The Oct. 9 edition of the Butler Eagle continued to tell the story of the Carrizalez family. Yes, it’s easy to feel empathy for them. But for the last 40 tears, my empathy has been for the family dairy farmer. During this time, I have been providing nutrition services to dairy farmers and have watched many go out of business for one reason.

That reason is, in my opinion, that the government did not enforce our immigration laws, which I believe has allowed the consolidation of U.S. dairy farms from over 100,000 to just over 20,000 now. Pennsylvania now has over 4,000 dairy farms after losing 490 in 2025.

In the U.S. in 2025, there were over 2,000 farms that milk over 1,000 cows and they produce ⅔ of total U.S. milk. Some of these farms only exist by relying almost entirely on illegal immigrants for their labor force.

If the laws had been enforced for immigration, we would have a lot more dairy farms that would have been able to take advantage of new technologies such as the robotic milking system featured recently in the Butler Eagle (“Emerging technology, grant funding reshape agriculture,” Sept. 8, Page B1).

Congress is considering a revised visa that would allow the year-round type of immigrants to be legally employed on dairy farms. I believe that if that happens, consolidation will ramp up on these large farms even faster, putting the local farms everywhere at risk.

Harry Stugart,

Center Township