If the lede were that expelling illegal alien workers (not "immigrant workers") aided the legal working class, the Times would not have run this story.
2
After reading the comments I have come to the conclusion that many commentators have no experience in today’s service economy.
I live in area where a “starter”home is $345,000.00 and it will need “updating”. Four out of five homes/condos are 2nd & 3rd homes.
I can’t hire a “white” person to work in my landscaping and house cleaning business. I pay $13.00 for landscaping new hires and $20.00 for house cleaners. I advertise in the newspaper and put the word out that I need help. The few white people that apply and get hired (sorry, no felons) either don’t show up or last two days at most. Contrary to some of the commentators here, my experience 20 years has shown me that white, native born Americans don’t want to sweat.
The seasonal people that employ me are NEVER going to scrub own toilets or mow their own yards and neither is the neighborhood teenager.
If you will work I will hire you, whoever you are.
1
We need to make it clear that employers should have every opportunity to pay the lowest possible wages and illegal labor is probably the best way to accomplish this.
2
“American transportation will always require buggy whips,” Tom Nassif, who heads the Western Buggy-Whip Association, told me.
As for the illegal aliens pulling weeds, why doesn’t the farmer instead use the Tesla self-driving electric weed-puller that pulls weeds all night on battery power, and recharges with solar while pulling weeds by day? Those machines will be commonplace and cheap as soon as there are no illegal aliens to provide a cheaper, inefficient solution.
The most sensible thing to do is to immediately expel all illegal aliens from our country. It just makes good sense.
3
I don't think the main argument is that fewer illegal immigrants will lead to more jobs for US citizens. Isn't it more the case that local communities can't support the burden on schools, hospitals and other local resources? The local tax base isn't helped by the immigrants though a business owner benefits for sure.
3
The future effect of reducing illegal foreign ag workers is shown in grapes I buy. Prices of $.99 - $1.49 are common today, and 99% are imported from Chile. Production is already going across the border, leading to less dollars entering into our economy, and more dollars going out.
Yes, if underpaid and illegal foreign workers are not allowed to be used in agriculture more agricultural products would come from other countries. The answer to that is to have some reasonable tariffs. Most countries protect their food production in some way if at all possible (the US can easily be self-sufficient in almost all food categories). Of course as others point out illegal immigrants are used in many areas such as construction which are not exportable.
The idea that wages are not reduced in a given industry by using immigrant low-wage workers is simply laughable. If those workers do not reduce wages, why are they hired? The claim that those who lose jobs to immigrants are employed elsewhere at higher wages is in practice just a fantasy. There is a tendency for adjustment over time, but immigration has been fairly continuous since around 1970 (it was very low before that in the 20th century), preventing any equilibration.
9
The basic premise in this story is only illegal immigrants are willing to do agricultural labor. As a kid, I worked in the fields picking tomatoes. The pay was terrible, the conditions horrible, but I did it because it was the only way to make any money. Today, there are too many programs for too many work-able people, which provide food and other basic necessities without requiring them to work. Everyone needs to work (disability is another issue) and contribute, even if only in some small way such as caring for the elderly in the neighborhood. If people are unwilling to work, then we should not encourage the behavior with free food.
6
Trump doesn't care. He despises Spanish speaking people. He wants them gone.
1
The US Gov already has an ag-jobs visa - the H-2A - which has an unlimited number. A farmer can get as many as he wants. However, he has to obey hour and wage laws, pay for some transportation and housing, etc. He also has to state the length of time he wants his workers. No fair promising a month of labor, working them 18 hours a day at whatever wage you can get by with paying, and dumping them in a week or 2. It does require a little planning but so does farming itself.
And the same illegal workers who do this work now could qualify back in their own countries.
So why would farmers want to hire illegal workers? Because it is cheaper for them to bypass the safeguards in the H-2A law and then pass the costs of their cheap labor onto the community at large - its hospitals, affordable housing, food banks, schools, etc. Thus they whine about 'crops rotting in the fields' when in fact the ag-biz has had banner years for profits over & over.
"Crops rotting in the field' should take its place with 'the check is in the mail' and 'of course, I'll respect you in the morning'.
This says it all: "Yet for all the complaints from farmers about labor shortages that forced them to pay more, the wages of field workers failed to keep up with inflation."
We are importing poverty wholesale.
11
The Times had an article earlier this year about a roofer who couldn't find U.S. citizens to work for $17/hour. Either they couldn't pass a drug test or they didn't last more than a couple days on the job. This roofer said the immigrants were the best workers. I see that in my state with horticulture, landscaping, child care, hotel workers, etc. The immigrants are hard-working employees who don't cause problems, who aren't drug addicted & who show up for work. Many employees I speak with tell them they would rather hire a Mexican than anyone else.
3
In essence, low paid immigrant labor has been subsidizing the average American through the low cost of many food products, including processed foods and packaged meat, not just vegetables and fruit. Not allowing employers to access that labor pool will act the same as an added sales tax for those same American consumers. The rich won’t notice it, but for middle and low income families who spend a large fraction of their income on food, it will be significant and may force them towards cheaper and less healthy choices.
7
Most Americans will buy the cheapest food no matter what
3
But, the poor will have higher wages and better working conditions because they will not have to compete with illegal aliens for low skill jobs.
2
Perhaps we should use illegal labor in many more industries so we all have cheaper goods and services. American workers may not like it, however.
1
I have worked PT as a cashier on 5-6 hours a shift for the past year and in a half. This PT workforce earns around $8 per hour for a large supermarket chain. The work force is either young (16-18 ) high school students of post- retirement like myself.
Automated check-out is becoming more effective and I’ve told my colleagues that we will all be replaced with automation if our wages went to $10 and certainly at $12.a recent article in the Guardian made the same point.
This is a good time to assess low education, immigrant low wage earners- our jobs wont be here in a couple of years; there is no long-term argument for allowing immigrant low wage workers.
America is swamped with people, especially California, and as the Sierra Club once opposed such immigration on environmental grounds, those arguments are even more valid now. This is not racism, simply economics- the US welfare state can’t suppot more. There are cultural issues but those are legitimate and valid to the ones already here.
9
Mr. Jordan, your view of California from your perch in North Carolina is dim indeed. You might get a better view while you are cashiering at the grocery store in Raleigh if you look more closely at the produce and notice how much of it is from the Central Valley of California.
