A harvest of hypocrisy: Strict enforcement of immigration rules will leave crops to rot in South GA

[Sequoia]

Now that Congress has given up on comprehensive immigration reform, the hypocrisy of claims that the problem can be solved by merely enforcing existing law is about to be exposed on South Georgia's farms.

Agricultural interests, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, are already worrying out loud that if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials crack down on illegal hiring this year, as it should, it will leave hundreds of millions of dollars of crops in the field to rot. That's a very different message than that preached in public by the state's political leadership, including U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, who claim to support stricter enforcement of current immigration laws as a precondition for tackling comprehensive reform.

Both Georgia senators abandoned a bipartisan effort last month to enact a top-to-bottom rewrite of laws regarding the use of immigrant labor. Among other things, the failed proposal — which Isakson and Chambliss helped draft — would have streamlined the process to allow more legal temporary immigrant workers into the country to pick crops. Afraid of a backlash, American business and agricultural interests did not push hard enough for that change and other major reforms. They talked in political back channels about the need for comprehensive reform, but they fell largely silent once critics started attacking a proposal to provide temporary legal status to many of the workers they have lured here to produce food, products and services for American consumers.

Now they are reaping what they failed to sow.

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/king/stories/2007/07/11/immigrationed_0712.html

No doubt, all crops across the USA.

[ixion]

1. it will affect many blue collar sectors

because a vast majority of the lowest rung jobs have been performed by 'illegal' immigrants. Why? Because US citizens either won't do the work, or won't accept the payment being offered.

[mainegreen]

2. Really? Or would the farmers pay more to have them picked?

And would the price of these crops rise to reflect the higher cost of growing said crops?

[shain from kane]

3. Surely the profits which they have accumulated on the backs of illegal farm laborers can absorb one

year of lost crops. Cost of doing business in the manner which you chose, assholes.

[Flarney]

4. If you're business model relies on an illegal practice, get a new business model.

And go to jail, for that matter.

[jdlh8894]

5. Damned if you do,damned if you don't

IMHO, if we enforce the current laws,we'll be paying more at the store for food. Not to mention homes, landscaping,etc. If we allow the (so called) amnesty, our taxes go up. Catch 22 ?

[phildo]

8. No, not at all.

Crops are commodities -- sort of like gasoline. The price is not tied to the production costs, only the supply and demand. All economic jargon aside, in a commodity type business, it does not matter whether you pay $2 an hour or $20 and hour for your help, you still only get what the market is at that time for your product. This is solely about the profitability. The corporate farmers believe it is more profitable to use cheaper labor.

[phildo]

6. gotta call bs on this . . . .

from the article --

"The only people we can get to do the work is Mexicans, " said Randy Scarbor, who harvests 350 acres of melons, sweet potatoes and tomatoes on his farm near Tifton. "If we got our political people to understand you don't get average city people out working in fields , we'd get this mess straightened out," he told The Associated Press.

The labor problem in the fields of South Georgia mirrors what is happening elsewhere, especially in California. The process of bringing in temporary legal workers with H-2A visas takes at least a month and requires farmers to prove there are no U.S. workers available to do the work. Employers also must provide H-2A workers with free housing and transportation and pay the prevailing wage, about $8.50 an hour in Georgia.

Farmers say the process is inefficient and costly , leaving would-be legal workers waiting in their home countries for visas. That delay increases the pressure on farmers to skip the legal route and hire immigrants already in the country illegally.

If ICE cracks down on illegal immigrants working in the fields — as politicians claim the public is demanding — that source of labor will dry up. And so will the unharvested crops.

[shain from kane]

7. The ancestors of these Georgia farmers probably thought that slavery was the only way to raise

crops. Do we have to fight the Civil War again? Keep this shit up, and I'm going for reparations.

[RubyDuby in GA]

9. These aren't little piddly little family farms - these are giant corporations

There are very few family farms left in South Georgia.
And Saxby Chambliss is the biggest whore of them all for the Big Agra that controls the farming in this state. He does whatever his corporate masters tell him to do.

[phildo]

10. Plantations were the corporations of their day.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I suppose cheap illegal labor is BETTER than slaves. No real capital investment, grab them quick as you need them, and dump them the next week. Ahhh, life is good in the Big House.

Fiddle dee dee.