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Vox writers are making the best case for the leading Democratic candidates defined as those polling above 10 percent in national averages. But with his strong showing in the Iowa caucuses, Pete Buttigieg has established himself in the top tier of candidates.

This article is the fourth in the series. Our case for Bernie Sanders is here; our case for Elizabeth Warren is here; our case for Joe Biden is here. Vox does not endorse individual candidates.

The case for Pete Buttigieg is simple: The Democratic Party wins when it nominates young, charismatic leaders who are able to convince people outside the partys base that Democratic values are their own.

It is a model that drove Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and John F. Kennedy to the presidency. And it could be the model that puts Pete Buttigieg there.

As the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, hes not the most experienced candidate running. And while he would probably be the most left-wing nominee since at least Walter Mondale, he is hardly the leftmost candidate in this primary, and hes worked hard to differentiate himself from the maximalist platforms of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

But Democratic primary voters are weighing competing priorities. They want a nominee who is progressive but still electable. They want a leader who is smart and even-tempered but who ideally isnt of an age and health status that puts their ability to run a presidential campaign and serve a full term in doubt. They want a president who can represent underrepresented groups while speaking to Obama-Trump voters who feel threatened by that kind of social progressivism.

There is a strong case that Buttigieg is the candidate who best fulfills those competing demands. He would be able to pair a form of liberalism thats more ambitious than Obamas with a sophistication about political institutions and structures that Obama sometimes lacked.

The combination could prove incredibly powerful, and redefine the party for a generation. The results out of Iowa suggest that Democratic voters are beginning to see it too.

Amid the Mayo Pete and Pete is CIA jeers of his left-wing critics, it can be easy to forget what Buttigiegs actual policy agenda is. That agenda would easily be the most progressive by any candidate for the general election in decades. Here is a brief rundown of economic and social policies hes endorsed and promoted:

But thats not all. Buttigieg has devoted attention to big structural problems that afflict our democracy, and has proposed solutions that are genuinely radical.

Taken as a whole, his agenda isnt as ambitious as that of Sanders or Warren. But make no mistake: This is a bold wish list, full of items that either the Obama administration struggled to pass even with 59 senators (like immigration reform and a price on carbon emissions) or that wouldve been too radical for Obama to begin with (like a $15 minimum wage, universal child care, a Medicare buy-in not limited to the elderly, and sectoral bargaining the last of which has barely received any coverage, but which would at a stroke vastly increase the power of the American labor movement).

The fact that his agenda isnt as progressive as those on the left flank of the party is a plus for Buttigieg, not a minus. Sanders and Warren have performed a valuable service by making the objectively quite ambitious agenda of Buttigieg appear, by comparison, incredibly mild, a centrist approach to expanding the safety net.

A perception of relative moderation will most likely help, not hurt, the eventual nominee. The most rigorous studies on this question from political scientists tend to find that moderate nominees have a distinct advantage over ones perceived as more extreme, largely because they dont activate their opponents base the same way a more extreme nominee would.

Put another way: Sanders would terrify and turn out Trumps base, whereas Buttigieg likely would not.

We can get more specific here, too. Buttigiegs most prominent point of differentiation from his leftier rivals is on Medicare-for-all, which he shares as an ultimate goal but rejects as a step too far in limiting choice for the time being. Instead, Buttigieg is pushing Medicare for all who want it, which is exactly what the name implies: a buy-in option for Medicare that he sees as setting us on the path to Medicare-for-all.

Buttigiegs position may inflame die-hard left partisans, but it might be a better general election play. The best evidence we have from the 2018 midterms, as compiled by Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz, suggests that supporting Medicare-for-all cost Democrats about 4.6 percentage points in swing districts; the average Democratic margin was higher in districts where the Democratic candidate didnt back Medicare-for-all, despite those districts being more Republican-leaning overall than districts where pro-Medicare-for-all candidates ran.

More to the point, although Democrats control the House, there is not a House majority for Medicare-for-all at the moment, and there certainly isnt a Senate majority or even a majority of the Senate Democratic caucus that supports it. If the next Democratic president proposes a full Medicare-for-all bill to a Senate where the pivotal members are moderates and avowed Medicare-for-all opponents Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Joe Manchin (WV), the idea will be dead on arrival. After negotiations, Warren and Sanders will inevitably arrive at a compromise that will likely involve some kind of buy-in proposal.

