The next basic foodstuff that's set to soar in price after cost of eggs skyrocketed

The price of milk could soar if laws further restricting illegal immigrants from working are passed, according to experts - since their labor is crucial in making sure dairy farms across the United States are productive.

The Idaho Dairymen's Association estimates that 90 percent of the state's on-site dairy workers are foreign-born. Nationally, the number is closer to 51 percent, according to a Texas A&M survey from 2015, with most academics agreeing most of them likely don't have legal status.

Meanwhile, more and more state-level Republicans want to prohibit any business from operating if they're caught employing illegal immigrants. On the national stage, former President Donald Trump has said he wants to deport 15 million people .

That same Texas A&M survey states that removing immigrant labor entirely would cause retail milk prices to increase by 90.4 percent.

Peter Wiersma, the president of the Idaho Dairymen's Association, told The New York Times the consequences of getting rid of these workers would be catastrophic.

'I don't think there would be milk,' Wiersma said. 'I just don't think we could get it done.'

An increase in prices would hit the US hard, considering that most citizens view dairy as a staple of their daily diet.

China, for example, consumes about 15 percent of what Americans consume per capita, according to Fortune .

A 90 percent increase in milk prices would resemble similar sticker shock with eggs during the worst of the pandemic-induced inflation .

In just the last year alone, the average price for a dozen grade A eggs across the US jumped by 85 percent from just over $2 to $3.82, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics .

However, the dairy industry has unique constraints, according to those who produce milk for a living.

Peter Wiersma, who runs a dairy farm in southern Idaho , told The Times he already operates on tight margins while relying heavily on his workers - 90 percent of whom he believes were born in Mexico .

He said the price of everything in America has gone up, except for milk. It's a dream for consumers but a nightmare for him.

During the pandemic, costs soared for Wiersma and have never come back down to earth.

Fuel-tank fittings that cost him about $2,000 in 2014 can set him back $13,000 now. Mechanics who used to charge $60 an hour to fix his farm equipment now charge $95 an hour.

Yet the farm value of milk has actually been declining since the 1970s adjusting for inflation.

Wiersma said that in the spring, the selling price for a hundred pounds of Class III milk - the kind used to make yogurt and cheese - was around $15.50.

That's roughly $3 above where it was 40 years ago, or in reality, a 55 percent drop in real value.

Andrew Novakovic, a dairy economics expert from Cornell University, said that over the past five years milk prices have varied from as little as $11.66 to as high as $25.46.

Overall, Novakovic said, the price trend is down. And every time it dips below $18, Wiersma said he runs his business at a loss.

Since milk, like eggs, is a commodity, Wiersma has no control over how much he can charge for his dairy. Like every other dairy farmer, he sells his milk through a co-op, which then sends a truck twice a day to drain 75,000 pounds of milk from his holding tanks.

Wiersma only finds out how much he'll make several weeks later.

'We're not price makers,' he said. 'We're price takers.'

He has come up with ways to stay afloat. He's saved money by building fences out of recycled oil pipes, and he hedges against the price of milk in futures markets.

None of this, however, would be sufficient if all his foreign labor was ripped away from him - either through mass deportation or more restrictive labor laws.

Under current law, Wiersma is only required to take a cursory glance at his employees' work documents. In his mind, as long as there's a social security number, that's enough.

In February, Idaho state representative Jordan Redman, a Republican, sought to change that with bill H-510 , which would allow the state's attorney general to revoke the business licenses of anyone found to be employing illegal workers.

The bill would also allow ordinary citizens to alert the attorney general to any businesses they suspect are using unauthorized labor.

Redman told The Times his priority with the bill was to level the playing field for companies that don't hire illegal immigrants, who would normally be paying higher wages for natural born workers.

'I don't have a ton of dairies up in my neck of the woods,' Redman said.

He said he was surprised when many of his colleagues opposed the bill, which would ultimately never come up for a vote.

In March, Redman along with nine other representatives, were able to pass bill H-753 through the House. It stepped up enforcement against illegal immigrants, but it was never voted on in the state Senate.

Other statewide Republicans have shared their views on this issue, angering dairy farmers.

This includes Dorothy Moon, the chairwoman of Idaho's Republican Party, who wrote a column in 2023 for the local newspaper in Twin Falls, The Times-News.

In it, she said: 'Everywhere immigrants are relied upon to fill the workforce, domestic-worker compensation, including young workers recently graduated from college, drops dramatically.'

She added: 'Everywhere immigrants are relied upon to fill the workforce, welfare spending increases.'

A retired dairy farmer named Terry Gartner penned a furious clapback in the same paper a month later.

'If you remove these workers, then you, Dorothy, and Republican leaders need to go buy yourselves some rubber boots, work clothes, a wet suit and gloves, and get ready to go to work in a cow barn!' he wrote.

Philip Watson, an economist at the University of Idaho's College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, told The Times that legislation and policy ideas floated by Republicans to stop illegal immigrants from working won't help Idaho.

Watson and his colleague Hernan Tejeda conducted multiple studies that found the dairy industry brought in $10.7 billion to Idaho in 2020.

In a 2012 study, Watson estimated that if Idaho cut its less-educated foreign labor in half, the state's GDP would fall by $905 million.

In 2024, he said that number would only be bigger.

He added that dairy farms generated $155 million in state and local taxes in 2020, compared with $90 million in 2012.

And even though Idaho's dairy farms employ just 4,400 people, Watson and Tejeda say that these farms directly enable 30,600 other jobs in milk processing and other related businesses.

So if the dairy industry were to depart Idaho, it would have a downstream effect on schools and restaurants across the state.

'People have seen this for decades,' Watson said. 'When the coal mine shuts down in West Virginia or the steel mill shuts down in Pittsburgh, it's not just the mill and the millworkers that are affected. It's entire communities.'