Posted on 05/30/2012 11:06:00 AM PDT by moonshinner_09
He was afraid his seasonal migrant workforce might not return for the summer picking season, opting to stay away rather than risk running afoul of Alabama's stringent immigration law. The crew he awaits is picking the Florida harvest.
"I had to cut back my planting not knowing if the labor is going to be available," said Copeland, 47, who planted just two-thirds of his 30 acres on the far side of Straight Mountain in northeastern Blount County.
"I don't know what we're going to do if they run every illegal out of here. It's going to be hard to stay in business."
Fellow Blount County tomato farmer Tim Battles planted just 12 of his 25 acres because of uncertainties engendered by the law.
"I've got $160,000, $170,000 in my crop," he said. "Let's say (immigration enforcement officers) come in July and haul everyone off. I lose it all. What they're doing down in Montgomery (the state capital) is governing us out of a job."
Modeled after Arizona's controversial 2010 immigration law, Alabama's statute and others also passed last year - in Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah - require state and local law enforcement officers to verify the immigration status of those they suspect of being in the country illegally.
Now, Alabama is finding out whether it can live without undocumented immigrants, estimated to number 120,000 in 2010, who flocked to this southern state only in recent decades. They've been working in border states for several generations.
More states are considering their own laws but first want to see how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on provisions of the Arizona law, a judgment expected before the end of June. Based on questions posed by justices during oral arguments heard on April 25, some analysts expect the Roberts court
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
“I don’t know what we’re going to do if they run every illegal out of here. It’s going to be hard to stay in business.”
I’m sorry, but that’s NOT a reason to flout the law.
“Now, Alabama is finding out whether it can live without undocumented immigrants.”
Don’t worry about us Rooters. Somehow we’ll make it. /sarc
What can he do?
Well, he can join millions of working Americans to pass laws that arrest welfare cheats and when when arrested, place them in the fields to work......that’s what!
Advocacy journalism is the single greatest threat to this country's continued existance.
Mr. Copeland, put an ad on Craiglist and you will probably get enough pickers.
If not, raise the pay until you do.
That is how capitalism works.
Many years ago, high school kids used to pick crops to make money so they could buy school clothes. Those days could come again if the illegals don’t show up.
I bet he could find some unemployed people somewhere to help out. Of course he might have to pay at least minimum wage.
I wonder if this chucklehead expects his kids teachers, doctors and dentists to be illegals so it is cheaper for him also.
STFU you criminal enabler!
Airborne !.
Gee, maybe he will have to pay a wage that the market decides is right, whatever is required to attract legitimate workers. NAW, no way that would work.
Could not agree more, frig’em and feed’em fish heads. The building contractors have for too long gotten away with this bullchit. They now think they are the new farmers, ie: lowered wages so low that illegals are the only ones who will work for them.
Where in the hell is the unions on this subject?
u talking to me?
What a winning business model!
It’s pretty obvious why Americans are not doing the work illegals do when you think about it. They only hire their foreign pals and they have locked out Americans from the skills development and work.
Construction jobs used to keep the working class in America rising. If you weren’t great at school, but could work with your hands, you learned a trade and then were trained on the job. No speaka spanish, no job in most construction operations in the US. It’s time for them to go.
That farmer who built his livlihood on illegal labor should be making other plans for hiring Americans rather than whining. He first has to get rid of his foreign farm manager who hires only illegal, foreign crews.
At least one true statement in the article, but they fail to point out that all these jobs that Americans won't do were overwhelmingly being done in Alabama by white and black US citizens until about twenty years ago. It wasn't until the early 1990s that you could even find an illegal alien working in Alabama without going to great effort.
These illegals gradually began arriving and would work cheaper, so more employers began to hire them. If some employers who did the hiring are now having to hustle more to find workers, I have no sympathy for them. And if they can't arrange labor to work 40 acres of tomatoes, they shouldn't plant forty acres of tomatoes.
Farmers who want large scale operations, especially in labor intensive crops like vegetables and fruit, should work out their labor needs without including illegal workers, or they should not plant such crops on a large scale.
The problem is that he expects US to pick up the tab for all the bennies the illegals and their families claim. He gets the benefit of cheap labor. We get the shaft in the form of huge benefits costs, higher crime rates, increased infectious disease, ad nauseum.
Screw that.
” Building contractors,pay in cash , if one of their illegals gets hurt on the job, Building contractors,will take illegals to er drop off them and leave it to the taxpayers to provide healthcare coverage “
YEP
” That farmer who built his livlihood on illegal labor should be making other plans for hiring Americans rather than whining. He first has to get rid of his foreign farm manager who hires only illegal, foreign crews.”
Yes.