So the question is: Is it worth paying a potentially significant electoral price for backing Medicare-for-all considering the very low likelihood that any Democratic president could enact it anyway? If the answer is no, then the case for Buttigieg looks strong.

Much of the above can count as a case for Joe Biden, who, like, Buttigieg has positioned himself as a moderate alternative to Sanders and Warren. As my colleague Ezra Klein has noted, despite being labeled moderates, if Biden or Buttigieg actually win the nomination, they will be running on the most progressive platform of any Democratic nominee in history.

But it would be a mistake to throw Biden and Buttigieg into the same bucket. Whereas Biden remains wedded to romantic notions of returning to a pre-polarization Washington where Republicans and Democrats hobnob and work frequently across party lines, Buttigieg has a clear-eyed view of the institutional barriers to progressive policy and how to remove them.

Biden has repeatedly told supporters that he expects the Republican Party to come to their senses upon his election. With Donald Trump out of the way, youre going to see a number of my Republican colleagues have an epiphany, he told fundraiser attendees in November, Mark my words. Mark my words. While his comments about working with segregationist senators like James Eastland in the 1970s drew ire for the racial implications of those collaborations, at their heart was this conviction on Bidens part that he could work with anyone, that the raw power of his commitment to collaboration could overcome the deep forces polarizing American politics.

Its just one piece of evidence among many that Biden is out of step with where the party is.

And its not just Biden. Even Bernie Sanders has brushed off the idea of abolishing the filibuster in favor of a bizarre gambit to exploit the budget reconciliation rules to pass Medicare-for-all. At best, this would only enable one piece of controversial legislation to pass, leaving the rest of the policy agenda abandoned; at worst, it will appall old-school Senate Democrats even more than filibuster abolition.

Buttigieg, by contrast, has a much stronger connection to the more brass-knuckled realities of 2020s politics.

Instead of relying of Republican goodwill, he has concrete plans to amplify Democrats relative power: by repealing the filibuster to enable the passage of popular social programs that Republicans will then be reluctant to repeal; using a slim Democratic majority in Congress to add DC and (if they so desire) Puerto Rico as states; reducing the Republican geographic edge in the Senate for years to come; and passing sectoral bargaining to build up labor unions as a countervailing power to American business.

He also sparked the first serious conversation of the campaign about revamping the Supreme Court to prevent partisan rulings striking down progressive legislation. He has floated the idea of expanding the Court to 15 justices, five from each party and another five selected by the partisan justices, in hopes of breaking the narrow conservative majority that threatens everything from Medicare-for-all to universal free college.

In an era crying out for structural political reform, Buttigiegs approach on this front is vital. He understands that Democrats need to fight with all the tools at their disposal to get even a modest legislative package accomplished. And hes laid out plans to use those tools.

Whats remarkable is that hes been able to take that approach without coming across as shrill or unduly combative. He presents as a moderate, as a hope and change candidate like Obama who is able to use rhetoric and charisma to overcome the resistance of skeptical moderates and center-right voters.

The model of a charismatic rhetorician packaging progressive ideas in a moderate message is one that has worked incredibly well for Democrats historically. Like Obama, Buttigieg would make history: He would be the first gay president, Chasten Buttigieg would be the first first husband, and the two of them would become Americas first couple barely six years after they were legally allowed to marry in their home state.

And Buttigieg is unique in pairing the Clinton/Obama approach of hopeful promises of a changed politics with a more hardheaded approach to institutions and the rules of the game than Clinton or Obama ever had.

The most serious case against Buttigieg is that he lacks the necessary experience to hold the office of president. His sole tenure in government has been as mayor of a tiny city smaller than Waterbury, Connecticut, or Peoria, Illinois.

But it is not obvious why Buttigieg should be considered less experienced at being an executive than many of his major rivals. It has been three decades since Bernie Sanders served as a mayor, and in that case as mayor of a smaller city than South Bend. The same goes for Elizabeth Warren. They might know how Washington works, but thats hardly the same as knowing how to run the executive branch.

The candidates rsums, with the notable exception of Joe Bidens, tell us little about their ability to manage complex bureaucracies. But Buttigieg has performed well at other tests of executive judgment and temperament. As the saying goes, personnel is policy, and Buttigieg has assembled some of the most impressive personnel of any candidate.

