Wisconsin
Wisconsin’s top industries rely on immigrant labor and call for reform of ‘broken’ system
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.
“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.
WISCONSIN (WBAY) – Wisconsin residents contributed more than $36 million in marijuana taxes to Illinois last year and nearly $6 million to Michigan in 2024, according to new numbers released by the state Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
The revenue comes from counties bordering Wisconsin that legally sell marijuana, while bills to legalize both medical and recreational marijuana remain stalled in the Wisconsin Legislature.
Wisconsin will have a new governor, new speaker in the Assembly and a new majority leader in the state Senate next January.
All three people holding those leadership positions decided not to seek re-election.
State lawmakers will have a fresh debate regarding marijuana for the first time in a while, and the latest numbers from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau are likely to be a big part of it.
Illinois dispensaries generate millions from Wisconsin buyers
On the Wisconsin border, from Michigan to Illinois, marijuana sales have become big business.
“The economic value to restoring this plant back to our economy is huge. We can’t even put a dollar amount on it,” said Jay Selthofner, founder of the Wisconsin Cannabis Activist Network.
According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo, Wisconsin residents contributed $36.1 million last year to the overall marijuana tax collected by Illinois.
That’s based on data from 36 dispensaries located in five of the six counties bordering Wisconsin. Jo Daviess, Lake, McHenry, Winnebago and Boone counties have dispensaries, while Stephenson County does not.
Among the five counties with dispensaries, a total of $319.4 million in sales was generated. The report concludes $132.4 million, or 41.5%, of these sales were made to out-of-state residents.
“It’s concerning that yeah, revenue is leaving the state both tax wise and tourism dollars without being a state that is looked at as recreational marijuana, we’re losing some tourism there,” Selthofner said.
Michigan collects nearly $6 million in taxes from Wisconsin residents
On the other side of the state, Michigan is making money off Wisconsin residents.
The most recent data from 2024 shows the state with 854 retailers and microbusinesses licensed to sell cannabis. Of those licensees, 22 were located in counties bordering Wisconsin: Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson and Menominee.
The report states, “Assuming that each retailer/microbusiness makes an equal amount of sales,” those businesses in the Upper Peninsula brought in $85.4 million. Using the same estimate as Illinois, 41.5% of sales came from Wisconsin residents, translating into $5.8 million in tax revenue collected.
Minnesota is also mentioned in the report. The state began legalized cannabis sales in September 2025, but so far there is no data on taxes paid by Wisconsin residents.
Gubernatorial candidates weigh in on legalization
If Wisconsin makes changes, it’s likely to be next year after the November election.
Republican candidate for governor Tom Tiffany said he is open to medical marijuana and supporting veterans.
“I think in particular we should look out for our veterans. I’ve heard from so many veterans that suffer from PTSD and I’m very open to that as well as medicinal. I think we just work our way through it and get to a good spot in regards to marijuana,” Tiffany said.
Among the Democrats running for governor, at least seven have come out supporting efforts to legalize marijuana, aligning with the state party platform.
“A lot of people look at it as the wild west right now here in Wisconsin, it’s not. It’s the wild Wisconsin and what Wisconsin is going to do is it’s going to show the rest of the country how innovative a state can really be on cannabis,” Selthofner said.
Twenty-four states, along with the District of Columbia, legalize recreational marijuana, and 40 total legalize medical marijuana. The most recent additions are Ohio, Minnesota and Missouri.
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Everyone talked to Daniel Bice – whether they admitted it or not.
A veteran political reporter, Bice could conjure a politician’s personal phone number in seconds and never feared knocking on the door of someone he was trying to reach.
Bice, who worked for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for 33 years, died from complications of esophageal cancer on April 21, his birthday.
He had just turned 62.
“Dan was fearless and fierce, a relentless reporter who wrote with clarity and precision. He knew how to cultivate sources and chase a story,” said Greg Borowski, executive editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “He thought nothing of driving five hours to stick a notebook in the governor’s face, willing to ask any question – and take the blowback that came with it.
“His loss is a blow to the community, the profession and especially for our team here.”
A native of West Virginia, Bice started his Wisconsin career in the Madison bureau of the Milwaukee Sentinel and then the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after the two papers merged in 1995.
A few years later, the paper’s leadership wanted a new, buzzy watchdog column and tapped Bice and Cary Spivak, a business reporter, to write it. The pair, nicknamed the “Spice Boys,” earned national awards and scored countless scoops, including one that ended the political career of former Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist.
“The two of us working together, it was kind of the odd couple,” Spivak said. “He’s West Virginia, I’m Chicago ‘burbs. But we got along good. We had no sets of rules on how to do stuff, we would just argue it out, but we both had similar news judgment.”
Bice later went on to author his own column, “No Quarter,” where he wrote about scandals big and small, from all sides of the political spectrum. He always responded to readers with a mix of humor and humility, especially his critics, who flooded his email inbox and online chats.
When one called him a “liberal activist” in 2014, Bice pointed to his three critical pieces about Democratic politicians that he had just published the week prior. “But here’s the lesson,” Bice added. “We should all spend more time paying attention to what I am actually writing and publishing. Then maybe I’ll get a huge raise.”
Even with his column, Bice never stopped reporting the news.
He broke countless stories and distinguished himself among Wisconsin’s press corps with his relentless coverage of Milwaukee County prosecutors’ “John Doe” investigations into Scott Walker’s time as Milwaukee County executive and as governor.
“As someone at a different outlet at the time, it was impossible to keep up with him,” said Mary Spicuzza, who joined the Journal Sentinel in 2015 after covering politics at the Wisconsin State Journal.