I live in S CA during the growing season and drive past the fields frequently. Very few of the vegetable crops, citrus or dates are harvested by machine. I only see Mexicans doing the hoeing and harvesting in the fields. I wouldn't last 4 hours as a picker/harvester and couldn't come close to matching their productivity. I have little sympathy for the owners who take economic advantage of them. But, I eat the food they harvest and your job is scanning it. So, rather than shooting ourselves in the foot, maybe we should just live with our guilt quietly.
1
Great point. It's like retirees. They should transfer any accumulated wealth to the children and be done with it. It's not like nonie and pop pops are really adding much value to the economy. Healthcare? My god, between watching Fox News constantly and thrice weekly visits to doctors, it's all they do while waiting. And the Sierra Club could make artisanal sausage out of relatively healthy old folks. First in - last out, sort of. It's not ageism, it's reality. OK, that was mean and silly. I miss Dot Earth and selective population control as environmentalism.
If the U.S. expels all immigrants that do the work that Americans aren't willing to do, then there are a few expectations as a result.
~ an increase in scurvy due to no one picking the fruit
~ an increase in truancy as kids roam the streets with no one to watch them
~ an increase in diseases as cleanliness (homes) falls by the wayside
Psychiatrists will experience a boon as Americans will search for the next people to blame and not know how to handle it ...
1
How about this: STOP paying people not to work, and pay them a living wage to work?
why is this sooooooooo difficult?
6
employers must pay their employees a living wage. H-2A or not. If you pay a living they will come
The "establishment," including the NY Times, appears to be putting on a full court press to save NAFTA and the whole idea of corporate "free trade." I don't think people will be taken in by stories like this.
10
Ejs. You may, may be correct...but think of these articles as warning shots across the bow of the Goodship Xenophobia. And its shister shop MISSsplaced Anger. NAFTA, may need some tweaks, nothing inherently wrong with that. Problem is the approach...Trumps approach is an abomination. Hes hacks away at the shrubbery, instead of professionally pruning it. Then he claims hes an artist of the highest caliber, and has created the most tremendous, best art work ever made by anyone anywhere...then goes off to hack at something else, merely for the sake of hacking away...
Hes not a fix it guy, hes a break it and walk away and blame others type.
1
I certainly do not support Trump or the Republicans in any way, shape or form. Unfortunately, he seems to be the only one who may be willing to do something to start trying to arrest all the destructive features of corporate "free trade" on our economy and middle and working classes.
1
There is nothing right now coming out of Wash DC that helps middle-lower class workers. Period. We have a Pres with archaic notions about economics and world markets. Who speaks in bumper sticker cliches, and behaves like a 12yo bully with all bark, no political bite.
These are regressive times. Backwards looks like progress to this Admin. But backwards only keeps that comb-forward in place.
2
First of all, the fact that we rely on underpaid, overworked immigrant labor when nobody should be treated that way, is disgraceful. Second, if those jobs were decent paying and with decent conditions, Americans would do them, no problem. Third, there is plenty of money to subsidize food prices instead of wars, oil barons, estate taxes and other pet projects of the rich, and most of us would prefer to see our tax money spent that way. Fourth, illegal workers in building trades and manual labor jobs definitely take jobs away from American workers. People often hire the cheaper "company" without realizing or caring that they are hiring uninsured, illegal workers who don't pay payroll or income taxes.
8
One purely anecdotal bit of evidence. My wife and her brother grew up in Salinas, CA, the cool- weather salad bowl of America. He worked one summer in the fields. To his credit, he stuck it out. He has never eaten cauliflower since.
2
Thank you Mr. Porter! Finally someone who gets it!
The anti-immigrant folks argue that if American farmers can't get cheap foreign labor, they'll raise wages enough that Americans will take the work. So let's say that Americans will do the back-breaking work of picking lettuce for maybe $20 an hour, more or less twice what farm workers make now. That's the law of supply and demand, right?
Of course, lettuce growers would raise the price of lettuce to cover their higher costs. And that same law of supply and demand means that Americans will by less lettuce if it costs more.
Furthermore, another law of economics, the law of comparative advantage, says that if the price of U.S.-grown lettuce rises, then enterprising business people will import cheaper lettuce grown elsewhere. Two of the biggest five lettuce producers in the world are China and India, both very low-wage countries. And maybe Mexico, a low-wage country that has been a relatively minor lettuce producer - even importing from us, thanks to NAFTA - will expand production, maybe with laborers deported from the U.S.
Mr. Porter says this is counterintuitive. I say that we should stop trying to use intuition to figure out complex macro-economic problems.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
3
Too many have short memories. Following the misbegotten Reagan amnesty of 1986, many newly legalized illegal workers fled the ag fields and went into better paying, easier work than toiling in the fields. You see they were working in ag because they were illegal, not because they were Hispanic. Vacated ag jobs were filled by a new wave of illegal "immigrants". The same thing will happen again if we do the same thing. The very definition of insanity.
Here is a straightforward statement of what should be our policy: any job that can't be filled by a legal worker should not exist in this country.
10
Its a two lane highway directed away from American workers.Entire towns closed up losing factories that supported families for 50 years with full benefits in every state.Every known US brand has moved to Mexico.At the same time they have moved here legal or not taking millions of jobs in construction and warehouses and at ports working for contractors outside of the Unions. Many young Americans even with educations and minorities across the board have lost the opportunities we once had and even the idea of a steady job.
15
All opportunity lost in America is blamed on immigrants? Why? What right to jobs that newcomers fill should go to people whose only "qualifications" are to have been born here? As an employer I'd look pretty hard a the commitment home-born and therefore "entitled" workers bring to my work-site. Are these the same slackers who in other industries cling to their right to refuse training on the grounds they "deserve" to benefit form new vocations they themselves had no part in creating? Not able to care for themselves, Americans need to blame someone else.
I grew up in a family that picked strawberries in June at the local truck farm and turn them into jam, or froze them, for the winter. I have never forgotten how hard that work was, and respect the people who do it, and think they deserve to be paid more.
We canned tomatoes in August and September, in the sweltering heat, to have food on the table in January. We baked our own bread and made our own pizza at home to save money.
Maybe it's time to acknowledge that what made America great was doing hard work, and respecting and honoring those who did it.
19
As a society, we are not prepared to pay real wages to someone whose tools are shovel and hoes and whose office is a orchard, grove, or field. If we did pay the “less than blue collar work” workers a decent wage, the transferred cost costs would make food far more expensive than current boutique food marts costs and Americans would be screaming.