Danny Yagan, the Berkeley economist and one of Buttigiegs top economic advisors, is widely considered one of the worlds top young public finance economists, and has already reshaped how the profession thinks about taxing wealth.

Austan Goolsbee, formerly the Obama administrations top economist, is advising Buttigieg as well, despite having served with Joe Biden. And hes not alone: Various foreign policy luminaries, including Clintons national security adviser Tony Lake, Iran expert Vali Nasr, and top Obama adviser Philip Gordon, have endorsed Buttigieg. What Buttigieg lacks in experience, he more than makes up for in the accumulated expertise of his supporters.

Whats more, one of the best tests of presidential capability is how well candidates manage their own campaigns. Presidential campaigns are vast, sprawling operations with hundreds of employees, dueling advisers, tough strategic decisions, and huge demands on their leaders time and resources. The experience of running is of course different from the experience of being president, but its a test of executive mettle nonetheless.

The fact that Buttigieg has run his campaign exceptionally well, lapping candidates who on paper should have far outpaced him, like Sens. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Govs. Steve Bullock (D-MT) and Jay Inslee (D-WA), says only good things about his managerial acumen. There was no reason to think the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, could wind up as one of the top contenders for the Democratic nomination, and Buttigieg deserves substantial credit for the operational decisions that helped bring him to that point.

There are arguments for Buttigieg that I frankly wont echo here because they dont hold water. Winning the incredibly Democratic-leaning city of South Bend doesnt say anything about his ability to win Indiana, much less the rest of the Rust Belt. He is not a Washington outsider in any meaningful sense: Indeed, his deep ties within pan-geographic elite networks have produced his impressive corps of advisers.

But while its easy to knock down bad arguments for Buttigieg, its harder to rebut the real arguments for his nomination: that a liberal perceived as a moderate, with a hardheaded view of American institutions but a hopeful, charismatic approach to campaigning, is exactly what the Democratic Party needs right now.

For more on Pete Buttigieg, listen to Ezra Kleins conversation with the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, on this episode of The Ezra Klein Show.

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Pete Buttigieg is more electable than Bernie Sanders and more progressive than you think - Vox.com

I was sad to hear Rush Limbaugh announce that hes battling an advanced form of lung cancer, and might not be able to fulfill his daily duties as he has for decades. Im not a listener of his anymore, but he was part of what inspired me to go into politics. And without Rush Limbaugh, you likely wouldnt be reading this article.

I wish Limbaugh nothing but the best in battling this disease. Some of his close friends, as close friends should, are saying things like if theres anyone who can beat this, its Rush. After all, he is a fighter, and quips that he does so with half his brain tied around his back. Limbaugh also lost his hearing, and thanks to a cochlear implant, was able continue to work for years.

I owe Limbaugh a debt, and Im not sure I can ever repay it. Instead, Id like to chat about his influence on me for a bit. Longtime readersknow a little bit about my career trajectory. But Ive never written much about Limbaugh, who played a role for meand hundreds of thousands of other conservativesover the years.

His show typically airs on weekdays from 12-3 in the Eastern time zone, so I didnt get to catch it much in high school, except in the summer. This was long before YouTube, podcasts, and digital streaming. Some radio stations would re-air it at late hours, particularly the 50,000 megawatt AM stations. You could record it if you had a fancy VCR-esque tape recorder. (I didnt have one.)

After graduating from high school, I took a job before going off to college at a colorants factory called ColorMatrix, working as an injection molder making plastic test chips. I got the job through my family, a sort of this is what the real world looks like experience my dad set up for me. (My dad paid for his high school and college by working at a slaughterhouse, so I had it pretty darn good.)

I was the youngest guy on the shop floor by probably 15 years, and I didnt deserve the job. It was total patronage. Not only that, I was the only non-African American in the shop except for a Pakistani immigrant named Gul Khan, who was part of a famous dynasty of squash players. He, too, was a patronage hire, working hours when he wasnt teaching squash to rich Clevelanderslike the companys owner. He was one of the best squash players on the planet. Seriously.

Anyway, every day my coworkers and I would argue over what to listen to on the radio and if there wasnt a baseball day game, Id always make the case we should listen to Rush. I rarely got my way. It was easier to listen to Rush that fall, when I went off to college in Missouri, his native state. Rush grew up in Cape Girardeaumy grandmother was from Sainte Genevieve, not far down I-55.

