Drive through our country's heartland, past golden fields, cattle-speckled hills, and humming dairies, and you'll see the soul of America at work. But look closer, and a bitter truth emerges: the hands harvesting our crops and milking our cows are too often foreign-born laborers here illegally or on a costly visa program.

In my state, the Idaho Dairymen's Association reports that a staggering 70 percent, or more, of dairy workers are using falsified documents—illegal labor that is propping up Idaho's top commodity in our country's number three milk-producing state.

We're told Americans won't do these jobs. Really? Between the 1880s and the 1940s, Americans established these industries. So what changed? It's not the workers. It's the bosses who stopped believing in them.

Idaho's dairies, ranches, and construction sites can thrive with American grit—if employers stop making excuses and start making offers.

Go back to the late 19th century, when Idaho's Snake River Valley was a raw desert. Local settlers—farmers, laborers, families—dug canals, raised dams, and turned dust into fields of potatoes and alfalfa, as historian Mark Fiege shows in Irrigated Eden (1999). These weren't hired foreigners; they were Americans, mostly Western settlers, whose sweat and cooperation built an agricultural empire through the Depression and into the 1940s, despite wartime challenges.

Those were hard years, yet these people showed up, sleeves rolled, ready to work. They weren't too soft for the sun on their necks or the ache of a long day.

Today, we're fed a line that Americans have gone lazy, addicted to cubicles or city lights. Nonsense. Some, yes, but fewer than imagined. The problem isn't our people; it's an industry that's forgotten how to call them home.

Don't tell me Americans won't work. Plenty of us still hunger for the kind of labor that smells of earth and steel—jobs that build calluses and communities. Idaho's fields offer purpose: the roar of a tractor, the precision of robotic milkers, the quiet triumph of a harvest under wide skies.

Vice President JD Vance nailed it when he sarcastically gave in to the notion that deporting tens of millions of illegal aliens would send America back to a time, the 1960s, when houses were not being built because there was no illegal immigrant population to build them. Absurd! The same goes for agriculture.

These aren't dead-end gigs; they're the backbone of our nation. However, employers must stop acting as if foreign workers are the only option. If you are one of these employers who show up to the town parade waving Old Glory, singing Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A.," and are America First, then hire Americans first. Anything less is talk.

Here's where the elites squirm. Idaho employers, as Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen has pointed out during House debate, claim that foreign labor isn't even cheaper. Visas, travel, lodging, meals, and transportation—it adds up, perhaps rivaling what an American might earn in salary and benefits. Yet they claim no amount of money will lure American workers.

Have they tried? Really tried? Take those bloated costs—every dime spent on foreign logistics, and pour them into wages, health plans, or housing for locals. Develop training programs to teach children how to operate today's high-tech rigs. If tech giants can sell college grads on coding in Silicon Valley, Idaho's dairies can sell our youth on feeding America. It's not rocket science; it's will.

These same elites also play shell games with unemployment numbers to justify the false claim that American workers aren't even available to hire because unemployment is low. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' unemployment numbers exclude those able-bodied men aged 25-54 who have left the workforce and aren't actively seeking employment. We are talking about an estimated 7 million in that forgotten category alone. 

Imagine this: billboards across Idaho, or your state, showing a young farmer steering a drone-guided planter, grinning like he owns the future. Community colleges partnering with ranchers to train veterans and high school students. County fairs where dairies are handing out scholarships, not just milk samples. These aren't fantasies; they're strategies. Businesses that want loyalty don't wait for workers to knock—they go out and get them. 

Currently, 70 percent of dairy workers with falsified papers aren't a workforce; it's a failure of imagination. Legal, local labor builds trust, boosts economies, and demonstrates our commitment to sovereignty. 

My state of Idaho can show America how it's done.

Employers, quit hiding behind old excuses. Redirect your budgets, roll out campaigns, and watch Americans answer the call. Lawmakers reduce or eliminate regulations that incentivize foreign labor.

Neighbors, cheer these jobs as the honorable work they are. Picture our fields alive with Americans, dairies humming with citizens who know this land as home.

That's not just Idaho's future; it's America's. We've done it before. We can do it again. All it takes is the guts to try.

Matt Edwards is the State Director of Citizens Alliance of Ohio and the host of Idaho Signal. You can follow him @TrueMattEdwards on X.