On the other hand, few if none non-minorities are willing to do the work that puts the food in the stores (brown collar, if you will). It’s work that is beyond hard and we don’t value it the same way we do blue or white collar work.
When mr. trump finishes deporting, blocking, and otherwise deterring immigration, it will be a cold day in hell before you see a team of white American field hands picking apples or harvesting grapes. Whom will he blame then?
11
"...it will be a cold day in hell before you see a team of white American field hands picking apples or harvesting grapes. Whom will he blame then?"
Obama. It has worked up to now. And it may continue.
I have lived in central WA since 1961. In the 1960s and 1970s we grew sugar beets. They required intense labor to eliminate the weeds. It was done by hand with a hoe. I can only remember one white person who did this job. My best friend's sister. We dated that summer. She was muscled like rebar.
In the last fifteen years my work in law enforcement brings me into regular contact with our growing Hispanic population. We no longer grow sugar beets, but apples, grapes, onions and potatoes are still grown. Apples and grapes ( winery production has boomed ) are the crops which require intensive hand labor. When I talk with Hispanic adults who work apples and grapes they tell me their children won't follow them into the fields. Their kids say the same. In fact, they say hell no they won't work in the fields. These are first generation Americans. They have no intention of even working these jobs for a summer.
I do not see the farmers who grow apples and grapes raising the wages. If they did raise the pay for these hard, physical jobs, I wonder how many people would apply?
9
Ag is the gateway drug of illegal "immigration". We should enforce immigration law and create a serious farm labor shortage and force this throwback industry to adjust to living in 2017. Some crops may no longer be viable in this country. Some may be more expensive. Some may be grown in entirely new ways. Fine. Let's move into the future and stop once and for all the wink wink employment of illegal workers.
8
Well said Kurfco. Very well said
2
"...Hispanic adults who work apples and grapes they tell me their children won't follow them into the fields. Their kids say the same... they won't work in the fields.These are first generation Americans. They have no intention of even working these jobs for a summer...."
It is distressing to see these kids becoming American in this way: Being Too Good to Have To Do Hard Work. OTOH, it ought to cause some self-examination on our end: If these are the values we've communicated to these young people, what does that say about us, and what should we be doing about it?
Okay, so...
-Working class Americans are stuck in the past and need to get with the times, automation is the future and we need more people in college, not working in the fields. Our economy depends on it!
-We need illegal immigrants to fill these jobs because no one else will do them, our blue collars jobs are vital and we need more people working in the fields. Our economy depends on it!
I don't get it. Aren't these jobs vanishing? Aren't robots gonna take over soon? Why is it that we need less working class Americans, but more working class illegal immigrants?
12
Hasn't Trump been talking about stopping only illegal immigration and not legal immigration?
5
No. He’s in favor of curtailing legal immigration as well. He has proposed sweeping changes to our immigration system, including using only a points-based system. He has also spoken out against family sponsorship as it currently exists.
Trump has promised to deport illegals and cut legal immigration by a lot.
1
More on Trumpian economics:
The estimated cost to build Trump's US/Mexico border wall is $15 billion ($15,000,000,000,000). The estimated total number of illegal immigrants entering the US from Mexico each year is 750,000. $15 billion divided by 750,000 is $20,000,000 to keep out one illegal Mexican immigrant each year. How many $20 million a year low information, poorly educated Trump supporter's jobs are being taken by Mexican illegal immigrants?
9
$1,000 per blocked illegal Mexican.
Not your $20,000,000.
This sounds look me modern day slave labor. Rationalize all you want, but this is no better than the pre-war South. For shame.
20
Upside down analogy.
Africans were brought here in chains.
If they left the fields and ran, they were chased and hunted down.
Nobody is forcing Mexicans and other Latin Americans to come here.
They can leave anytime. No one will stop them.
Lies upon lies. Falsehoods without end. Every job stolen by an illegal is suddenly a job "Americans don't want to do". They stole farmworker jobs - Cesar Chavez did not want illegals here taking jobs from natives. They steal millions of construction jobs. Suddenly, Americans don't want to do these jobs. Basically any job that can benefit from cheap labor of illegals is suddenly a job Americans don't want to do. Americans DO want to work. They DO want to do manual labor. What farmers want is slaves, who are paid low wages. Before the Civil War, southern planters told us that they needed slaves. We ended the slave system anyway. It's time to end the dependence on slaves today.
32
Hey, all you white folks looking for a job - come on down to Immokalee, Fla and pick tomatoes. You’ll make $ 6.37 for every 32 lbs of tomatoes you pick.
Right. Every year the Naples Daily News and Ft Myers News Press print an ad in the help wanted section looking for farm laborers.
NEVER seen a white person in the fields. Guess they can’t read.
1
Just like outsourcing has made the cost of goods cheap at Walmart and Target, Undocumented immigration has made the cost of services low inside the country.
What do you get when a happy meal cost $12, and that manicure at the foreigner-staffed nail salon hits $50? And your nightly stay at the La Quinta goes from $88 to $140 a night?
An economy that resembles Soviet-era communism just before the collapse of the USSR: very low wages, very high prices, spotty supply.
We need to start looking at our relationship with foreign workers as a symbiotic rather than parasitic, for all our sakes.
7
We are much better off without the Happy Meal.
3
As was proved several years ago hi=ere in Californian, Americans will not take the jobs that illegals do for any money. One year the illegals stayed home so there was no on to plant, raise and harvest the crops. American workers were offered in excess of $15 per hour, a guaranteed 40 hour work week ,overtime and other benefits The few Americans who took the jobs lasted, at most, a couple of weeks. The Farmers plowed under a lot of crops that year. the truth is that Americans will not take hard dirty jobs.
7
Looking forward to the skyrocketing prices of food!
2
Far more than field wages goes into the retail price of food.
Other inputs:
land, water for irrigation, pipes and pumps for irrigation, equipment to till the land, pesticides and fertilizer, equipment to apply the pesticides and fertilizer, refrigeration equipment and storage facilities, transportation to market, fuel and electricity to run all that equipment, wholesale distribution costs, retail costs.
Doubling, or even tripling field wages will not affect those other inputs.
So, maybe the retail price goes up 10%.
And, if it goes up more than that,
the food can be imported.
