By: Tia Nanjappan and Jordan Wilkie
Photos: Carol Bono
ALBERTSON, N.C. – With the tractor’s hydraulic line broken, the Murphys, farmers from Duplin County, had no choice but to collect hay bales by hand. What would have taken Linda Murphy 30 minutes with a tractor instead took seven men the better part of a Saturday afternoon.
Rain was in the forecast. Without the men, Mexican laborers here on temporary visas, Morris Murphy could have faced selling wet hay, hurting his profits.
With its aging white population, high poverty rates, and economy dependent on agriculture and manufacturing, Duplin County is like many around the country that swung hard right in November’s election. Donald Trump, a man who vilified Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug smugglers, won the county by 19 points. And he won the Murphys’ votes.
But Trump’s approach to immigration is a non-starter for the Murphys and for many Duplin County politicians, who worry that Trump’s immigration policies will actually hurt the county.
Several of the men on Murphy’s crew are like family, he said. He’s worked with some of them, like Gerardo “Tito” Ferman, for 27 years. Early on, Murphy would drive Ferman home to Mexico after each season of work and would spend weeks with the families of his farmworkers.
“They treated him like royalty,” Linda Murphy said.
One year, Ferman’s wife was pregnant. His baby was due about the time Ferman was scheduled to return. Murphy again drove him south, hoping to get Ferman there for the delivery. As they neared the brick house in San Juan del Rio, Ferman knew something was wrong. The house was surrounded with cars. His child had been stillborn the day before.
Ferman still works on Murphy’s 1,500-acre family farm half the year. Only now, Furman is joined by his eldest son, son-in-law, brother, nephew and cousin. They are all registered migrant workers and are among the tens of thousands of Latinos – documented, undocumented and citizens – whose labor helps keep North Carolina’s rural economies afloat, according to research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.
Duplin County is the type of rural economy that would lose jobs, tax revenue and business competitiveness without its Latino contributors, according to the UNC research.
Murphy said he would have to stop growing labor-intensive produce, like cucumbers and sweet potatoes, if he lost the 23 migrant farmworkers he employs on his farm. He would have to repurpose the 600 acres he currently uses to grow agricultural crops and would lose contracts like the one he has for his cucumbers with Mt. Olive Pickles.
Murphy’s farm is more diverse than average, he said, and it helps account for his success. As long as he can maintain a balance of agricultural and cropland products, he’s never too dependent on one harvest. Losing access to migrant labor would change that.
Murphy said he wants a secure border, but not a wall. And Murphy does not want DACA recipients – young people who were brought to the U.S. without documentation as children – to be deported. Nor does he support any of Trump’s other proposed plans on immigration.
Any of those policies – increased deportations, cutting legal immigration, limiting paths to citizenship – would affect people that Murphy personally knows, and would damage his ability to do business, he said.
“Immigration, you need a strong government worker program that’s economically feasible for both sides,” Murphy said. “The worker needs to make a living, but the farmer can’t be put out of business.”
For now, that program exists for farmers as the federal H-2A visa program for temporary agricultural workers. In 2016, North Carolina brought 19,000 H-2A guest workers, second only to Florida.
Foreign-born Latino residents make up more than 12 percent of Duplin County’s population, and they contribute to or run many of the area’s key businesses.
Murphy is not alone in his antagonism toward Trump’s anti-immigrant stance. Kennedy Thompson, a second-generation lawyer in Duplin and vice-chair of the county commissioners, said he’s seen the crackdown on immigrants get a lot worse since Trump’s election.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” Thompson said, speaking specifically about the Trump administration’s announcement to rescind DACA in six months. “People are trying to do it the right way, and they get the rug pulled out from under them.”
Thompson also sees economic benefit from the immigrants and Latinos in the area. His law firm assists with naturalization services, but that accounts for only a small part of his business. From property sales or traffic violations to contract disputes – any part of life that involves the law – Latinos are a key part of his business, Thompson said.
He is not alone in seeing economic benefit from Latinos in North Carolina. According to a 2014 study by UNC’s business school, the buying power of all Hispanics in the state – many of whom are recent immigrants – contributed “$10.3 billion, or $12,895 per Hispanic resident” to the state’s economy.
This created “92,000 spin-off jobs, which, in turn, generated $3.4 billion in spin off labor income, $740 million in spin-off state and local taxes, $444 million in spin-off federal taxes, and $367 million in spin-off social insurance payments.”
These spin-off jobs range from more servers at local restaurants to bilingual paralegals at law firms, such as the two employees Thompson said are essential to the success of his business.
Jessie Ladson, a fellow county commissioner, relies on the Latino community’s buying power to keep her rural corner store open. Since Trump’s election, she has seen a drastic drop in her profits from $200 to $30 dollars a day, she said.
“When I first returned home and opened our little store, it was booming, but now if I see two Hispanics a day it’s a miracle,” Ladson said.
She said doesn’t know what happened to her Hispanic customers. If they don’t come back, Ladson said she will have to close her store.
The importance of their economic spending is not lost on the Latinos who live in Duplin.
“I think we benefit the community,” Ferman said. “For example, with the different stores. Because, now that there are so many Hispanics, they consume and buy from these stores.”
Murphy, who is dependent on migrant and immigrant labor, has helped finance efforts for some immigrants to gain citizenship, and said he would do so again. Thompson’s law firm, which does ample business with the Latino community, helps in the naturalization process. And Ladson would be glad to see the return of Latino customers in order to keep her business open.
After the last harvests in October, Ferman and the other H-2A workers on Murphy’s farm will be on buses headed home. In this political climate, there is no guarantee that Ferman’s 23-year-old son, José, will be able to build a life around working in the U.S. as his father has done.
“You sacrifice yourself to help yourself,” Ferman said. “All these years I’ve worked here, it’s a sacrifice, right? Because it’s been many years. But, as long as I can still come back, as long as they grant you a visa, we will be here.”
As for Murphy, it’s not just his business that hangs in the balance. Many of the men who work alongside Murphy have become as close as family.
“I haven’t told these boys I love them,” Murphy said, “but I reckon I ought to.”