Rush was a steady part of my media diet throughout college, as a college Republican who dropped out of college for a semester to work on the Bush campaign. I stopped listening when I made my way to Washington in the mid 2000s, because I had a day job.

In 2007, one of my fathers law partners died. He was a former congressman from Michigan named Guy Vander Jagt. After the memorial service for him in the Longworth buildings Ways & Means committee roomwhere Id later workwe went out to dinner at a Washington steakhouse with others who had worked with the man. As we were waiting to be seated, who did I see sitting at the bar? El Rushbo himself. I excused myself from the gathering and walked over to rudely introduce myself and be a total fanboy, not even able to understand the weirdness of how he had played a part in me winding up in that room with him.

Rush was gracious and listened to my Missouri connections and abridged life story, and then asked what brought me to Washington. I told him I worked in the U.S. Senate.

In true Limbaugh style, he quipped You dont work for Lindsey Grahamnesty, do you? I told him that, from his perspective, it was probably even worse. I worked for Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, who was the author of the later-doomed immigration reform bill. Jons a great guy Limbaugh told me. I disagree with him on this amnesty stuff, but hes a good man, and I respect him.

I used to like to take pictures with famous people, before I realized it was tacky and that you should act like youve been there. In the pre smartphone era, I had a digital camera on me. I asked for a picture and Limbaugh agreed.

The break over my old bosss sensible immigration reform bill was the first of many Id have with Rush over the years. Nearly 13 years later, here we are, with him getting the nations highest civilian honor, live on national TV during the State of the Union. And to be honest, I agree with Noah Rothman: the made-for-TV presentation by Melania in the House gallery diminished the award for show. Limbaugh deserved better.

Rush Limbaugh helped inspire my love of politics, and he also inspired my skepticism of the conservative media echo chamber. Like so many in the movement who have parted ways on matters of policy and the importance of morality,I dont listen to him much anymore, and if I did, I suspect Id rarely agree.

But despite going separate ways Ill always be grateful for him, both for helping bring me into the world of politics and for his personal kindness to a starstruck nobody. I wish El Rushbo the best of health, and would like to thank him for his kindness and inspiration.

Read more from the original source:
El Rushbo and Me - The Bulwark

On Monday, the Supreme Court lifted a lower-court stay on a Trump Administration rule that will deny permanent-resident status to legal immigrants who are deemed likely to become public charges, because they have in the pastor may in the futurereceive public assistance, such as Medicaid or Social Security supplemental income. The rule has been called a humanitarian catastrophe, an act enabling racist and classist cruelty, and a throwback to the darker days of rejecting the neediest immigrants, be they Irish, Jewish, queeror nonwhite. It is all of those things, but it is not, contrary to many comments, a drastic change in immigration policy. Like much that is Trumpian, the new rules, and the Supreme Court order allowing them to go forward, build logically on the last few decades of the American political conversation on immigration, race, and class.

In August of last year, Ken Cuccinelli, then the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, quipped in an NPR interview that the guiding principle of American immigration policy is give me your tired, your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge. He was telling the truth. U.S. policy has always hewed closer to his rendering than to the original Emma Lazarus poem that adorns the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The public charge exclusion in immigration law goes back to the middle of the nineteenth century, and the underlying fear that newcomers will take what is rightly ours predates the policy by centuries.

The immediate precursor of the Trump Administration rule is the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the welfare-reform law signed by Bill Clinton, in 1996. Clinton had run on the promise to end welfare as we have come to know it, and he did. On its way through Congress, the reform package acquired provisions that effectively threw most noncitizens, present and future, off most federally funded public-assistance programs. Clinton opposed these amendments. In his speech heralding the passage of welfare reform, he said:

I am deeply disappointed that the congressional leadership insisted onattaching to this extraordinarily important bill a provision that willhurt legal immigrants in America, people who work hard for theirfamilies, pay taxes, serve in our military. This provision has nothingto do with welfare reform. It is simply a budget-saving measure, andit is not right.

These immigrant families with children who fall on hard times through no fault of their ownfor example, because they face the same risks the rest of us do from accidents, from criminal assaults, from serious illnessesthey should be eligible for medical and other help when they need it.