Far better to import cheap produce grown in Mexico or overseas using cheap labor there than to import the supposedly cheap labor with all the hidden costs borne by taxpayers for the imported cheap labor, such as health and education for the cheap laborer and his family (delivered in Spanish of course), and the burdens on public roads and parks and other infrastructure -- costs far exceeding the meager taxes paid by the imported cheap laborer.
3
The commercial production of fresh fruits and vegetables has relied on immigrant labor in this country since the 19th century. There's only one real exception: the Dust Bowl era which gave rise to a persecuted white minority labor force known as the Okies. They were absorbed by the military and industrial demands of World War II, only to be replaced in the fields by Mexicans hired through the Bracero Program.
The only real issue is whether the United States is willing to create guest worker programs sufficient to meet domestic labor demands (the current ones don't) or whether it will continue to accept (and abuse) unauthorized immigrant workers.
I think you can see what the humane course of action is here.
5
Agriculture is unique.
Agriculture is the one industry that we could not assume that if pay were much higher for American workers that they'd take jobs in that industry.
Using the experience we have with illegal immigrant agriculture workers as the basis as our immigration policies and laws is just plain nuts.
But for the right amount of money Americans will do just about any jobs outside agriculture, even jobs that are dangerous and very hard to do. Just look at coal mining. It's about 100% done by US citizens, I think, and the people who used to have miserable but high paying coal jobs are begging to get their old jobs back.
It is also nuts to think we can keep bringing in so many new people each year when our population is rapidly growing and technology continues to kill so many jobs and job categories.
I accept the fact that we're going to get stuck with the illegal immigrants we already have. When are people going to accept the fact that we can't take in every nice person in the world that wants to live and work in America? The underlying assumption of the article is that we have an endless capacity to absorb people at no cost. That simply isn't true.
10
It's become increasingly apparent that immigrants are simply a scapegoat used by Trump to get whites to vote for him, the oldest trick in the demagogue handbook. The entire "Whites are suffering" narrative isn't holding water anymore, if it ever did:
1. We had record real median household wealth in 2016; nearly so in 2015.
2. Household debt has fallen from 100% GDP under Bush to 80% GDP now.
3. Household wealth continues to hit record levels. If you've got a 401k, you've seen it more than double since 2009.
4. About 20 million more now have affordable health insurance.
Yes, we've got an income inequality problem best addressed by raising taxes on the rich to pay for middle class education (college, trade-school and pre-K) and get the remaining people covered. But I'm tired of the "Suffering White" narrative. Vote for the Democrats if you want some help.
11
It's become increasingly apparent that immigrants are simply a scapegoat used by Trump to get whites to vote for him, the oldest trick in the demagogue handbook. The entire "Whites are suffering" narrative isn't holding water anymore, if it ever did:
1. We had record real median household income in 2016; nearly so in 2015.
2. Household debt has fallen from 100% GDP under Bush to 80% GDP now.
3. Household wealth continues to hit record levels. If you've got a 401k, you've seen it more than double since 2009.
4. About 20 million more now have affordable health insurance.
Yes, we've got an income inequality problem best addressed by raising taxes on the rich to pay for middle class education (college, trade-school and pre-K) and get the remaining people covered. But I'm tired of the "Suffering White" narrative. Vote for the Democrats if you want some help.
2
What about illegal workers taking away jobs from tradesmen? We will not see that the claim that illegal labor is good for tradesmen, because construction is one thing that can't be outsourced.
7
From the LA Times , March 17, 2017
"Growers who can afford it have already begun raising worker pay well beyond minimum wage. Wages for crop production in California increased by 13% from 2010 to 2015, twice as fast as average pay in the state, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics."
LA Times March 17, 2017
Economics 101 : Wages follow supply and demand. Pay rises until it meets demand
5
This analysis holds true for agriculture, as you can't take the fields to where the workers are.
But consider the urban immigrants: they are the people who make it possible for the elite to cluster in a few wealthy cities. Without immigrants to staff the restaurants and clean the offices and change the hotel beds, would these elites still insist that they can only live and work in New York or San Francisco? Or would life and work in other places where Americans are already living and working become more appealing?
8
If US workers don't do the jobs people here illegally do, how do you explain unions competing with illegal labor in many areas?
12
It's not that immigrants aren't hardworking and productive, but that there are millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans who are willing and able to take most of the so-called "unwanted jobs" if the employers provide them with a living wage.
Personally, I cannot understand why so many Americans favor sanctuary cities and illegal immigration that places additional burden on their country's growing numbers of lower income citizens and legal residents.
And the idea that population growth is a necessity for economic growth is actually the worst long-term scenario for most countries. Increasing population results in further deforestation, more land, air and water pollution.
34
You missed the point of the article. Employers are not willing to pay their workers a living wage, even if Americans were willing to do the job. If immigrants leave, farms mechanize, leave the country or switch to a less labor-intensive crop. A few American workers might or might not gain a few jobs on small farms, but far more Americans will lose jobs in the stores, restaurants and housing markets supported by immigrant workers.
8
@Lauren - An I suppose the building managers at NYC office buildings are going to leave the lavatories uncleaned, rather than raise wages to attract unskilled US citizens to clean them.
9
Oh, please. Will you cut the propaganda and become a newspaper again?
Cherry pick the right "studies" and interpret them in the light of ex post facto reasoning and you can prove anything.
43
If you have data that have produced different findings, please share or cite.
Otherwise, use comon sense and leave the research to the experts.
Sheesh...
2
What specifics can you offer to refute the studies cited? To reiterate: specifics. Please?
1
When we drive the production of our food outside our border, we give up on some very important food safety controls. Congress needs to take a deep breath and resolve the immigration problem. We need these workers in agriculture, and in construction, especially as we rebuild after hurricanes and wildfires.
9
We already import plenty of food.
For various reasons.
No serious food safety scares.
No reason we cannot import more.
6
President Coolidge son spent a summer suckering tobacco plants. George H.W. Bush worked feeding pigs. What ever happened to the twin notions that hard work is good for young people and putting money in their pockets that they didn't earn is not. There is no necessity to import cheap labor to get the crops picked. It is a choice.
40
Do you think that Pennsylvanians are going to send their kids to work on mushroom farms? Doubtful. (See the article).
2
Don't let the information in the report influence your opinions....
1
Might also do something about the obesity people confront.
1
"Expelling Immigrant Workers May Also Send Away the Work They Do."
The immigrants took the low lying fruit. The idea that they took jobs away from natives is the dumbest assertion possible. Now, field workers are scarce in central California.