“Dan Bice was the most feared man in Wisconsin politics,” she added. “To me, he was larger than life – a legend who became my mentor, my work husband and one of my best friends.”
In recent years, he covered the record-breaking state Supreme Court race between Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel, the arrest and resulting court case of former Milwaukee Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, and the campaign of gubernatorial hopeful Bill Berrien, who ended his political run after Bice reported on his online activity.
“I used to kid him that he was equal opportunity in the sense that he’d go after Republicans and Democrats,” said Walker, a Republican and former governor.
“There were times when I liked what he wrote, and there were other times that I didn’t like it at all,” he said. “It probably was a good sign he was pursuing the role of the journalist, which was without regard to politics or other bias, just exposing things that needed to be exposed.”
For all the sharpness of his writing – Milwaukee Magazine once described him “as an assassin with a pen” – Bice hardly ever raised his voice with sources or colleagues. He had a preternatural ability to stay calm even in the most confrontational or tense interviews.
At a retirement celebration for Spivak last summer, Bice gave one of many speeches in his friend’s honor. Bice later told a colleague that he left out the last thing he wanted to thank Spivak for – carrying the column for months while Bice navigated a family crisis – because he feared he would not be able to finish without tears.
Beyond the paper, Bice was an avid music-lover and frequent concert-goer. If you asked if he had heard of a band, he undoubtedly had. He could spend hours discussing politics, history and religion with wit and humor, and he led historical tours to Greece and other countries.
Bice grew up in a household steeped in religious fundamentalism. He earned undergraduate degrees in ancient Greek and English at Bryan College, a small Christian college in Tennessee, and a master’s degree in social science from the University of Chicago.
His college experience shaped him and started to change his career path.
“Parts of my faith started falling apart. I don’t think it ever fell apart completely,” Bice said during a Rotary event last year. “But you know, when you start reading texts in the original language, things aren’t quite as they seem sometimes.”
He noticed a job listing for “liberal arts majors” from the Poynter Institute in Florida, a nonprofit that trains journalists and covers the media industry. He landed one of the coveted 15 positions after more than 350 people applied, and started reporting at the St. Petersburg Times in 1986.
In an early sign of his single-mindedness on a story, he had raced back to the newsroom with the latest from a meeting about a potential baseball stadium development. His mind completely occupied with the story, he didn’t see a red light and hit another car, which then hit a house.
“My editors are wondering where I am, and I’m trying to explain to the cop, this is super important and I’ve got to get back to the newspaper to write this,” Bice recalled during the Rotary talk. “They’re like, you’re not going anywhere.”
After his time in St. Petersburg, Bice returned to West Virginia, where he covered state politics – including the indictment of 10 state lawmakers over five years – before coming to Wisconsin. He had interviewed at both papers, the Journal and Sentinel. The Journal offered him a job writing feature stories. The Sentinel offered him a position covering the governor’s office.
He chose the Sentinel. An editor at the Journal sent him a note telling him he had made the “worst career decision” of his life.
“I still have the letter,” Bice said.
And he never looked back.
Daniel Bice is survived by his wife, Jessica Hodgson; his father, David Bice, and his wife, Alice; his siblings, Penny Bice, Cheryl Bice, Jeffrey Bice and his wife, Roberta, Richard Bice and his wife, Sandra Sim; and his children, Zachary Bice and his wife, Alex, Sophie Bice and her husband, Ben Teich, and Raney Bice, as well as numerous nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his mother, Patty Adkins.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
Wisconsin
Tranfser Portal Predcition: Wisconsin trasnfer John Blackwell likely to land with contender
John Blackwell is one of the more sought-after players still available in the NCAA transfer portal. Big-time programs are coming after the former Wisconsin Badgers guard. And now, On3’s Joe Tipton is calling his shot on where Blackwell will end up.
Tipton has put in an RPM for Blackwell to commit and sign with the Duke Blue Devils. His level of confidence sits at 60%. If Duke head coach Jon Scheyer can get this one over the finish line, it could prove to be a massive addition.
“Wisconsin transfer John Blackwell is one of the most coveted players in the transfer portal,” Tipton said. “The 6-foot-4 shooting guard took an official visit to Duke on Monday and the Blue Devils are carrying the momentum in this recruitment. I’ve officially placed an RPM prediction in favor of Duke to ultimately land the star transfer.”
The On3 Industry Transfer Portal Rankings have Blackwell slotted as the No. 5 overall player to enter this cycle. Just looking at shooting guards, only one guy is ahead of him — Wake Forest‘s Juke Harris.
Blackwell spent three seasons in Madison before entering the transfer portal. He was in double figures over the last two years, averaging 19.1 points during the 2025-2026 campaign. Duke will enjoy his efficiency as well, shooting 43% from the field and 38.9% behind the three-point line.
There is more to what Blackwell can do than just shoot, though. He snagged just over five rebounds and dished out 2.3 assists per game.
To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire. The On3 Transfer Portal Instagram account and Twitter account are excellent resources to stay up to date with the latest moves.
Before the RPM pick from Tipton, the latest update on where things stood with Blackwell came on Saturday. Tipton laid out who else is still considered to be in the running, including a visit schedule for the Wisconsin transfer. You can check out the full piece of intel here.
Duke has turned into one of the more consistent programs in college basketball, playing at a high level under Scheyer. The last three seasons have resulted in at least an Elite Eight appearance, even making the Final Four in 2025. Still, the expectations in Durham are to win a national championship. Maybe Blackwell is the guy who can help them take the next step forward.
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