Then Clinton signed the bill into law. Of course he did: it was his signature legislative achievement, which had taken years to craft and pass. The fear of spending too much money on immigrants, meanwhile, had become a matter of bipartisan consensus. (In the years leading up to welfare reform, California residents voted for a bill that would strip noncitizens of public benefits.) In the end, most of the money that the Treasury actually saved on welfare reform came from cutting benefits to noncitizens.

The thinking that underpinned the anti-immigrant amendments was fundamentally indistinguishable from the thinking that drove welfare reform in general: that undeserving people would somehow take advantage of the system, getting something for nothing. The spectre of the welfare queen haunted America. Viewed through the prism of this fear, immigrants are the least deserving people of all, because they havent paid their imaginary dues.

One could point out that noncitizens pay taxes. (Notably, many noncitizens pay Social Security taxes even though they may never attain the status that would entitle them to benefits.) But arguing about taxes misses the point. The basic idea behind the welfare state is that its best for a society when all its members lead lives of dignity. Not only those who have paid taxes, not only those who have worked, want to work, or will work, not only those who were born here, but all people who inhabit this wealthy land ought to have a roof over their heads and food on the table, have basic medical care, and be free of fear that they will not have any of these things tomorrow. Precisely because this is the foundational principle of a welfare state, in most welfare states noncitizens are eligible for public assistance, and, indeed, public assistance is seen as an essential element of integrating immigrants into society.

After welfare reform became law, the number of noncitizens receiving public assistance decreased precipitouslymore drastically than the law required, in fact. Many people who were still eligible, such as citizen children of noncitizens, stopped receiving benefits, not because they were thrown off the rolls but because they stopped seeking the help. Some of the provisions of the law, such as those stripping benefits from people who were already in the country and receiving aid, were never enforced, but people complied with them anyway. Scholars called this a chilling effect: immigrants, fearful of repercussions, went into the shadows.

Of course they did. Another of Clintons signature legislative achievements was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (I.I.R.I.R.A.), which created the framework for the mass deportations of immigrants who broke the law in the United States. The law was rooted in thinking that we have now normalized: that noncitizens and citizens should be punished differently for the same crimescitizens by incarceration, fines, and community service, and noncitizens by removal, often in addition to the standard penalty a citizen would have received. It also reified the image of immigrants as criminals, and it laid the groundwork for mass deportations, for which the Obama Administration, which removed hundreds of thousands of people a year, still holds the record. In addition, the I.I.R.I.R.A. mandated the construction of a physical barrier on parts of the southern border, laying the literal foundation for Trumps wall. The I.I.R.I.R.A. became law the same year as welfare reform, as did the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which created expedited procedures for deporting alien terrorists. This was five years before 9/11, and two decades before Trump conjured the image of immigrants as terrorists in his 2016 campaign.

Trumps spin on these long-standing policies and fears takes them to an entirely new level of hatred and cruelty. But, to reverse them, we will have to do much more than return to the way things were before Trumpism.

Continue reading here:
Trumps Immigration Rule Is Cruel and RacistBut Its Nothing New - The New Yorker

The president has said he'll build a border wall, cancel funding for sanctuary cities and remove undocumented immigrants, among other things.

President Donald Trump has promised to make big changes on immigration since he was a candidate.

"The truth is our immigration system is worse than anybody ever realized," the president said.

Among them, build a southern border wall, remove undocumented immigrants, cancel funding for sanctuary cities and other sanctuary jurisdictions, suspend immigration from certain countries, limit legal immigration, and end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

We'll cover the border wall and DACA in separate stories, but here's a closer look at some of these other promises.

"There are vast numbers of additional criminal illegal immigrants who have fled, but their days have run out in this country. The crime will stop. They're going to be gone. It will be over," the president said.

On the campaign trail, President Trump said he'd remove all undocumented immigrants from the U.S., especially those who had committed crimes. Pew Research estimated there were about10.5 millionundocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2017.

In a series of tweets in June 2019, thepresident reiteratedthat promise. He said Immigration and Customs Enforcement would "begin the process of removing the millions" of undocumented immigrants. In total, ICEremoved over 267,000 peoplein fiscal year 2019, a slight increase from the year before.

"Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars," President Trump said.

In January 2017, President Trump signed anexecutive ordersaying sanctuary jurisdictions could not receive funding that's not already mandated by law. Two months later, the Justice Department announced it would expand an Obama-era policy that denied sanctuary cities funding.

