Mexican officers made arrest in U.S., boys say

Okay. I'll explain this one more time. Start with 100 Amish people who are exclusively in the business of farming. Statistically they are 100% farmers. Then they have 100 kids who can't become farmers (because there's no more land) so they go into crafts or manufacturing. That means Amish are now 50% farmers. Does that mean Amish are getting out of the farming business? No, they aren't selling their farms and moving to the city. But statistically it might look like it. It works the same way with the birth rate. The ones who leave farming have a lower birth rate but it doesn't mean that all Amish farmers are having fewer kids.

Yes their offspring are embracing a new lifestyle and having fewer children out of necessity but that process has been going on for over a century. In the past though, they would leave the church because their rules made it impossible to live outside a farming existence. They would leave the community, become employed, go to school, join the army -- all of those things. But they would no longer be counted as Amish. Now, though, they are finding ways to reconcile and compromise with the new reality. So that skews the statistic. Before, when they left the church they weren't included in the population so you didn't see a birth rate drop until recently.

New Hutterite colonies are also going into manufacturing because of lack of land. But as far as I know existing Hutterites are not selling off their land. Like I said, they produce 40% of the pork in South Dakota.

Now if you have information that says otherwise tell me. If you can point to figures showing how much acreage the Amish and Hutterites have sold off in recent years I'd like to see it.

One of the biggest gripes of the Anabaptist farmer is the high cost of land. That says to me that they will take up the slack if land becomes available and farming becomes more profitable. And that is the point I'm trying to make. I'm saying there are plenty of people in the US who will do the work of the illegal immigrant.

Are you trying to make the point that we can't exist without illegals?

No, my objection was to the way you applied blanket statements to an entire group called Anabaptists. The term Anabaptist is used to describe Christians who share a specific theology.

Beyond that, there is an incredible diversity in lifestyle and economic choices. Mennonites already have sold their farms and are getting rich by turning them into subdivisions. The current cultural and ecomonic landscape of Mennonites is completely different than it was 50 years ago. In the 60's and 70's there was a massive cultural shift among Mennonites and currently their occupational choices, education, land ownership and other factors are more tied in to the general population than the Amish.

You're right, Amish are not selling their farms to outsiders. But they are turning their farms into the Amish version of a subdivision, with only enough grown on a 3 acre lot to feed a horse. So yes, over the years these 40 acre farms are turning into 1-3 acre homesteads with "farming" only being done to provide what the family needs. So the high birth rate means that they aren't needing to sell the farms to outsiders to quit farming. And there is a significant cultural shift right now among the Amish that is looking upon farming negatively as a profession.

Hutterites I don't know much about. Mexican immigrants are mostly doing agricultural work that is labor intensive and very seasonal for very low wages. I don't know any Amish community that would agree to do such work. I think illegal immigration should be stopped, but if you think Amish, Mennonites or Anabaptists are the answer to the labor needs, I strongly disagree.

Our country would be fine with the population and overall, total, cumulative federal and national debt levels we had back in the 50's.

We've borrowed $40 trillion dollars, as a nation, to pay for our population growth over the last 50 years.

Our country and its people will be saddled with this debt for eternity.

Who in their right mind will continue to lend us the money to pay for the population explosion that our country will suffer over the next 50 years as a result of out-of-control legal and illegal immigration?

Our national economy is a 'house of cards'.

I hope you didn't think that I was suggesting we should in some way coerce Anabaptists into doing something they wouldn't want to do. That's not what I meant. Nor do I want to give any special advantage to them, that would be unconstitutional. But rational people make decisions based partly on economic forces. So I believe that ending illegal immigration will open opportunities for Anabaptists and they will take advantage of them.

Amish farmers with their ancient farming techniques can not produce enough to replace the illegal agribusiness. Hutterites, however, can. Hutterite colonies have thousand acre corporate farms but they, like the Amish, are also branching into other industries. They could easily manage their labor to shift from seasonal crop harvesting to product manufacturing.

Illegal immigration is not just about agriculture. I don't know what the breakdown is but a lot of them take menial jobs in the textile, construction and manufacturing business. No, I don't think Amish should be working in sweatshops, but I think they might very likely start their own firms (designed maybe by Mennonites) if they see an economic vacuum open up.

So these new trends you've outlined are not incompatible with the notion that they will take up tasks previously done by illegals. I focus on Anabaptists only as an example. There are likely a lot of other people in this country that are perfectly willing to do the work of illegals. My point is to stomp out the silly notion that Americans have grown so soft we are incapable of menial labor.

Nor is it a given that crop production must be done by menial labor. A few years ago the University of California had a project to develop machinery to harvest crops that are currently picked by hand. Some Luddite realized that would put farm laborers out of a job and they killed the program. So, point is, it could be done and we never know what events might transpire if we closed the immigration floodgates.

One other thing that I'd like to mention. If we were to stop immigration to this country, our population would begin to decline. If that happens I don't think we should respond by paying people to have children. We should help productive people who like to have children. We should take land that has been locked up by the government and sell it for agricultural use. You can be sure that at least the Hutterites will buy it up if not the Amish.

The one blanket statement that you can make about Anabaptists is that they have a social formula that, like few other religions, produces a lot of decent hard-working people. And that is something this country needs.

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