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“The workload on these farms is intense,” said Jackie Folsom, a former dairy farmer and president of the Vermont Farm Bureau. "And we are not able to find locals who want to work on farms anymore.”
According to the University of Vermont, 94 percent of dairies in the state that hire outside help employ migrant labor. That amounts to an estimated 750 to 850 workers, mostly from Mexico, plus 150 partners and children.
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Despite his misgivings about the immigration crackdown, Dustin Machia says he doesn’t regret voting for Trump.
“I’d still do it again. I like a lot of his policies,” Machia said. “I feel he’s more for the rural people like us, the middle-class type person.”
It always amazes me that people think Donald Trump gives a fuck about farmers or anyone that is middle class. Like what makes you think that? Is it that he was born and raised in New York City? Or that he inherited 400 million dollars from his dad? Maybe it’s the gold toilets? Maybe it’s that he’s never done a hard days work in his life? Or what about all the normal everyday things that he’s probably never done? Like drive a car, punch a time clock, mow grass, grocery shop, pick up the kids from school, or cook dinner.
Donald Trump is just about the most “unamerican” person I can think of. Yet rural middle class voters think he stands for them. And they will continue to get their faces eaten by the leopards.
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