A decade-long labor shortage has created a reliance on immigrant labor in Wisconsin. Industry leaders are calling for reform of the state’s legal immigration system.

Over the last decade Wisconsin has experienced a labor shortage paired with a below national average unemployment rate and a decreasing birth rate. These conflicting trends have resulted in an increased reliance on immigrant labor for the state’s most economically significant industries.

“We absolutely have a shortage of workers in Wisconsin and part of the solution has to be bringing in people from outside of the country,” Kurt Bauer, president and CEO of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), the state’s largest business and manufacturing lobbyist, told a USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reporter.

Revisions to the United States’ guest worker program, often referred to as different types of visas such as H-1B or H-2A, is necessary for a statewide workforce solution, Bauer added.

Latinos often make up a significant portion of the workforce of Wisconsin’s most important industries despite accounting for only 7.6% of the state’s total population, according to U.S. Census data compiled by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers in a 2023 study. The state’s Latino population more than quadrupled from 1990 to 2020, from 93,000 to 447,290, and surpassed African Americans as the state’s largest minority population in 2014.

Years of slowing growth in the labor supply and few signs of a native-born worker rebound have led to demands from both industry lobbyists and immigrant advocates to reform federal immigration laws to ensure both the continued productivity of the state’s important industries and the safety of both visiting workers and native residents.

Immigrants fill jobs that are unappealing to native workers

A 2024 Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development labor supply study pointed at the increasing number of retirements by members of the “Baby Boomer Generation” as a main cause of the labor shortage. The number of new workers entering the workforce is only slightly higher than the number of workers exiting the labor market and the study’s authors noted a negative effect on employers in the state.

“Many businesses report that the lack of available workers has hindered expansion, even curtailing the ability to meet current business needs in some cases,” the study’s authors wrote.

Immigrants fill jobs that are unappealing to native workers, according to Pew Research, often for reasons such as low wages, long hours, dangerous working conditions, or insufficient transportation and housing options close to the workplace. These unappealing jobs are essential in almost all of Wisconsin’s most economically significant industries including manufacturing, agriculture, hospitality, health care, and building and grounds maintenance.

The UW School for Workers study found Wisconsin’s most celebrated industry, dairy farming, likely relies on between 46% and 90% undocumented immigrant labor, with common estimates settling near 70%, to fill the unappealing jobs on medium to large farms in the state. The study surveyed dairy workers across the state and found a majority of its participants to be undocumented.

The long hours and low wages of jobs typically filled by immigrant laborers in Wisconsin may be unappealing to native-born laborers but are seen as an opportunity for building wealth for natives of Latin American countries where wages and working conditions are often worse.

Immigrant laborers often send a large portion of their earnings to family in their home country, called a remittance. Families use the funds to take care of themselves and manage the construction of houses for their family member to reside in when they return from years of working in the United States.

Another key finding of the UW School for Workers study was that housing can be difficult for immigrant workers to obtain, especially if they lack official identifying documents, so employers often offer housing as a “recruitment tool,” according to the study’s authors.

“Immigration status is rarely discussed at work and is treated as an open secret by employers and employees alike,” the study found.

‘Employers need to be held to a larger accountability’

Healthy Opportunities for Latin Americans (HOLA) is an organization that provides outreach services to Latin Americans living in Central Wisconsin, regardless of their documentation status. The organization provides legal information, pop-up clinics, translation services, community-building events and more. Part of the organization’s mission is to promote “economic advancement and civic engagement for workers and families from Latin American countries.”

Mark Bradley, HOLA board secretary/treasurer, has heard from various stakeholders in his years with the organization in an effort to learn about Wisconsin’s immigrant laborer population and the various strategies employers and laborers use to keep the state’s essential industries operating despite a declining qualified or interested native workforce population.

He explained several strategies Wisconsin employers use to find workers, which include paying cash to laborers or paying dubious limited liability corporations in exchange for the work that is completed in these unappealing workplaces.