Los Angelessued the DOJafter it was passed over for a community police grant. The case went back and forth in court, and in July 2019, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Trump administrationcan give preferential treatmentwhen awarding grant money to cities that use it to combat illegal immigration.

Let's go back to President Trump's first few days in office: On Jan. 27, 2017, hesigned an executive orderbanning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. The order was quickly challenged and met with nationwide protests. The White House revised the order two times and a revised ban eventually made it to theSupreme Court, which upheld it in June 2018.

"When politicians talk about immigration reform, they usually mean the following: amnesty, open borders, lower wages. Immigration reform should mean something else entirely," President Trump said. "It should mean improvements to our laws and policies to make life better for American citizens."

President Trump has also looked at limiting legal immigration. In September 2017, the State Department said itwanted to capthe number of refugees admitted to the U.S. at 45,000 for the 2018 fiscal year. That was the lowest since the refugee program was created in 1980. The Trump administration decreased that cap again in each of the next two years. Forfiscal year 2020, the U.S. has a refugee admissions ceiling of 18,000.

In May 2019, the presidentoutlined his planto overhaul the U.S. immigration system. The heart of the proposal was the creation of a merit-based point system aimed at prioritizing skilled workers in the immigration process.

"Our proposal is pro-American, pro-immigrant and pro-worker. It's just common sense," President Trump said.

That proposal has since stalled. But in August, the Trump administration issued its so-called "public charge" rule. It prevents people from getting green cards and visa extensions if they use or are deemed likely to use public benefits in the future. Federaljudges temporarily postponedthe rule while it faced legal challenges, and in late January, the Supreme Court said the rule should be allowed to take effect.

Finally, in the latter half of 2019, the U.S. entered into asylum agreements with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. It's part of the Trump administration's goal to limit the number of migrants entering the U.S. at the southern border. Under those deals which are often referred to as "safe third country" agreements the U.S. will send migrants to apply for asylum in those countries regardless of whether they actually passed through on the way to the U.S. The Guatemala deal is in effect after several legal challenges, but the Honduras and El Salvador agreements aren't being enforced yet.

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Trump Has Had A Lot Of Immigration Plans Here's Where They Are - Newsy

Driscolls One Family philosophy has played a key role in helping the company navigate challenges such as labor standards, immigration reform and water stewardship. We spoke to Soren Bjorn, President of Driscoll's of the Americas, about the impact it has had on the farming communities who produce its berries.

From its humble beginnings as a small family business more than a century ago,Driscolls has become a major producer of berriesin the US and beyond. But the ideas of family and community still play a keyrole in Driscolls business philosophy especially as it navigates increasinglychallenging issues such as labor standards, immigration reform and waterstewardship. While agriculture can bring work and prosperity to a community, itcan also put a strain on precious resources such as water. And while there maybe regulations in place to ensure workers receive the financial and healthbenefits they are entitled to, making sure this happens can be a very differentstory.

We spoke to Soren Bjorn, President of Driscoll's of the Americas, about thecompanys One Family approach, andto find out more about the impact it was having on the farming communities whoproduce the berries we eat.

Soren Bjorn: In our business, we work in a number of different countries,and while there may be laws and regulations in place, we often see varyingdegrees of enforcement and compliance. In Morocco, for example, many of thefarmworkers were not even registered with the state; and so, had no socialsecurity or registration number. This meant that although social security wasbeing paid on their behalf, the workers had no way of ever getting the benefits.So, we worked to get individuals registered to make sure that they will beeligible for these benefits one day.

In Mexico, in a lot of the smaller communities, there may not even be ahealth clinic meaning that although the grower is paying for health benefitson behalf of the workforce, the workers wont receive any benefit. To deal withthat, in some instances, we would pay to get a clinic up and running and fundthe infrastructure required to make sure the workers receive those healthbenefits.

Hear insights from a variety of field experts and practitioners on the myriad benefits of a world devoted to regenerative sourcing practices June 1-4 at SB'20 Long Beach.

If you want to drive meaningful change, you need to address these underlyingissues. This is why you sometimes need to draw the circle around your businessmuch wider and think beyond the narrow economic impact.

