During the Great Depression, my great grandfather and other farmers in Wisconsin organized penny auctions to help prevent some of his neighbors from losing their property to foreclosure.
On the day a farm was put on the auction block, farmers in the area closed down the roads around the farm—the only people allowed to enter were the farmer whose property was being auctioned, a bank representative and the auctioneer. Then, when the auction was held, the farmer facing foreclosure would put in a bid for his own farm—sometimes as little as a penny.
Today farmers are no longer organizing penny auctions, but they are engaging in solidarity actions with immigrants. They are bringing their tractors to marches in defense of immigrant rights, as well as partnering with organizations that lead know-your-rights trainings and challenging warrant service agreements between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and local law enforcement that, according to the American Civil Liberties Union,
can embolden police to engage in racial profiling.
The flurry of ICE activity in California, which has included arresting day laborers at Home Depot and chasing down farm workers in fields, is breaking up families, devastating communities, and making it impossible for farms to function. President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has tried to justify these actions by saying that undocumented workers have broken the law, either by crossing the border without authorization, overstaying their visas, or using fake Social Security numbers to get a job.
Technically, he is correct—in the same sense that enslaved African Americans broke the law when they escaped their captors. My point is that laws can be reformed, especially when they entail a clear injustice that defies common sense.
Trump himself recently posted on Truth Social: “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.” He promised that “changes are coming” to the nation’s immigrant crackdown.
He ought to begin by backing various bills in Congress that could improve the lives of millions of people. These include the American Families United Act, which provides a legal pathway for the more than million undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens; the American Dream and Promise Act, which would grant permanent residency with the chance of citizenship to college-bound youth who came to the United States without status when they were children; and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which expands the H2A visa program for agricultural workers. U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, has even proposed an exemption to visa limits for fish processing workers.
All of these bills should be given due consideration, as they could help prevent the government from wrecking the farm economy and ruining the lives of vulnerable people to score cheap political points.
We are in this mess due to a broken immigration system that needs reform. Specifically, while ending a system of national quotas that favored migration from Western Europe, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 capped the number of immigration visas for people from the Western Hemisphere at 120,000. This provision, which passed when migration to the United States was virtually nil, is one reason why so many immigrants from Mexico and Central American states are undocumented.
Another reversible wrong step is the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, passed during the administration of President Bill Clinton. Part of his general “tough on crime” agenda, this law permanently bars status adjustments for people who had come to the United States, left, then returned without legal authorization. In effect, Clinton made it impossible for millions of people to gain legal status if they had criss-crossed the border to care for a sick relative or attend family events.
The penny auctions of my great grandfather’s time maintained the integrity of our communities. People participated knowing that real neighbors stand up for one another in the face of injustice. That spirit still animates us, during a time when, instead of doing the hard work of passing legislation that could reform our outdated immigration system, our politicians are choosing to make matters worse.
This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.
Anthony Pahnke (anthonypahnke.com) is vice president of Family Farm Defenders and an associate professor of international relations at San Francisco State University in San Francisco.