Posted on 03/30/2016 8:39:26 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is suggesting that mechanization is the answer to the labor needs of farmers who lose their access to illegal immigrants.
During a CNN town hall Tuesday night, a Wisconsin dairy farmer told the GOP presidential candidate that his industry can't find enough American-born workers and that the only people “willing to do this hard work are Latino immigrants.” Join Farm Bureau and make YOUR VOICE stand out. Cruz didn't answer the question as it pertained to dairy producers specifically but instead responded by citing a Wall Street Journal article about an Arizona pepper grower who was forced by a crackdown on illegal immigrants to obtain a mechanical picker and hire fewer, higher-skilled American workers.
“He had to pay them more. He paid them about $15 an hour. But he continues picking his peppers except he's doing so in a situation where what has happened in Arizona, the public expenditures have plummeted,” Cruz said.
Cruz asserted that the crackdown had saved the state money in prison, health and education costs, but he didn't mention that the article said that the loss of immigrant labor had stunted Arizona's economic growth.
“In the agriculture world, I think the first option should be trying to find American workers. Now that may mean wages come up. It may mean that we have to use more tools. We've seen in Arizona that has happened,” Cruz said.
However, increased mechanization won't solve dairy producers' labor problems, said Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation.
“A complete shift to mechanization is not an option for all of the labor-intensive jobs in agriculture, whether on dairy farms or pepper-growers. For instance, robotic milkers are a tool for small number of farms, but are not a blanket solution, certainly not in the near term,” Galen said.
Citing a Texas A&M study, Galen said immigrant workers earned an average of $11.54 an hour in 2014. “Dairy farms that hire immigrant labor pay higher average wages than farms that do not hire immigrants," he said.
Later in the CNN town hall, Ohio Gov. John Kasich promoted the benefits of trade agreements in answer to a question from Jim Walker, vice president of Case IH North America. Walker, who was introduced as a likely Cruz supporter, asked Kasich how his diplomacy would avoid disrupting trade.
“To spark a (trade) war right now would not only be detrimental to business, but all of those people directly and indirectly that I said we support,” said Walker, referring to jobs resulting from the company's exports and to front-runner Donald Trump's threat to impose antidumping duties on China.
Kasich responded by pledging to enforce existing trade agreements and promoting the benefits of the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership. He resorted to a Big 10 football analogy to connect with the Wisconsin audience.
“Think of it this way. If Ohio State came up to play your beloved Badgers and I asked for five downs to get a first down and you only got four, how would you feel? You wouldn't put up with it, OK? We should not put up with countries when they cheat.”
Kasich said the 12-nation TPP agreement would serve as a “bulwark against the strength of the Chinese.”
“We’ve got 90 million working-age Americans NOT working now.”
We also have a huge teenage population that doesn’t know a goddam thing about working and saving for their own car, buying their own gas, having their own possessions.
We’re screwed right there. This is where the Pajama boys come from...like working is a dirty word. Maynard G Krebs...”WORK!!!”
It’s going to happen whether we like it or not.
They have machines that shoot lasers into strawberries to determine if they are the proper ripeness before picking.
There is 40% unemployment in the Central Valley of California. Yet, they keep on bringing in unskilled labor from Mexico.
Anyone that still thinks this is about cheap labor is wrong.
Used to be that around here in upstate NY all the teens would work the farms in summer. Haying. Then the farmers that could afford to bought the equipment to make the round bales which required NO farm hands.
Not a direct effect (?)- but within a few years all the young people that age were heavy into drugs. Used to have been that they drank at the occasional weekend kegger, but with no work available to the high schoolers during the summer - well, they kept busy in other ways. No way to earn money - they sold drugs to each other.
I’ve got an idea. Kick people off of lifetime welfare. Farmers place want ads. People will take the jobs. Change laws so that kids under 18 can do farm work as they used to, that should help, too, especially as many farm jobs are in summer.