7
The work they did benefited no one besides the owners and themselves.
Meanwhile, the California taxpayer paid for the education of their kids and bilingual services for them and their families and the roads and parks infrastructure for them.
And the meager taxes they paid did not come close to covering those costs.
If the owners won't pay the wages needed to attract Americans and legal green card holders, then import the produce made in Mexico or overseas with cheap labor there. Do not import the workers
18
And CA is the world’s sixth largest economy, sam.
What’s the complaint?
2
So, losing low-cost immigrant labor will result in greater mechanization of agriculture?
That doesn't sound so bad.
Leading U.S. universities and corporations are already developing and employing automated systems to harvest a wide range of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. If this can be accelerated, we can gain a global advantage in such automated equipment.
20
Perhaps. But how will increased automation in agriculture yield more jobs for US citizen?
Obviously you know little about agriculture. Picking the crop is the easy part. Its preparing the fields, planting the crops, weeding them and watering them that takes a human hand.
1
Incredulous:
There will be some offset in jobs created in the automation sector. But, of course, it will not offset all the lost jobs.
So we have two choices. For example, we can keep 10 low-wage immigrants (or some number) or replace them with 2-3 high wage automation/research/manufacturing jobs. (This doesn't account for the possibility of labor substitution by U.S. workers, which is also possible.)
Which is better for the economy? That's a difficult question. Since a large portion of immigrants' wages are repatriated to family in their home countries, it flows out of the U.S. economy.
As such, I think the U.S. is better off in total with the higher wage jobs, especially since it creates an opportunity for the U.S. to export high tech agriculture automation equipment as well. I would like to see an unbiased study to confirm/reject my thinking.
5
The US population is growing at less than 1 percent for the past decade.
We need population growth to support GDP growth and fulfillment of our tax based services.
History has shown that hard working immigrants who enter our country fill unwanted jobs, raise families, acculturate well into society and send their kids off to college.
This system has worked effectively for 150 years. This is the history of most American families. Why are we working so hard to screw it up?
15
Sure, more immigration means a bigger "economy" (i.e. more total GDP).
But it does not mean a better economy (i.e. more GDP per capita).
The economic pie might "grow",'
but the slices get smaller.
How so?
Not difficult:
More immigration means more people.
More people usually means a bigger "economy" (total GDP).
But it does not mean a better economy (GDP per capita).
India has a far bigger "economy" than Australia.
And also far more people.
But all those people are not making a better economy.
Far from it.
12
Economists have been touting the advantages of trade for decades. Both countries win, they say. And on a macro basis, it makes sense. On,y now are they acknowledging that a country will have winners and losers in it from trade. In a wealthy, relatively high labor cost market like the US or Europe, the losers are the lower skilled. They lose both jobs and wage rates. The winners are the higher skilled, and wealthy. So, free trade exacerbates wage inequality unless the government takes actions to take some of those benefits from the winners and give them to the losers. Europe does a better job of this than we do.
Immigration is really similar to free trade in goods, except that instead of production of goods moving from one country to the next, it is the labor that is moving. In many cases, it is because the labor is a service where it needs to be performed locally or regionally. Yes, we overall have a benefit, but the economists prefer to ignore that once again we have winners and losers. The quantities of immigrants into the US expand the supply, which means lower wages, and the replacement of some low skilled US workers. So working class people are expected to pay for the benefits the rest of us enjoy since we do not have a very strong social net.
22
Mr. Porter fails to calculate the role of H2A workers. These people are not illegals. They are so-called guestworkers and work in my State, then expect to go back to their country at the end of the season.
8
Karen, the guest workers don't bring the same benefits to the economy as immigrants (legal or illegal) do.
Indeed, the guest workers try to spend as little of their earnings as possible, and take as much as possible back to their countries.
Immigrants, on the other hand, buy houses, cars, appliances and much else. They also shore up our foundering Social Security and Medicare systems.
4
The infamous H1B visas are good up to 6 years. H1Bs do pay social security taxes but will never collect benefits as a minimum of 15 years of contributions is required to ever qualified for retirement benefits.
1
Illegals bring no benefits for most of us.
What will get Americans on those farms doing the labor is to end the welfare state that enables people to evade difficult work. Nearly all of the nasty backbreaking and, in the twisted way some people see work today, "demeaning" work that supposedly Americans won't do, I or my parents have done even though we are white descendants of people who immigrated to this land long before there was a United States.
My parents picked cotton. I have crawled through sewers, built roads, nailed on roofs in the Louisiana summer heat and, yes picked crops. I never considered any of it demeaning because I was taught that all honest labor is honorable and manly. I raised the value of my labor through education and no longer do those things but have no disrespect for those who. The work ethic learned in manual labor served me well in applying myself to my studies and the jobs that paid tuition. I have only contempt for those who feel entitled to live off the labor of others and their enablers who make it possible.
When people have to do farm work to live, they will do so. They will be enobled and happier souls for it. Some will learn a work ethic that they transform into more economically rewarding fields.
21
Hard to imagine how this generation of people on permanent “disability” will do hard physical work. I am a physician and I daily see young, morbidly obese patients who are 100% disabled due to “back pain”. Easier than getting or keeping a job. It’s going to be a lost generation.
1
Yup. Until attitudes change, nothing else will fix this problem. When a Presidential Candidate says $8/ hr. is over paid in 2017.... then Houston we have a problem.
It's a called a total 100% lack of respect for human beings
1
If you read between the lines, this author's premise will take us to a society with an underclass of poorly paid, illegal immigrants as 'workers'. It would be fairer to everyone involved if we scrapped that idea, raised the minimum to a livable wage, and enforced our immigration laws. If the price of grapes goes up- so be it; it's better than having even more of a class-oriented society than we have now.
47
Young Republican Clubs on campuses across the country are mobilizing their members to replace immigrant workers in agriculture. In Alabama and Georgia they will weed vegetables, in Wisconsin muck out dairy barns, and in California Rep. Devin Nunes will lead groups harvesting lettuce and spinach. As I write Jeff Sessions is organizing FBI strike teams to sweep up those employing unauthorized workers. We can count on Republicans to protect the interests of real Americans!
24
I am trying to figure out if this is satire or serious.
They can go to the website takeourjobs.org and the undocmented workers will help them get jobs on their employers' farms
Yet despite the claims from the Trump administration that immigrants have decimated the working class, Mr. Card’s analysis has emerged pretty much unscathed: With few exceptions, economists agree that even less-educated natives suffer little when immigrants arrive.
