The Great State of Vermont

"The great state of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese!" -Senator Ortolan Finisterre, Thank You For Smoking

According to the recent study "Assessing the Health Status, Health Care Needs and Barriers to Care for Migrant Farm Labor," Vermont's dairy industry is in a big heap of trouble.

The report, detailed in a Burlington Free Press article, centers on Vermont's uninsured (and unvaccinated) dairy workers, approximately 2,000 of which are illegal immigrants from Mexico. Vermont officials estimate that 75 percent of the milk produced in the state is from farms that employ these workers with "unmet health-care needs," which range from tuburculosis to worms to dental problems (note: all cases from anecodatal evidence in the article). Just to put the health risk into perspective, Vermont produces an estimated 2.5 billion pounds of milk per year, placing it 15th out of the 50 states in the industry. [source]

Interestingly, some Vermont officials are incredibly sympathetic to the migrant workers' plight, almost to the point of ignoring their legal status. Most notable are Cheryl Mitchell and Claire Ayer, D-Addison. Besides compiling the report for Vermont's Health Department, the busy bee Mitchell is a leader of the Addison County Migrant Workers Coalition, which is pressing for legislation that will start a guest-worker program.
Democratic Senator Ayer, who Mitchell expects to sponsor the bill, has a similar opinion:

"'They're here for a reason, and the reason is they're doing jobs Vermonters won't take,' Ayer said of the Mexican workers. 'There's no reason why the state can't step up to the plate and offer these people some kind of access to health care.' She said the workers could help pay for the care, but shouldn't be afraid to seek it when they need it."

I have a beef with this article; the justification of illegal activity, which is summed up in a paragraph right beneath the thesis, rubs me the wrong way:

"Most of the Mexican farm workers are believed to have entered the country illegally but, according to state agriculture officials, are critical to the viability of the dairy industry because they do the physically demanding work most Vermonters don't want to do."

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that farming is difficult, bitter work that's radically undercompensated for the physical activity and stamina it requires. I'm not surprised in the slightest that Vermonters don't want to take these jobs; there are easier ways to make a dollar. What irritates me, however, is how Vermont state officials, instead of investigating and addressing the problem of why Vermonters don't want those jobs (Economics 101!), just accept it as never-changing fact and encourage migrant workers to work for lower prices and little to no health benefits.

However, at the same time, considering that the dairy industry is so concerned with their financial status, wouldn't it cost less to raise wages enough to attract Vermonters rather than to provide free health care to illegal migrant workers? It may sound cruel of me to suggest that the Vermont officials are simply putting a Band-Aid over a larger problem by offering migrant workers free health care, but they are still not fixing the main problem: the jobs still pay extremely low wages, so apparently Vermonters won't work with them.

Yes, I realize that there is a health crisis for these migrant workers due to a lifetime of poverty and neglect, and in my heart of hearts, I would love to see a system of free health-care that is constitutional, professional, and cheap. I would absolutely love it if the workers could afford health care on their own, because that would signify that they were able to carve our their lives here. But, coming from a financial standpoint, it seems ridiculous to me that the Vermont dairy industry would encourage the retaining of said people (at low wages) and expect "legal" citizens of Vermont to pay for such a health care system through taxes. When given the choice between paying taxes into a standardized health care system and raising the price of milk and cheese, I'm almost certain that the majority of Vermonters would choose to pay more for their swiss.

Perhaps a guest-worker program is the way to go; I just don't know.

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