My two uncles and aunts grew up on a farm/ranch in Oklahoma, up to milk cows well before dawn, chopping and picking cotton, raisng beeves and the hundreds of other things they had to do to keep their heads above water during the dust bowl and Depression.
First opportunity, they were all out of there: Army Air Force, college instructor, CPA and Army wife.
And I’ve bucked bales of hay all day. Farm livin’ ain’t for the faint of heart. I’m thinking the average unemployed hipster or wannabe gangsta wouldn’t last a half hour.
Did he take farming at Princeton....or maybe he debatated about farming?
The problem with people from Harvard is they think they know it all.
Those are some of the reasons wages are sticky downward. All the alternatives to work make it easy not to, so the unemployed quit looking, as the statistics show with the drastic decline in the labor participation rate.
Was he born with a silver spoon in his mouth like a certain other candidate?
Nope, and I didn’t like working in paper mills, either. But it was that or not go to college.
Our population is spoiled.
If people had to actually work in order to eat, many problems would be solved.
Or the sandpaper factory.
Wages paid Illegals ARE market wages. An average wage is calculated from all wages legal or not.
These “migrants” are now demanding computer jobs - seriously. They demand bank teller jobs. They demand priority construction jobs... on and on.
What they come to take as far as jobs is NOT just in the grape fields. Wake up. And all the public schools are catering to them, INCLUDING ADULT “EDUCATION”, and they are favored in many positions simply because they speak Spanish.
We are becoming Mexico. Soon the police will be totally corrupt like in Mexico. And that will be the end.
Sounds like it would be a win-win.
Fewer opportunities for illegals.
More jobs for unemployed black youth.
Don’t make me laugh.
Brilliant, you farmers just pull a million or more out of your butts for machinery.
Shows how clueless politicians are wrt to economics.
I would tell you the proper answer but don’t want him to steal it.
So you want illegals to do the labor for the farmers? He is trying to come up with solutions to a labor problem. What’s Trumps big idea? I know he will sue the farmers and steal their land!!
[If the agricultural industry thinks that the illegals they hire now will work for the same low wages after they become “legalized”, they are fools.]
Why are illegals hired in any industry ? Because they cost less and can be worked harder without complaints that legal workers would make. If they become legalized, they will no longer be as attractive to those employers. Those employers will hire fresh illegals. The newly “legal” and now unemployed immigrants will become dependent on government benefits, added to the rolls of foodstamp and housing assistance recipients ... and Democrat voters.
I say save a few steps — deport all the illegals, build a wall to keep out fresh ones, and send all the Americans already on the welfare rolls out to work the farms. In the cities, make them clean the streets and alleys and graffiti to collect their welfare — and watch how quickly they disappear from those rolls.
In Australia, they use automated pickers in their wine industry much more than we do in America. This is because there is no handy migrant labor force. So Cruz has a point.
But ... “heavy capital investment -or- illegal immigrants” is not a choice that should even exist.
In the current environment of ubiquitous illegal migrant labor, you could argue that a single farmer cannot compete with his neighbors unless he uses the same or cheaper methods.
Recently, some farmers in NC were charged fines in the millions for using illegal labor, which is one way to make sure they are no longer a “cheaper method”.
If all the illegals are deported, then none of his neighbors can use the old “cheaper method” and will have a level playing field again.
If legal labor is taxed while illegal labor is invisible to taxes, that makes the illegal labor “cheaper”. Maybe a solution is not to tax any labor. Fund SS/M and general fund via tax on business gross revenue and imports rather than American workers’ wages (also tax rebates for exports like Germany and China do). Prices would go up, but so would after-tax paychecks, which would benefit legal workers more than the illegals whose pay was always untaxed.
There are lots of ways to remove the incentives for illegal alien labor besides automation.
Ooooor - make the able-bodied welfare crews get out there and get sweaty and dirty and tired for their stipends.....seems that Ted buys in to the “some jobs Americans just won’t do” meme and thinks mechanization will ruffle fewer feathers than telling folks that there is a human solution that will also serve as a training platform for the lazy leeches.
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