*******
Trickle Down Economics is what has devasted the working class, not immigrants. The Trump administration is pushing for new Trickle Down Economics that will once again benefit the rich and further marginalize anyone not in the top 20%.
9
There is an aspect of this issue that never seems to get discussed. If 25% of the farm laborers are illegally here, aren't their employers also breaking the law? Why aren't these employers being thrown in prison? Why is it that if you are a businessman you get a pass on breaking the law when you feel like it? We have somehow elevated being a businessman into the highest state of mankind, when the evidence is exactly the opposite -- they are on the whole unscrupulous, selfish scoundrels with an outsize ability to look out for number one. It is time we stopped coddling them.
101
Because they make very large campaign contributions.
14
You have to understand how the 1986 reform act works.
Under this law, employees must present a credential showing they are authorized to work in the US. The employers must copy down information from this credential, put it on an I-9 form, and file the forms in a binder. However, they are prohibited from asking if the credential is phony.
Yes, this was a compromise....where else but in Congress?
3
A deeply misguided opinion. Let’s be clear: the goal is not simply to remove illegal/unauthorized/undocumented immigrants, but also to clamp down on their enablers: employers, sanctuary cities, sanctuary organizations, states heaping benefits like driver’s licenses, judges on ideological missions, like the one in DC who wants to rush abortion to an illegal immigrant, never mind possible rape of a minor or her getting pregnant solely to avoid deportation, or the judge in Hawaii who everyone’s tired of, even entire administrations like Obama’s, who, together with his party, got the royal boot in the 2016 election, because he wanted over 5 million in simply by writing-up an illegal order.
*Everyone* in the list above is in focus. What’s more, voters from both sides of the aisle, approve resoundingly.
What of higher food prices you ask? Those are the last enabler of illegal immigration also in focus: the American people, meaning they too get to take a hike if they’re buying cheap strawberries, well aware that laws were broken to mark their prices down .
Seriously, though, it won’t translate. Consumers won’t pay a dime extra for strawberries, so cost savings will have to be squeezed through technology. At least one smart businessman in Seattle understands that, more are sure to follow.
15
Curiously, the pick-it-yourself strawberry places charge just as much for the strawberries you pick as they do for the strawberries they pick. Evidently, the labor of picking is not much of a factor.
8
The alternative is we do not eat strawberries. Is this so bad? Only for the farmer, not the rest of us. It used to be that you only ate fruits/veggies that were in season. Depending upon where you lived, there were certain fruits and vegetables never seen. People survived as we are here today.
My complaint with this article is the premise that illegal immigrants are only doing farm work. Fact is they are everywhere. Many Americans would be happy to work in a restaurant, construction, nanny, home attendant.
As others have stated, article is promoting slavery for illegal immigrants
7
So basically you're saying 'let's continue to exploit these slave laborers because it makes us better off.' Really?
57
Trying to protect Big Agra's use of severely exploited farm workers, who earn substandard wages for backbreaking work, reminds me of Southerners during the Civil War who defended the "peculiar" institution of slavery.
58
And when the US has forced all of the foreign labours back out of the country, there will be no more crops to harvest, prices will sky rocket, and still our work force will not go out and take those jobs. We rely on migrant workers where I live. The salaries are low and they are badly abused. I have to wonder what these farmers will do with no pickers....
4
Cut off the free food and housing vouchers and you will have labor.
16
Workers suffering from exposure and hunger always perform the best.
You know, the military gets housing allowances and food allowances. Should they pick crops? (This is in addition to their income).
1
“Foreign workers will always be harvesting our crops,” Tom Nassif, who heads the Western Growers Association, told me.
Jefferson Davis in 1861: "Slaves will always be picking our cotton."
Who does agricultural work, where they're from, how much they're paid, what their rights are, etc., is not a law of nature. Work structures are created by people. With an eye on something more than making more money a better structure can be created.
45
Study after study shows little effect on jobs, wages and eventually increase in economics by immigrants. 1/3 of small businesses in USA started by immigrants. Medical usage by immigrants way below the working poor USA citizens. Billions donated to SS by young workers and many more in taxes. Most USA folks would not take the jobs immigrants do regardless of wages. Now, with the young workers using drugs and unreliable the businesses need responsible immigrants. We all do! These facts will not not be used by the conservatives to educate but instead they will fire up their base since fear and simple blame is their path to voters.
4
There are two types of immigrants: illegal and legal. We welcome the latter, as they have pursued the necessary steps to come here.
8
Illegals are not immigrants. They are criminals. It's amazing how persistent the ignorance of this simple fact is. Illegals are not immigrants any more than shoplifters are undocumented consumers. Please try to educate yourself.
8
This article assumes that Trump will follow through on one of his impractical, unrealistic red-meat promises made solely to whip up support among his "base." A promise that would negatively impact a large, powerful business lobby.
I'm not concerned.
2
Breaking into the country is also wrong. That time has passed since the original wrong does not mitigate it. Illegals must be deported. We can replace them with a legal guest worker program that does not lead to permanent residency but serves the need.
31
“We can replace them with a legal guest worker program that does not lead to perminant residency but serves the need.”
...and creates a perminant underclass of ‘disposable’ people we can acquire and discard as our whims dictate. As an added bonus, these ‘disposable’ people will serve to limit any wage growth at the bottom of the labor market.
9
They are lured into the country by the offers of work on arrival, no papers needed. There is no punishment enforced for employing workers with no legal documentation to work in the US
2
and I suppose these guest workers will be exempt from paying social security taxes.............
Two points on the David Card study: 1) it is stated that "research tried to find fault with that counter-intuitive conclusion ... yet ... Card's analysis has emerged pretty well unscathed". For a recent study leaning in the opposite direction, see BBC World News Online, September 20, 2017: "Rise in Female Workers Suppressing Wages, Says OECD" ... (article) "A rise in the employment rate for women since 2008 is holding back wage growth globally, the OECD has told the BBC. ... Chief Economist Catherine Mann said ... "You've got more women employed, as compared to men, so the algebra works out to be a downward pressure on wage growth." So women have this effect but not migrants?