“If we want to talk about dealing with the criminals in the immigration situation, we should be honest and we should talk about all of the criminals,” Bradley said. Wisconsin employers continue to recruit workers with questionable documentation despite likely tax law violations. Inadequate employment reporting requirements allow these unlawful practices to continue unchecked year after year.

Tony Gonzalez, who has worked as an advocate for immigrants in Central Wisconsin for over a decade and is well-connected with area court systems, employers, public officials and others relevant to his work, said there have not been any major workplace raids in Central Wisconsin since the start of the Trump administration in January.

“Has immigration come? Oh, hell yeah, a lot. But they come with specific warrants and specifically with orders to get particular people. Nobody in a group,” Gonzalez told a USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reporter. “These employers need to be held to a larger accountability because they know what they’re doing. They know who they’re hiring. … The government is focusing more on the immigrant that is just working than the employers that are illegally employing people without even an electronic verification or anything like that.”

Gonzalez said the current arrangement with immigrant laborers is accepted by employers because the laborers are easily replaced if one is deported or injured on the job and is forced to leave the area.

Wisconsin’s largest industry advocates are calling for immigration reform

Statewide trade organizations such as WMC and Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, the state’s largest farm lobbyist, have found strong support in surveys of their members for both strong border crossing enforcement and reforms to the country’s guest worker program, particularly the H-2A visa program that covers temporary agricultural workers.

“A critical step in addressing labor shortages is modernizing immigration laws. It’s unrealistic to expect workers to enter legally when the current system is broken,” Tyler Wenzlaff, Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation’s director of national affairs, said in an email to a USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reporter. “Expanding the H-2A visa program to include dairy workers would be a meaningful step in ensuring Wisconsin farmers have access to a stable workforce.”

WMC’s Bauer said his organization’s members desire to secure the border, and reforming the state’s legal immigration system is “an economic imperative.”

A December survey of WMC’s members, conducted by the organization, revealed 92% did not believe the Trump administration’s immigration policies would impact their workforce, according to Bauer. The survey included responses from 153 employers “of all sizes, industries and geographic locations in Wisconsin.”

“I think their statement of no concern is dismissive of the role that they need to take,” Gonzalez said. “If any industry is dependent on that labor, you need to step up and tell your legislators because otherwise things won’t change.”

HOLA’s Bradley asked a similar question of voters, activists and employers in the state in comments to a USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reporter.

More: In the Midwest, it’s a multi-front battleground over immigration

“What’s the business plan to help employers in farming, meat processing, construction, manufacturing or hospitality? What’s the strategy? Nobody wants dairy farming to collapse in the state of Wisconsin. Nobody is saying that’s a good thing,” Bradley said.

Industry advocates tread a careful line between honoring the real need for immigration reforms and the majority of votes in the state’s rural areas where many of their members and their employees reside in support of President Donald Trump and the anti-immigrant rhetoric used in his campaign.

“There is often a gap between campaign rhetoric and the realities of implementing policy,” Wenzlaff said. “WFBF supports securing the border but believes the labor challenges facing Wisconsin farmers should be addressed separately. It is possible to enforce border security while also ensuring agriculture at a local level has the workforce it needs to thrive.”

WFBF’s Dairy Committee’s 2024 Agricultural Labor Report lists 17 policy reforms including several specifically for the H-2A visa program including reducing paperwork, streamlining application systems, allowing flexibility in compensation rates, reducing housing rules and increasing funding to the Department of Labor to reduce delays in their work to support employers.

Bauer similarly shared the results of a survey of WMC’s members and further work by himself and his staff to understand Wisconsin’s population of laborers. He summed up the results of the work with the statement, “We need workers, but we need them to be legal.”

Bauer’s opinion on the topic, informed by WMC’s work to understand the issue, is that potential immigrants should be vetted for national security, public safety, public health and skillset before being issued a visa.

“It really doesn’t need to be much more complicated than that,” Bauer concluded.

Erik Pfantz covers local government and education in central Wisconsin for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and values his background as a rural Wisconsinite. Contact him at epfantz@gannett.com.