California Peach Farmer: Americans Won't Reliably do the Work

The National Ledger ^ | 06-07-06 | Debra Saunders

[Coastal]

"Everybody has an opinion, although most people think food comes from Safeway," muses Ken Hajek. A dentist three days a week, Hajek offers me his opinion as a peach grower the other four days. We are talking as he stands near his white pickup on 25 acres in Lodi, where he grows peaches in an orchard tucked behind a house and a yard full of cars.

Hajek had contacted me because he objected to my call for the Bush administration to get tougher on those who knowingly employ illegal immigrants.

[Mamzelle]

Aren't the illegals avoiding ag jobs these days, anyway, in favor of taking construction jobs? Seems to me he'd have a reliable program of temporary ag
workers if the crooked contractors weren't luring them away. Mexican workers, for decades, have come in temporarily, been housed and fed by farmers, then sent home with their paychecks. Seemed orderly--why the enthusiasm for a flood?

[Mamzelle]

Hey, you should have notified the cops about the DUIs...just wander out to the parking lot and take down a few numbers...

[quadrant]

Jesse Jackson complains frequently about the lack of jobs for inner city young black men. The lack of reliable labor in the fields is an opportunity for Jackson to mobilize his minions to come to the aid of farmers.
It would be an opportunity of Jackson's followers to work out of doors at honest labor that contributed something to society.

[lewislynn]

With 25 acres he isn't a farmer, he's a back yard gardner!

Actually they're called truck farms.