Posted on 08/22/2007 10:25:14 PM PDT by neverdem
HAMPTONBURGH, N.Y., Aug. 16 — With a look of supreme satisfaction, Jeff Crist squinted at the Ginger Golds and Jonamacs ripening under an incandescent sun at his apple orchard here: the trees were so laden that they almost seemed to strain under the effort.
“It’s a vintage crop — a solid quality crop, which means good sugars in the apples,” he said. “They should eat very nicely, almost like a good wine.”
This is the third year in a row of near-perfect weather, and Mr. Crist, a fourth-generation apple grower, like many other growers in the Hudson Valley, is finally feeling secure after a disastrous string of harvests marred by early frost and hail. In fact, Mr. Crist is so bullish that he recently bought a 164-acre orchard nearby, bucking the decades-long trend of apple orchards being sold to housing developers.
But while weather conditions have cooperated and industry experts say demand for apples nationwide has approached an all-time high, there are new fears in New York and around the nation over whether there will be enough hands to pick the crop. This month, the Bush administration announced new measures to crack down on employers of illegal immigrants.
Nationwide, growers’ associations estimate that about 70 percent of farmworkers are illegal immigrants, many of them using fake Social Security numbers on their applications. Under the new rules, if the Social Security Administration finds that an applicant’s information does not match its database, employers could be required to fire the worker or risk being fined up to $10,000 for knowingly hiring an illegal immigrant.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I’m not an illegal aien but I picked apples when I was a teenager..
Why dont they hire Americans? College students?
It’s not work that Americans wont do..
that does not fit the “doing jobs Americans wont do” template.
We’ve collectively said it a hundred times here, but it’s true: Any business whose success or failure depends solely on the labor of illegal aliens deserves to fail.
Why dont he pick the damn things himself? Then once he remembers what work is really like maybe he will pay wages that will get Americans to pick them. Pathetic
I'll bet Mr. Roe wants us to believe that he has ten guys who all happen to be named Jose Gonzales.
How did such allegedly bright entrepreneurs start a business run on chronic law-breaking? I guess the govt and mafia are birds of a feather.
Because the apple pickers want to pay less than minimum wage under the table.
College students make better money working as waiters and waitresses and pocketing the tips.
Here in Kansas farmers have been hiring foreigners to help with the wheat harvest for years. They hire legal temporary workers, but they are operating farm equipment rather than picking by hand as is the case of apples. If the federal government had any sense it approve bringing in legal temporary workers to harvest apples and other crops too.
I don’t know much about harvesting apples, but I do know that it is only temporary work whereas working in a fast food restaurant can be year round and burger flippers have the opportunity to become managers.
American kids are now so spoiled....well, so are the adults.
I remember back in 1975, taking a weekend trip up to Sewanee (TN). There were groups of college kids/hippies living in old farm houses and picking fruit. They migrated to wherever there was a crop to pick.
Those days seem to be gone.
They can come BACK, though.
I was talking to a wine grower and in talking about wages he said “I can’t even get the Mexicans to pick grapes for less than $9.00 an hour”. And he went on to explain how grape picking is preferred work a it is mostly at chest level - compared to the crops you have to stoop down to pick, or the orchards where you’re up and down ladders all day.
It seems the more illegals we get the fewer farm workers are available.
Regards.
I very much like the idea of doing this kind of hard work instead of what i did 2 semester ago at a sbarro(italian fastfood) on our campus. It’s kind of hard though to find this kind of work where I live. otherwise, this sounds like a swell summer job to me. I used to volunteer at my middle school to water, plant trees and weed things around the school. We got paid in cookies and sodas at the end of the day. I know where I’d rather be. Outdoors, fresh air, no one haggling you to smile every dang second and feeling a little bit more alive.
my 2 cents
“Why dont they hire Americans? “
Because we demand livable wages and reasonable working conditions. We can also go to the authorities if our employer violates the law. These folks love cheap labor who can’t complain.
Just about every job that I am told American won’t do, I’ve done. I’ve done them and more. That is the lamest line on the planet these days.
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