I have absolutely no sympathy for the home building contractors. Those SOBS got so bad in the mid 2000’s, that an American out west couldn’t find a construction job at all. Now tens of thousands of nearly new homes are falling apart, even turning into slums.
The guy has $170,000 invested in 12 acres of tomatoes? That’s $14,000 per acre. He’s got other problems other than labor.
“Many years ago, high school kids used to pick crops to make money so they could buy school clothes. Those days could come again if the illegals don’t show up.”
I am 73 years old, when a kid, school let out in the spring so we could chop cotton ten hours a day for 50 cents an hour. School started back up in July, then in September let out again so we could pick cotton from daylight to dark until November for $3.00 per hundred pounds.
Our single mother didn’t like it, but our family’s very survival depended on getting the meager work and wages. Such was the norm for my five siblings and I, along with the majority of other kids.
On our wedding day, the Wife and I got married at ten o’clock in the morning, at twelve noon we were back in the cotton field and picked until dark. Our wedding dinner was foot long chili dogs bought by father-in-law at the Log Cabin drive in.
We didn’t like it and vowed to get out. I hitch hiked to Chicago with ten bucks in one shoe and 15 in the other. I took the first job could find working for a day labor company, went on to other jobs and the rest as they say, is history.
Some may say BS about the wedding day story. In 2010 we retook our wedding vows on 50th anniversary in Las Vegas at the Elvis wedding chapel. My sister leaked the story to the Elvis Preacher and he made me promise Wife would not have to pick cotton the rest of the day.
Here is video of the event and one can hear Elvis make me promise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGrDyM5-RJs&feature=player_embedded
Now, Alabama is finding out whether it can live without undocumented immigrants,
Think about it! What does that say about America? This is not the country it once was. "A nation of immigrants" my ass! We've got too many foreigners living here. They are not Americans. They don't want to be Americans. They just want to live where you can get lots of "free stuff" and whine about "discrimination" and "racism" if you don't get it.
Its closest rival is the proliferation of attorneys.
Majority of farmers are government subsidized. Yhy are those taking the $ not forced to pay the minimum wage?
What can he do? How about turning himself in for knowingly breaking the law? He is also pretty stupid to be blabbing about in public.
I’m about 6 years younger than you but can relate to your cotton field experiences right down to the 50¢ an hour 10 hour days and $3.00 per hundred for picking. We got out of school for picking season too.
Where our stories differ is that after high school, I enlisted. There weren’t a whole lot of options for college back then, no student loans, no Pell grants for poor cotton pickers.Work at something or go hungry.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do if they run every illegal out of here. It’s going to be hard to stay in business.”
Well there are tens of thousands of legal citizens getting welfare checks for YEARS. I think we could find people that need to work if we really tried!
Those SOBS got so bad in the mid 2000’s, that an American out west couldn’t find a construction job at all.
They also clog the drains and toilets if you are not watching them. The contractor swore the workers were here legally, but I doubt it. I made my husband inspect the work every night while I cleaned and he found some serious nonsense that had to be redone.
At least you were able to monitor them.
My brother runs a landscape business.
People who hire illegals undercut him because they have lower overhead.
I am sure they too would whine and cry if enforcement of the law deprived them of their illegal labor.
F*ck them.
I not only don’t want them to have access to illegal labor - I want them driven out of business with huge fines if they are caught hiring illegals.
When there is no longer a market for illegal labor they will go home and stay home.
u = you? If so, why abbreviate it? Or should I say, "y abv t"?
u bore me
He could also get off his dead butt along with his wife and kids and pick it themselves.
Just look at how well the last discounted/imported labor force has worked out for America! Choose your deleterious statistical subject and look at who is causing most of the problem and their percentage in the overall population.
Why are we allowing ANY immigration with our current unemployment and underemployment problem?
When you get down to the nut of it, it’s all about undcutting wages for the American citizenry, especially lower class whites.......which is all yesterdays slavery and today’s unenforcement of immigration laws is about.
When El Migre comes for his crew, they should haul his ass off too.
I quit school after the eighth grade and went to work full time, My Mother signed and I enlisted in the army when I turned 17. E-1 private’s pay was 69 bucks a month and made out 50 dollars a month allotment to my Mother.
When I got out was twenty, came home, married, we left and never looked back to that G_D forsaken place. One thing I can say,is that early root wild hog or die life taught Wife and I the value of a work ethic and a dollar.
It was still exactly that when I enlisted in '63. A couple of months after that they raised it a little, $5 or $6 per month but by then I was no longer E-1.
I spent 4 years active duty, my memory is bad but it seems like I was making around $200 something when I got out.
When I applied for S.S., they told me to be sure to bring them my DD214 because of those "low earning" years, my S.S. would be adjusted upward. For 4 years active duty I got an extra $13 per month. Hey, I'd rather have it than not.
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