For one day at the end of July, the Mexican consulate of Boston set up shop in a high school gym in Fairfield, Vermont to provide laminated ID cards to Mexican nationals. The ID cards do not grant legal rights to live in the United States, though they are good enough for most Vermont dairy farmers that depend on illegal immigrant labor.
The mobile consular service has been offered in Vermont four times since 2004 with the cooperation of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. It's intended to aide Mexican workers living in Vermont who can not easily travel to Boston to obtain documentation.
"Their legal status, we don't ask that question… They have the proper documentation (to obtain work)" said Louise Waterman to the Burlington Free Press. Waterman is the education coordinator for the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, and she was on hand overseeing the consular activities in the gym.
The "don't ask" policy is vital to the survival of the Vermont Dairy industry where farmers struggle to stay afloat in an economy of rising production costs and consumer demand for inexpensive milk. It is estimated that there are 2,000 illegal immigrants providing inexpensive labor to dairy farms throughout Vermont.
"Our (dairy) industry really relies on foreign workers to be successful," said Republican Governor Jim Douglas.
"Immigrant workers contribute to our industry's vitality," adds Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy on his website.
Both Leahy and Douglas oppose the Bush administrations' guest worker program because it does not address the needs of Vermont's year-round dairy industry.
"I am a cosponsor of the AgJOBS bill, which would provide an opportunity for illegal workers to come out of the shadows and obtain legal permanent residency in return for the contributions they have made and will continue to make to American agriculture and to our state's economy," said Leahy.
Senator Leahy's touched on the dark side of this gray issue. Though illegal immigrants have some friends in the Vermont government, it doesn't ensure that they won't be the victims of arbitrary enforcement of the immigration laws.
At least two deportation raids of illegal workers living in Vermont took place this summer. One instance was the Zacarias, a family of four that worked on Charlie and Elaine White's dairy farm in Corinth, Vermont for 18 months.
After several weeks of observing the farm through binoculars, federal agents moved in, arrested, and deported the family. The White's even had to drive the two Zacarias children to Logan airport to be re-united with their parents, an oversight on the part of the arresting officers.
The Zacarias were a larger target because they had been deported previously. Re-entering the country or committing a crime both make illegal immigrants a more probable target for federal deportation efforts.
"I'm sending a message that if you are removed from the United States and you come back to New England, we're going to be looking for you," said Bruce Chadbourne to the Associated Press. Chadhourne is the field director for detention and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New England.
Meanwhile, Vermont remains vocal in bi-partisan support to reform immigration laws to guarantee that there will be available labor to sustain the state's dairy industry.
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