Sun Valley Floral Farms was forced to lay off half of its workforce Monday, after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) notified them that 283 employees are not eligible to work in the United States due to incorrect employment numbers.

According to a story published Tuesday in The Times Standard, ICE officials had reviewed the company's employment records about seven months ago, when the company was asked to provide I-9 tax forms. But the company had not heard from them since; until last week.

"From a personal perspective, I am devastated by this development," Lane DeVries, Sun Valley Group CEO, said to SAF via email. "These were dedicated, hard-working people who have very much become part of the Sun Valley family over the years, and they will be greatly missed."

"Countless people have asked how they can help; the best way to support our company is to continue to count on our dedicated team to provide our customers with excellent service and high quality flowers that have become the Sun Valley standard," DeVries explained.

DeVries says he's confident the company will carry on. "Our organization is remarkably strong, and we will make the best of a bad situation," he says. "The remaining Sun Valley team members are dedicated to producing beautiful, premium-quality flowers that have come to not only represent Sun Valley itself, but their own hard work and commitment to growing the finest cut flowers in the world."

From an industry perspective, DeVries says the action could happen to "any number of businesses throughout America" and drives home the need for immigration reform.

"The current immigration policy is a threat to the sustainability of the California cut flower industry and to dozens of other sectors across the country," DeVries says. "We must address this issue and find common ground for the economic health of our industry, our state and our country."

SAF has supported comprehensive immigration reform for many years, but Congress has yet to agree on a solution. "What happened at Sun Valley is a direct consequence of congressional inaction," said SAF's senior director of government relations Jeanne Ramsay.  "SAF agrees with enforcing existing laws, but will continue to support reform that addresses the urgent and very real needs of business owners in the floral industry."

DeVries says he will likewise continue to support the immigration reform effort, and he encourages California growers to support the efforts of the California Cut Flower Commission and SAF "as they aggressively address this issue with fairness, diplomacy and results-oriented urgency in our nation's Capitol and in Sacramento."

--Kate Penn
kpenn@safnow.org

 

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