When the welfare state eventually collapses then the farmers will complain about all those lazy liberal arts majors who pick their crops for them.
California has about a 60% greater population density than Mexico. The trick isn't bringing in more people, it is getting the people already there to work.
Like any market there’s always a price. Raise wages so an American not living in an apartment with 15 other illegal workers can afford to take the job. Simple.
Open the immigration limits on the Philippines.
They have a struggling population of 95 million hardworking mostly social-Conservative people, and already the “overseas workforce” of their population is a big part of their economy.
Philippino farm workers (would all speak English already) would either go back and forth as “temporary” workers, or become loyal Americans, but would not be, at any time, a nationalist fifth column of a next door neighbor.
Where are all the illegals who pick the fruit and vegies?
They have moved up the food chain taking jobs legal Americans
will do. That’s why there is ALWAYS a shortage. Illegals have moved up to take YOUR JOB!
If the USDA would stop advertising in Spanish to sign up for food stamps, they’d soon have plenty of workers. Why sweat when you can sit in front of your flat-screen TV in air conditioned comfort?
One third of all welfare recipients in America are in California. Why would they work when they get everything for free?
Fifteen percent unemployment and there isn’t enough labor.
Seems to me that the dole is just too darn comfortable...
I have spent 4 of the last 6 weeks in central CA — farm basket to the nation. It’s a mess. People are standing in the medians asking for hand outs. Unemployment is paying $12 per hour. Crops are drying up in the fields. I drove past an apricot orchard every day (probably belonged to the Ag Dept at CSU-Fresno) and saw no pickers. The trees were heavy with fruit, and the ground underneath was golden with dropped fruit. No pickers. I don’t understand it. If they didn’t want the crop, you’d think that they could have turned the orchard over to The Gleaners, or to Second Harvest.
sounds like some enterprising person needs to invent a fruit picking machine
Victor Davis Hanson was talking this so called shortage on a Ricochet podcast. There are tons of children of immigrants who could work the fields but they on are welfare, disability, etc. So these farmers have to bring in a fresh crop of serf labor every few years to make up for the flow into the welfare state. How do these farmers need labor when there is Spanish level unemployment, 20% and above, in the Central Valley of CA.
Why would illegal mexicans pick crops when they can ride the obama amnesty-welfare gravy train? What? You thought all of those illegals were hard working, respectable people doing the jobs Americans wouldn’t do? The fact that they’re here illegaly should answer your question.
A simple change could end this right now. Right now, unemployment is being extended. So why not require approved agricultural work during the harvest season to continue to get unemployment?
The illegal alien pickers discovered they can make more money on California welfare benefits than working for the pittance wages the growers are offering. It’s that simple.
How many criminals are sitting around in California prisons doing nothing?