SB: Working in agriculture, we have to consider not just the water on thefarm; but also ask if the community has enough water to sustain itself. InBaja, California, for example, there was not enough water in the community;so we made a decision not to increase our footprint in that region unless wecould find a more sustainable source of water. For five years, even though therewas a demand for more berries, we didn't increase our footprint. More recently,our largest grower in the region developed an ocean water plant; which allows usto grow more berries, but also to return that supply of water back to thecommunity.

We've been involved with Ceres for quite a long time. In Watsonville, inthe Pajaro Valley, both agriculture and the community depend on the aquiferfor water, as there is no pipeline to bring water in. This aquifer issignificantly overdrawn, so we wanted to help solve that problem as part of thecommunity. We worked with Ceres on this and also as advocates for thegroundwater legislation that passed in California five years ago. Through that,we got introduced to the AgWaterchallenge.

By joining this challenge, we get to work with others who are already facingsimilar issues and get access to their expertise, as well as a lot of greatideas. There is also the pressure of having to make progress, and thats wherethe challenge part comes in. Water stewardship is not an individual businessissue, but a community and a societal one. To be able to tap into all theseother resources is absolutely critical to meeting the challenge.

SB: That was a really interesting project and one I was very involved inpersonally. We were originally trying to tell the story of our company throughthe voices of our growers. But it became clear when we went out to film thisdocumentary that labor and immigration issues were what everybody wanted to talkabout. We saw this as an opportunity not to advocate for or criticize anyspecific policy, but to shine the light on an issue that we think is critical not just for our business, but for society at large.

In the US today, we are very fortunate to have absolute food security. We are asubstantial net exporter of food; and if we want to maintain that status, weshould do everything within our power to try to protect it. If we want the freshfruits and vegetables that we consume to mostly be grown in this country, weneed immigration reform. The reality is that 75 percent of all the fruit andvegetables grown in the US are still harvested by hand, and the vast majority ofthe people who do that work are immigrants to this country.

If we, as a society, make the choice that we dont want immigrants here doingthat work, we also have to recognize that we are choosing not to have that foodproduction here. This means that we would be relying on imports for a wholerange of commodities.

Even if a person generally takes an anti-immigration stance, they probably donthave an anti-food security stance. But they dont make the connection. When weshow the documentary, it is always done with the intention of having a reallygood dialogue, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Immigration reform, particularly for agriculture, could easily happen. There isa pretty good bill that just passed in the house of representatives withbilateral, cross-party support.

Although we want to solve the problems in agriculture, we are also aware that itis part of a larger issue about immigration.

SB: Because of our business model, our growers are not in a contract withus. It is much more of a partnership, where we are both trying to delightconsumers in the marketplace and have the consumers reward us for that. And weshare that revenue with the growers. In fact, 80-85 percent of the revenue goesback to the growers in their local community. So, the single largest impact weare having in the community is through the success of the independent grower.

I'll give you an example. We grow berries in a small village in the south ofChina. For 1,200 years, they have grown only rice commercially in thatcommunity. If you grow an acre of rice in the south of China, the revenue yougenerate is somewhere around $1,000 per acre. Today, we have growers in thatcommunity growing Driscolls raspberries and the revenue that comes from thatone acre is somewhere between $60,000-80,000. In our model, 85 percent of thatrevenue goes back to the grower in that community to pay for wages, land andother inputs. This means more money for people to spend at the butchers; so thebutcher gets wealthier and has a lot more money for the people that own therental properties, so they can develop new properties and so forth. The impactthis has on the broader community is tremendous.

Another example is in Mexico, where we have mobile medical clinics drivingaround the fields providing basic health services to people that otherwise wouldnot have any health services. This led us to partner up with the ColgateFoundation in Mexico, which had always provided basic dental services tochildren. We asked if they would be interested in serving the farmworkercommunity. We have now partnered up with an NGO that goes out in the field;offering training in how to care for your teeth, as well as providing basicservices. And we have recently done the same thing on eyecare.

So, what started as a mobile clinic has mushroomed into a host of services for acommunity that previously couldnt access those services. And this isn'thappening with our money; it is happening because people are doing a really goodjob of connecting the pieces together. So, I think that is an example ofsomething that is really exciting, because it creates a much healthiercommunity.

Published Jan 30, 2020 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET

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Originally posted here:
One Family: How Driscoll's Is Working to Safeguard Its Farming Communities - Sustainable Brands