Originally Posted by Clara007

This was so predictable.

Last year marked the fifth consecutive year Santa Barbara County’s agriculture industry has struggled with labor shortages, which have ranged from 15 to 26 percent. Farmers, therefore, must leave crops to rot in the fields. An estimated $13 million of strawberries, broccoli, leafy greens, and other unharvested produce were plowed under last year, up from five years ago when losses amounted to an estimated $4.4 million, according to the region’s Grower-Shipper Association.

Strawberries are just one small piece of the labor shortage. In the last decade, according to the Pew Research Center, more Mexican immigrants have been leaving the United States than have been arriving. As Mexico’s economy improves and becomes less reliant on agriculture, Mexicans are having fewer children and “feeling less the push to migrate north,” said Lucas Zucker of CAUSE (Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy).

Security has also tightened along the southern border. The Obama administration deported about three million undocumented immigrants between 2009 and 2016, according to Pew, many more than the two million the Bush administration deported during the eight years prior.

Labor Shortage Leaves $13 Million in Crops to Rot in Fields

AND there's more:

In the spring of 2011, Georgia’s fruit and vegetable growers faced a crippling drought. But it wasn’t for lack of rain; rather, their supply of farmworkers had dried up almost overnight. Typically, migrant pickers made their way north from Florida’s winter tomato fields into Georgia to harvest its Vidalia onions, bell peppers, and blueberries. But that year, “they just didn’t come,” says Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. The pickers avoided the state, leaving “crops in the field rotting.”

What happened? Just after taking office that winter, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed a bill that, he vowed, would “crack down on the influx of illegal immigrants into our state.” Known in civil-liberties circles as Georgia’s racial-profiling law, House Bill 87 encouraged local police officers to check the immigration status of anyone suspected of violating any regulation, including traffic rules, and imposed harsh penalties on anyone caught “harboring an illegal alien.” The governor probably didn’t intend for his signature immigration law to cost his state’s farm sector loads of cash. But his timing couldn’t have been worse.
A shortfall of 11,000 workers—representing about 85 percent of peak employment—caused $75 million in crop losses that spring alone, with a total hit to the state economy of $103.6 million that season, according to a study by the University of Georgia. Neighboring Alabama passed an even more draconian law later that year, spurring its immigrant farmworkers to exit en masse and costing the state up to 6 percent of its gross domestic product.
Now, the entire country is governed by a chief executive who vows to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants. Pursuing what might be called his “bad hombre” theory, President Donald Trump swiftly made good on promises to ramp up deportations after taking office.

Just as in Georgia, the rest of the nation’s farms lean heavily on the very group of people targeted by the president. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the US harvest requires between 1.5 million and 2.2 million workers annually—and at least half of them are undocumented.

Trump?s Crackdown on Immigration Is Terrible News for Anyone Who Eats Food ? Mother Jones

Originally Posted by Sabcat

I don't understand what point the progressives are trying to make here...

Does this sound completely retarded to anyone else?

Originally Posted by Parsifal

Isn't that par for the course with progressives (actually they are regressives, but that is another story).

A few that post here are probably late 60's, or even in their 70's, and heaped up on meds of all kinds.

Originally Posted by caconservative

Wow, that's amazing! In a state with 3 to 4 million illegal aliens and they can't find enough people to harvest the crops? In a state that goes out of its way to harbor illegal aliens? How can this be remedied? How about harvesting machines that don't require manual labor? They've been around awhile. Of course farmers would rather forgo the initial cost for these machines in favor of cheap manual labor that is subsidized by the CA. taxpayers. That is so much more agreeable. And suggesting that a work-visa with strict time limitations is out of the question.

Originally Posted by senor boogie woogie

I am from Memphis, Tennessee, born and raised there. Before 1990, Mexicans and Hispanics were an oddity there. Hell, even a lot of Mexican restaurants were not owned or ran by Hispanics. I went to a high school of 2000 students which had one Mexican family, but they were upper middle class wealthy which were considered "white" by the rest of us. Now, Memphis is surrounded by farmland and rural country with crops, but again, never saw any Mexicans.

I noticed a few of them starting in the 1990's working in Mississippi, the average looking, working class Hispanics in the casino where I worked. I went away in 2001 and came back in 2015 and was just shocked about how many Hispanic people there are in Memphis. They have carved out neighborhoods in working class white and black areas of the city, there are lots of Hispanic supermarkets, those restaurant trailers, and in my parent's suburb (Germantown) is nothing but Mexican or Hispanic gardeners.

But it made me think, what do all these people do for a living? Memphis sucks to make a living, in one of the poorest areas of the United States. There is some construction, but not that much I have seen. There are only so many upper class yards to mow, and you can only sell so much food to the Gringos. I am not doubting the Hispanic's intelligence and many break out and be professionals. But my city has had well over 150 years of just whites and blacks, with the blacks of course getting the short end of the stick, but there are a lot of poor whites. So when another group comes, especially one which doesn't speak English as a first language with a foreign culture, there has to be some animosity.

I would think one way to scare off people from hiring illegals is to charge them with tax fraud since they cannot tax the income of someone who should not be here in the first place. What about social security withholdings? In the USA, you MUST have a Social Security Number to work. Why doesn't ICE just hang out in front of the Home Depot? Not to catch the Mexicans, but the contractors and people who hire them and not pay the taxes. America has a huge government which must have money to live and money comes from taxes.

I personally believe borders should be erased and just allow these people to come here and do "jobs Americans won't do"., let them work and live under our laws and don't screw with them. The government should allow people guest worker status to do this work, and for the farmers to provide decent lodgings, and decent pay for the work they do, whatever the prevailing wage is.

Originally Posted by caconservative

No, he says dumb thing on a daily bases.

Originally Posted by caconservative

Wow, that's amazing! In a state with 3 to 4 million illegal aliens and they can't find enough people to harvest the crops? In a state that goes out of its way to harbor illegal aliens? How can this be remedied? How about harvesting machines that don't require manual labor? They've been around awhile. Of course farmers would rather forgo the initial cost for these machines in favor of cheap manual labor that is subsidized by the CA. taxpayers. That is so much more agreeable. And suggesting that a work-visa with strict time limitations is out of the question.

Originally Posted by Sabcat

I don't understand what point the progressives are trying to make here...


That crops are dying on the vine because there is a shortage in illegal labor?


Is that really what they are trying to say?


So on one hand they bitch and moan about some sort do fictitious "living wage" and on the other they cry about dying fruit because the farmers figured out that they are better off financially to let it rot than pay someone to pick them...so we need more illegal labor in the states?


Does this sound completely retarded to anyone else?