Second, Peri & Hines are happy to study Arizona, but they declined to study the situation in the city of Calgary and the province of Alberta from 2005 to 2009. Calgary suffered a severe labor shortage at that time, and businesses and confectionery stands were forced to close, but wages for all low-wage workers, such as security guards, went up dramatically, approximately 150 to 200%, or approximately $8.50 - $9.00 an hour, up to $16.00 - $18.00 an hour. The government was intimidated from completely documenting and publishing the statistics on this occurrence, but I have employment records of hourly wages from at least one security firm to support it, and the data should also be discoverable through historical research (tax and occupation data) if Peri & Hines, or anyone else, were really interested.
8
Your concerns aren't valid.
The BBC article you referenced does not mention a study. It quotes an economist from a large think-tank, but doesn't name or link to a specific study or research paper. It's not invalid, but the NYTimes article holds more weight because it actually cites multiple studies instead of trying to paraphrase the conclusions of a closed think tank.
If the conclusions of the think tank are true, their findings still don't apply to this discussion. The think tank was talking about the global effect of low wage workers, not a local effect in a high wage country. If low-wage workers leave a high-wage country, many of their jobs will follow them back to their low-wage country or be eliminated entirely. So in the high wage country, the loss of low-wage workers leads to a net loss of jobs that isn't offset by the increase in wages for remaining workers. However, if many low-wage workers left the workforce entirely, wages across the globe would rise. Remember, jobs can leave the country or be taken over by robots, but they can't (yet) leave the planet.
As for your personal story -- did life actually improve for low-wage workers across the board? If you consider all the people who lost their jobs and businesses, did income for lower-class workers rise or fall? Did the increase in wages actually improve workers lives or was it eaten up by grossly inflated rents (which was probably the reason for the labor shortage to begin with)?
1
Thank you for your detailed reply, the character limit prohibits me the response it deserves. To respond on studies: Del Carpio, Ximena V., and Wagner, Mathis: “The impact of Syrian Refugees on the Turkish labor market”, World Bank, 2015 : “Consistent with economic theory, our instrumental variable estimates, which also control for distance from the Turkish-Syrian border and trade volumes, suggest large-scale displacement of natives in the informal sector … The low educated and women experience net displacement from the labor market and, together with those in the informal sector, declining earning opportunities”; and also Makela, Erik: “The Effect of Mass Influx on Labor Markets: Portuguese 1974 Evidence Revisited”, European Economic Review, Vol. 98 (Sept. 2017), p. 240-263: “In contrast to the previous evidence, the synthetic control analyses find that the influx had a significant adverse effect on labor market outcomes. The results suggest that the Portuguese labor market responded precisely the same way as the standard textbook model predicts: an increase in the number of workers lowered average labor productivity and wages”. See also Nickell, S. & Saleheen, J.: “The Impact of EU and Non-EU Immigration on British Wages”, IZA Journal of Development and Migration, Vol. (2017), 7:15 (controlling for occupations): “We find that immigration has a small negative impact on average British wages, with a somewhat larger impact within the semi/unskilled service occupations”.
1) Farmers always threaten to quit when re threatened with having to pay legal, market wages for labor. It's a largely hollow threat. Landowners have to use their land or they lose money owning it.
2) For every dollar you spend on food at the cash register, labor gets about 2 cents. The rest go to middlemen and fixed costs. If you paid every farmworker in the country a legal wage, you'd see at most a blip at the cash register. The idea that food prices would skyrocket is a bit of a joke.
3) How many other industries' profits depend on paying sub-legal wages? Agriculture has always claimed exceptionalism. There's nothing about the food business that requires standardized, habitual lawbreaking. The problem is attitudinal. Every year, the price of tractors, seed, fertilizer, etc, goes up with inflation. There's no non-racist explanation for the fact that wages can't rise with inflation.
35
In the Dust Bowl days, when the economy was driven into the ground, there were citizens born in the states who became migrant laborers working (and sleeping) in the fields with the immigrants. Looking over the Republican agenda, we could well see a return to that kind of desperation sooner than any of us would like to imagine.
4
If the border was actually controlled, guest worker programs would exist, as they did long ago, to provide Mexican labor for agriculture and other market sectors that pay poor wages for physically demanding work. Because the border is so porous, and so many people have crossed illegally, many American voters went ballistic and helped elected the most atrocious president in American history. This unfolding political train wreck might not have happened if we had effective border control. If Trump leaves office with effective border control in place, I think Americans would calm down about this issue.
15
So, TG, what is this effective control of our 2,000 mi. southern border that you are envisioning. What is its costs and how long would it take to institute it? And what about the great number of illegal immigrants that enter otherwise. I believe only about 2/3 of illegal immigrants come via the southern border. How will your program secure those points of entry.
I don't know what it would take to effectively control the border. Certainly, lots of government money and boots on the ground, and good engineering. But if we don't do it, or at least make a really determined effort, a significant fraction of voters might help re-elect Trump or someone even worse (hard to imagine). Lack of border control reduces national sovereignty. This drives some people nuts. Many good union jobs (in meatpacking for example) have been lost to undocumented workers. This inflames some voters, especially some unemployed or underemployed citizens. Democrats are not known for fiscal conservatism, but then they become fiscal conservatives when discussing border control. This looks fishy to some voters who suspect other motives.
6
Over the past 24 years, the amount of money spent on border security has increased 14 times (inflation hasn't even doubled nominal costs); the number of border patrol agents have increased 500 percent; the amount of border wall has grown from 77 miles to 700 miles since 2000; and the number of people being apprehended trying to cross the border have decreased by four-fifths. Sounds like we've spent a fair amount of money and have increased the boots on the ground, but I understand you think that has not been a serious effort. So, TC, what would be "serious effort" in your estimation. Also, how much more do we spend and how many more boots do we put on the ground (forgetting that the gov't can't find enough competent hires as it is). We spend 12 billion a year as of late on border security. Estimates say more "wall" will cost approximately (sic) 20-70 billion to build and add hundreds of millions in yearly maintenance costs. If that is going to be done in the next 3 years it alone could double or even triple current outlays. Plus we will need to hire more patrols, supervisors, etc.. Assuming no tax increases and no overall increased Fed expenditures, what programs would you cut? Finally, on what basis do you conclude that Trump was elected based on the border issue? There is lots of conjecture but really no good data. The analyses done so far with limited data available are inconsistent, some say racism, some say economic anxiety, some desired tax cuts, etc..
By the time Trump voters realize they've been conned, the republicans will have moved on to another scapegoat to bamboozle them with.
