Patty Loew:
This week we bring you two award-winning reports. We begin with a controversy down on the farm in a report that first aired in April 2008. More than a year later even with soaring unemployment numbers many dairy farmers say they still can't find enough local help. How can these farmers make sure their immigrant workers are legal? In our “Money Matters” series Frederica Freyberg found one farmer confronting the problem head on in Buffalo County.

Frederica Freyberg:
European immigrants who settled these hills and valleys would rise with the sun to work their fledgling farms. 150 years later, the part about rising with the sun hasn't changed, but today the great, great grandchildren of those early settlers are not the immigrant farmers. They employ them. On the Rosenow Wolf dairy farm they employ eight workers from Mexico. John Rosenow said the farm would not survive without them.

John Rosenow:
It’s clear as can be. There has always been a shortage of labor. Even when I was a kid there was a shortage of labor.
Frederica Freyberg:
He milks about 500 cows, a larger operation than his family's original dairy farm. Because of the trend toward larger farms in Wisconsin, hiring Mexican labor is a growing trend. State figures show nearly 1/3 of the workers on Wisconsin dairy farms, about 4,200, are Latino. The state secretary of agriculture acknowledges the need.

Rod Nilsestuen:
It isn't that one morning they woke up and suddenly decided it would be better to have Mexican labor. They went there because that was the only choice left in most cases.

Frederica Freyberg:
A recent academic survey found that 40% of Wisconsin dairy farms would go out of business without hires from south of the border.

Loren Wolfe:
We had the Mexicans employed because we need the labor. We milk around the clock. We couldn't find enough local labor to do the job for us.

Translator:
Because here the shifts are good. You have a whole day off every week.

Frederica Freyberg:
Starting wages here for workers like this man are $6.75 an hour. According to the department of labor that's a little shy of the average starting pay statewide. But the farm provides fully paid health insurance and housing, including utilities.

John Rosenow:
What better way to spend money than invest in your employees.

Frederica Freyberg:
The investment doesn't stop with the pay and benefit package. This farm provides training for the Mexican workers in dairy technology and classes in English language. Plus the eight local American workers take Spanish classes right on the farm.

Shaun Duvall:
A new paradigm, a new model of what an employer can be.

Frederica Freyberg:
Talk about change in America's dairy land. Shaun Duvall has made a business out of these on-site bilingual classes and works closely with farmers like Rosenow.

Shaun Duvall:
Word of mouth. More farms asking me to come. I'm on 30-some farms.

Frederica Freyberg:
Duvall originated the idea of not just bringing the Spanish language to the Wisconsin farm but bringing the Wisconsin farm to the Mexican culture, literally. She started Puentes/Bridges, a program of cultural  immersion trips. This photo shows farmer John Rosenow in Mexico, in the hometown of one of his employees, meeting the children and wife and parents his worker left behind for a good job at his Wisconsin farm.

Shaun Duvall:
It works. All of a sudden we're just people doing the same thing.

Frederica Freyberg:
Certainly not everyone embraces this growing influx of Mexican labor. Here in nearby Arcadia, the mayor recently proposed making English the official language. He proposed having people alert the feds to undocumented workers and to making American flags required anywhere a foreign flag flies. The mayor of Arcadia, however, refused to talk with us on this issue. The mayor's tough stand apparently brought on by the change in and around his town. Two major employers in Arcadia, Ashley Furniture and Gold N Plump employ Mexican workers. The local schools reflect that. The dairy co-owner Loren Wolfe happens to be the school board president in Arcadia.

Loren Wolfe:
In 2008 we have 180 Hispanic students in our school system out of 1,000.

Frederica Freyberg:
Wolfe says the children are here because the parents are working here.

Loren Wolfe:
They are just looking to make a better life for themselves, for their families back in Mexico.

David Gorak:
These are the jobs that Americans did 25, 30 years ago but for wages that allowed them to support their families.

Frederica Freyberg:
Job competition is just one reason David Gorak leads a group headquartered in his home called the Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration. His true aim is to send every illegal immigrant packing.

David Gorak:
One of my favorite five letter words is legal. That's all we're saying.

Frederica Freyberg:
Gorak blames the government for failing to impose law and order.

David Gorak:
You have to enforce the laws. If you don't enforce the laws all you do is breed contempt for all law.

Frederica Freyberg:
For his part, John Rosenow in no way considers himself exempt from immigration laws. He stays awakes night worrying his employees are not legal and that the INS will show up.

John Rosenow:
The biggest fear is that the documents that I'm receiving may not be real. If they're not real, that I will be checked by immigration, naturalization service and I lose my employees.

Frederica Freyberg:
He says by law he's not expected to be a document expert and all his Mexican employees have provided true-looking green cards, social security numbers or driver's licenses. He's not allowed to deny employment based by color of skin or assumptions that if the applicant is Mexican he must be illegal.

John Rosenow:
We have to walk a fine line. This constant barrage that we get of people like Lou Dobbs or whoever saying that basically if you're a Mexican you must be illegal and you're bad, that's horrible. I don't think we need to be a racist society.

David Gorak:
This has got nothing to do with racism. It's about the rule of law. The rule of law has no color on it. It applies equally to everybody.

Frederica Freyberg:
There are no hard figures on how many of the 4,200 Latinos currently working Wisconsin dairy farms are legal or illegal.

Frederica Freyberg:
If that is your biggest fear why are you not a target by talking openly about it?

John Rosenow:
I am a target by talking openly about it but in this society, which I've grown up in, all my family has grown up and been here since my great great grandparents were immigrants 150 years ago, in this society the way you get change is somebody has to speak up when something isn't right.

Frederica Freyberg:
Speaking up for change in federal immigration policy, change that would provide special visa programs or amnesty for Mexican workers so dairy farmers could be certain they are legal. It truly is a new day in Wisconsin agriculture when a farmer's biggest fear is not the market or the weather or the price of fuel, but whether immigration agents will come knocking.

Patty Loew:
According to immigration experts, only seasonal workers or highly trained workers like doctors are eligible for the current work visa program. Even then, the visas granted are fewer than the number of jobs available. Frederica Freyberg’s reporting on this issue earned a second place award from the Milwaukee Press Club for a public affairs report.