Any Takers?

AP ^ | Thu June 24. 2010 | Juliana Barbassa

[morque2001]

SAN FRANCISCO – In a tongue-in-cheek call for immigration reform, farm workers are teaming up with comedian Stephen Colbert to challenge unemployed Americans: Come on, take our jobs.

Farm workers are tired of being blamed by politicians and anti-immigrant activists for taking work that should go to Americans and dragging down the economy, said Arturo Rodriguez, the president of the United Farm Workers of America.

So the group is encouraging the unemployed — and any Washington pundits or anti-immigrant activists who want to join them — to apply for the some of thousands of agricultural jobs being posted with state agencies as harvest season begins.

All applicants need to do is fill out an online form under the banner "I want to be a farm worker" at http://www.takeourjobs.org, and experienced field hands will train them and connect them to farms. Read the rest at SAN FRANCISCO – In a tongue-in-cheek call for immigration reform, farm workers are teaming up with comedian Stephen Colbert to challenge unemployed Americans: Come on, take our jobs.

read the rest at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/ap_on_en_tv/us_immigration_take_our_jobs

[morque2001]

Sign up today! I am!

[craigster_nc]

In the “old days”, schools were off for the summer for kids to do this work. How about organizing unemployed city kids
to do this instead of sitting around learning how to be better criminals and gang members?

[autumnraine]

I think they underestimate the desperation of a lot of people who are unemployed.

I think they also are throwing up a HUGE strawman because if you have gone onto any construction or landscaping site in the last 10 years, you will find that farm working is certainly not the ONLY job illegals have.

[PA BOOKEND]

It's not "anti-immigrant"; it's anti-ILLEGAL immigrant. I'm inclined to ask what part of "illegal" they don't understand, but I know full well they understand it perfectly and are just muddying the water. Nevertheless, I guess we can't surrender the war of words if we want to have any hope of winning the war of the border.

[ricmc2175]

Signed up. Some of my happiest memories as a youth were working on the farms in Maryland.

[swatbuznik]

When I think of farms...I think of gov’ment subsidies.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

I shoveled many tons of chicken poop and toted thousands of bags of potatos in my HS days. I also cropped tobacco. Most kids I see today won’t even consider working that hard.

[craigster_nc]

Kids will do a lot more than we think if they don’t have any choice. After doing this kind of work for the summer they would be a lot more motivated to be attentive in school.

[mbynack]

One reason that Americans don't want farm labor jobs is because it doesn't pay enough to live on. I worked on farms over the summer when I was a kid and made $75 a week. It was tough, dangerous work and we frequently worked 12 hour days to beat a rain storm or get a harvest in before it rotted. There were no benefits.

Farmers hire illegals because they can't complain when they get paid less than the legal wage and they won't go to OSHA over safety issues.

The best thing that I learned while picking strawberries and harvesting oats and potatoes was the value of an education. It was pretty obvious to me that this wasn't something I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing.

[Travis T. OJustice]

Yep, I mowed a ton of lawns as a kid, and when I was 12, started working on a farm, haying. By the time I was 14, I worked my way up to driving the tractor, mowing, tedding and baling the hay. Harvestingt he corn, too, with a single-row harvester. I was thrilled to make more money for easier work than loading the bales onto the trailer, then loading them into the barn. I also got to drive on the roads with the farm license. At 15, I was driving a dump truck and running a backhoe.

Some days I miss being a kid.

[agere_contra]

Strawman.

Illegals get benefits and, ah, tax-breaks, that American citizens can't possibly get. They can afford to work for less, because they get to keep more

[varon]

So the group is encouraging the unemployed — and any Washington pundits or anti-immigrant activists who want to join them — to apply for the some of thousands of agricultural jobs being posted with state agencies as harvest season begins.

There shouldn't be any agricultural job openings; after all, aren't the 20+ million illegals here for that expressed purpose? Yet they keep coming and jobs go begging.

[Daffynition]

Picking shade grown tobacco. Now that's a job.

[Travis T. OJustice]

Did you do that as a kid? It is hard work! I spent a weeks “vacation” at my cousins across the river, we picked all week. I was very very happy to go back to doing hay after pickin tobacco.

[Daffynition]

Thank goodness no! IIRC it was a job the *boys* generally signed up to do; besides I lived too far away from the Connecticut River Valley to participate. But if you lived in that region ... it was something you did summers. Brutal work, under those nets.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

Federal and state laws won’t let kids do the things I did back in the late 50s and early 60s.

[Miztiki]

A couple years ago here in Michigan, the farmers were offering the unemployed work, and even rides to the job site.

Not one took the job offer, and it was all over the news.

Truth is, you can’t make a living doing what the immigrants do.

To be honest, our LEGAL immigrants wouldn’t be able to make a living from farm pickin’ jobs either. The farmers would have to closely follow all work regulations and pay the workers more (in keeping with all work laws), thus raising the cost of our food (which is already heavily subsidized).

The only solution is for the gov, at all levels, to BACK OFF and let us have our own damn farms! And be able to afford it!

I want a farm dammit! But the gov has made that impossible! No veggie garden and family cow for us! We MUST rely on the government, NOT OURSELVES. No, we can’t have us being self sufficient! GRRrrr!!!

(I want a farm, dammit. Where’s my 40 acres and a mule. Dammit.)