Cecilia Davenport has an excellent post on the very-white state of Maine (“Remember Maine! The Whitest State, Where Americans Are Still Doing Jobs That “Americans Won’t Do”“):
In Maine, about four percent of farm laborers are non-citizens. In California, approximately 73% of farm laborers are non-citizens. California has approximately 2.2 million illegal immigrants residing within her borders. The number in Maine is so small it was not quantifiable in the 2000 Census.
Somehow, even without massive amounts of immigrant labor, Maine produces 25% of all of the lowbrush blueberries in North America in addition to one of the largest potato crops in the nation…
Unlike in California, native-born Mainers have somehow retained the ability to pick crops and clean houses. In Aroostook County, the largest county east of the Mississippi and home to the majority of the potato production in the state, potatoes are picked not by immigrants—be they “guest workers” or the illegal variety—but by armies of high school aged children.
Most high schools in Aroostook County start two weeks earlier than elementary and middle schools, to account for a three-week long “harvest break” in late September to pick potatoes. The availability of the (nearly entirely white and native Mainer) schoolchildren is so crucial for the success of the harvest that farmers in several school districts were able to lobby schools to delay the start of the break by one week in 2012 in order to give the crop more time to grow. [Potato harvest break adjusted in parts of Aroostook County to meet farmers’ needs, By Julia Bayly, Bangor Daily News, September 14, 2012.] It’s hard to imagine something similar happening in say, California’s central valley…
