Posted on 07/30/2011 2:57:06 PM PDT by Steelfish
Farmers Oppose G.O.P. Bill on Immigration
JESSE McKINLEY & JULIA PRESTON July 30 Calif. — Farmers across the country are rallying to fight a Republican-sponsored bill that would force them and all other employers to verify the legal immigration status of their workers, a move some say could imperil not only future harvests but also the agricultural community’s traditional support for conservative candidates.
The bill was proposed by Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. It would require farmers — who have long relied on a labor force of immigrants, a majority here without legal documents — to check all new hires through E-Verify, a federal database run by the Department of Homeland Security devised to ferret out illegal immigrants.
Farm laborers, required like other workers to show that they are authorized to take jobs in the United States, often present Social Security numbers and some form of picture ID. Employers, many of them labor contractors providing crews to farms, have not been required to check the information and are discouraged by antidiscrimination laws from looking at it too closely. But it is an open secret that many farmworkers’ documents are false.
Supporters of E-Verify, an electronic system that is currently mandatory for most federal contractors but voluntary for other employers, argue that it would eliminate any doubt about workers’ legal status. But farmers say it could cripple a $390 billion industry that relies on hundreds of thousands of willing, low-wage immigrant workers to pick, sort and package everything from avocados to zucchini.
“This would be an emergency, a dire, dire situation,” said Nancy Foster, president of the U.S. Apple Association, adding that the prospect of an E-Verify check would most likely mean that many immigrant workers would simply not show up.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
There wouldn’t be an immigration problem if we eliminated the minimum wage and welfare. The farmers would find all the cheap labor they need. If they don’t pick, they don’t get paid.
Dumb-ass city slickers will believe anything. Ask rather how Al Franken got elected in Minn, Conrad and that other moron in N Dakota, Tom Harkin in Iowa, Tom D'asshole for years in S Dakota, Dick Turban in Illinois, Sherrod Brown in Ohio. The list goes on. Farmers are the most collectivist demographic in America and always have been. Stupid NYawkers.
Let the farmers use their subsidy money to pay for the subsidized wages taxpayers put out for their cheap labor. Open borders aren’t the answer to our agricultural problems.
Mexico needs its citizens at home to fight the revolution.
This is from the NYTimes.
Lies from front to end.
If this bill would mean that Korean apples would become “cheaper” than SOME, SOME American farmer’s apples, what is the difference to the pocket-book of he who buys Apples? Zero or better than zero.
As George Washington once said, with respect to trade, and I’ll paraphrase it:
If a producer in another country can do it cheaper than a producer in our country, it is not to our long-term advantage to prop-up our producer for that item. The money a buyer will save buying the item is money the buyer will spend somewhere else here.
The entire infrastructure of illegal immigration is an infrastructure propping up economic inefficiency.
If immigration is needed for temporary work, it must still be LEGAL immigration, it MUST BE temporary, it MUST NOT include family, it MUST BE verifiable.
If that is not good enough for SOME farmers then they need to develop new business models and update themselves to newer harvesting processes.
No, we do not have to accept illegal immigration just to suit “the farmers” and we don’t have to accept unlimited legal immigration either.
The kinds of people and businesses we need for this economy to grow are businesses and people that employ the better educated and higher skilled people, skilled people who are here and skilled people of the world who could come here, for work that needed them HERE.
We do not need MORE low-wage-immigrant demanding businesses here. We do not need to support businesses models that depend on more low-wage immigrants here.
By “farmers” they mean AIG and Cargill.
Farmers are timorous. If they would try to hire Americans at what the market would require, they would only have to raise the price of a head of lettuce or bag of apples by a nickel or dime a piece. And the good PR would make everyone feel good about the extra spare change. But like I say, they are afraid.
This. It’s not the job of employers to enforce the immigration laws. That’s one of the very few responsibilities that the feds do have under the constitution.
What’s next, having businesses make treaties?
As long as there is "cheap" labor available it will be used. When one must pay a respectable wage for labor then machines or techniques will be invented to eliminate the need for cheap labor thereby creating jobs in the machine or other industries for skilled, better paid labor.
Such is the brilliance of the free enterprise system. No one picks cotton by hand anymore.
Exactly. Couple the cheap labor with the subsidies and it’s no wonder there are many farmers living very comfortably, including some in my extended family.
Excellent idea. Also, I remember the days of prisoner chain gangs working picking up trash along side the roads and working the fields as well.
The farmers are unhappy because they know it will work. Period.
Imagine if there were no minimum wage.
Citizens who are willing to work for lower wages would do these jobs.
Illegal aliens would have no special value to farmers.
We would reduce unemployment.
Read Thomas Sowell...
Wait a minute...I grew up in Illinois...and how much lettuce, or vegetables or berries are picked in Ohio....I expect not much....where did you come up with that nonsense about migrant workers....now the picking of sweet corn is something that we in Illinois when I was a kid 50 years ago...was done by mexicans...in small numbers, but nevertheless they were there...and I expect most were legal!
“I do not think it is the job of employers to verify the legal status of their employees. You should be able to hire people without asking the DHS whether it is OK or not”
Let’s tell the states that they MUST NOT demand that you register possession and title of a motor vehicle; just let every guess whether or not they are buying a stolen car next time. /sarc
That’s no different than what you want to do.
So let’s see:
(a)Everyone knows we have an illegal immigration problem of a magnitude this nation has never seen, and;
(b) Everyone knows that the ability to illegally obtain employment here is what makes their continued illegal residency here possible;
but let’s NOT start at the one place they need and the one place that makes all that possible - the place that illegally employs them;
no, let’s not go directly to the source, let’s make it difficult for ourselves.
Why?
Are you suggesting an employer should not be able to accurately obtain accurate information about YOUR background when you are hired? Oh he, should!!!
And if you are in an industry RIFE with illegal activity, can he get a police background check on you too? Oh, he can?
Then why can’t we “E-verify” everyone?
There’s only one reason not to. To protect the illegal immigrant and prevent the illegal immigrant’s forced repatriation to their own homeland. There is no other reason. Just admit it.
Tacit admission that the farmers are breaking the law and knowingly hiring the illegals. Find them, fine them, deport the workers.
I’ll pay more for my produce if I can be assured that they’re picked by Americans and/or LEGAL immigrants who pay all their taxes and have been screened.
Ah, yes, where the rubber meets the road. When people suddenly realize that cheap labor is at steak, they go all wobbly on the illegal immigration thing.
An employer should be able to obtain factual information about me, yes. My credit rating and non-existent criminal record are easily obtainable. However, the government should not mandate that an employer must check up on my background. I am not saying employers should not have the ability to check backgrounds, I am saying the government should not command
As far as motor vehicles are concerned: Motor vehicles that must be registered only if you intend on driving them on public roads. If a vehicle is not driven on public roads, it does not need to be registered. So, I suppose a contractor with the civil government (someone who receives public money) can be required to check up on backgrounds including legal status, and I believe they already are.
We still do that here. :-) We see our County prisoners on the chain gang quite often picking up trash with armed deputies following them in a pickup truck. They don't work in the fields though.
Our farmers claim that not only are the illegals cheaper to hire they can also take the southern TN heat better. We tried hiring teenage boys to help with our hay several years ago and they spent most of their time passed out under a tree with cold rags on their heads from the heat. American kids have become too soft to work in the fields. Too many computers and video games.
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