4
The semester is over and it's time to assign grades in Econ 101. Those who predict higher agricultural prices and more automation, you pass and are allowed to move on to Intermediate Micro. To those who think that severely constraining the labor supply in agriculture (or landscaping; or building trades; or O&M services) will not raise wages, I'm sorry. Your grade is an F. Please come to class more often.
12
Wait, we're supposed to believe that farmers will just stop farming, will take their valuable farmland and get precisely zero return on it, because they don't have cheap labor? The whole argument seems absurd. There is some production that is lost when immigration is reduced, but farming can't be an example, because you can't pick up the farmland and move it to another country.
15
You could sell your farmland for development and move your farming operations to Mexico or Brazil where labor is cheap and plentiful. Many US farmers already doing it.
1
Go to the produce section. Look at where the non-organic fruits and vegetables came from. Guess what? Many of them have been shipped in from other countries. Same for some meat products, like chicken.
Small, local farms are great but they make up a tiny percentage of product and jobs. Also, many of the smaller fruit farms collapsed almost ten years ago because there weren't enough migrant workers. Now there are condos on that land and many of our fruits come from Mexico. Valuable farmland isn't very valuable if there's nobody to work it.
2
This article overlooks the reality. Only 10 to 15 percent of the illegal aliens in the U.S. work in agricultural jobs. The rest work in medium and large cities performing landscaping, construction, janitorial and restaurant jobs. If not for the torrent of unauthorized workers, wages and working conditions for these jobs would rise and citizens would take them. Flooding the country with unskilled, uneducated people only helps the plutocrats who need masses of desperate workers to maintain their wealth.
72
EH: the Pew Foundation estimates that agriculture account for only 4-5% of the jobs held by illegal immigrants. I agree with you on the other points.
1
George, I appreciate the correction !
The destiny of immigrants cannot be serf labor. That is not a solution. Anyone who defends the current state of immigration either has not thought about its consequences or views hispanics, chinese, africans, and other migrant groups as sub human. There is no justice in the status quo, no matter what the marginal benefits are to consumers.
52
Better to import cheap produce from Mexico or overseas
made with cheap labor there
than to import cheap labor to produce it here.
Imported cheap labor benefits only the owners.
It burdens the taxpayers with costs for education and health care
and other benefits (e.g bilingual services in Spanish)
for the imported cheap laborer and their families.
Let in cheap labor if, and only if,
only the cheap laborer himself/herself is let in
(no "accompanying" family members),
under a visa for a temporary period (maximum one-year),
and there is an employer sponsor for the laborer and the visa,
for the entire temporary period,
who guarantees all wages, and taxes,
and all health care and living expenses for the imported laborer,
and backs the guarantee with a cash deposit,
payable in advance, deposited to the U.S. Treasury,
in the amount of $100,000 per worker,
refundable only 90 days after the temporary worker departs the USA
and all health care expenses, wages, taxes and other expenses
have been certified as paid.
If the employer does not agree to those terms,
and does not make the upfront cash deposit with the U.S. Treasury,
then the laborer is not allowed to come in,
and whoever wants the produce
can either figure out a way to produce it here
with American citizens or green card holders,
or can seek to import the produce instead of importing the laborer.
8
You can't be the party for raising the minimum wage if you're also the party for undermining it with under-the-table pay. You can't be the party of labor if you're for flooding the market with cheap labor because it favors the capital class.
To those who claim that the current system must be maintained lest the price of fruits and vegetables rise, I say this: In another fractious time in this country's history, there were those who made a similar argument regarding the necessity of exploiting foreign labor in order to maintain the strength of the economy.
I'm not sure how we square the circle of maturing capitalist societies who must constantly replenish the ranks of a cheap labor underclass in order to justify the prosperity of successive generations. A nation's borders, traditions, and culture form the invisible fabric that holds the entire enterprise together. Until economists figure out a way to measure the value of "social cohesion" we will never understand the true costs associated with our voracious appetite for imported cheap labor.
87
We are often told American farms could not survive without unauthorized immigrants. According to the Pew Research Center, unauthorized immigrants make up 26 percent of U.S. farm workers, but only 4 percent of unauthorized immigrants work on farms. So, we could deport 96 percent of the 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants currently residing in the United State without affecting farms. We could replace the 4 percent who work on farms by expanding the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Worker visa program or reviving the Braceros program of the 1950s and 60s.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/11/03/occupations-of-unauthorized-immigr...
48
Trump said he'd make America great again. He didn't say for what or for whom however. If I were considering emigrating from another country for whatever reason, at this point in time the United States would be last on my list. Trump and the current administration are not an inducement to come visit or live in America. Trump is acting like a petty dictator.
And as he talks about jobs I hope Congress realizes that a great many Americans can't find good jobs. It's not because they aren't looking. It's because businesses are unwilling to invest in employees, hire new employees at a decent rate of pay, help to relocate them to where the jobs are, or to hire older more experienced workers. It's not that there aren't Americans ready, willing, and able to work. It's that employers aren't ready, willing, or interested in hiring or paying for the skills they want.
It must be great to be able to waste human beings because that's exactly what our country is doing. Employers want that purple squirrel and they don't care how they get it or what they lose or who loses. I hope that Trump and the rest of the clowns in the parade are prepared to deal with need that hasn't been seen in America since the Great Depression.
7
I find it hard to believe that there is no research about the effect of immigrants leaving; what about the end of the Bracero Program? When this program ended it lead to a boom of mechanization in the farm industry, which is always better for everyone. New tractors with GPS that drive perfectly through fields, harvesters that separate the seed from the stalk and all kinds of innovation will happen when labor is short. The answer is never to import an underclass of worker, but instead make the work better through automation. America has this weird fascination with the farm, but the reality is I don't think anyone would want to work in a 19th century factor just like I don't think anyone wants to farm like they did in the 19th century. Automation is coming to all these jobs so increasing the work force is not the answer, and people forget America will have to do something with the unemployed farm work and his family once the machines come in.
15
Not all crops are able to be harvested by machine. It’s also worth noting that under the Bracero program workers were legal and had rights such as being able to have a say in their working conditions. After that happened the workers were still migrants just no longer legal and paid less and treated worse. Not many years after that program was ended the meat processing industry, once a dangerous yet well paying union middle class jobs moved to non union southern states with an overwhelmingly undocumented and abused workforce. Doesn’t seem like a coincidence.
2
Are you old enough to remember the farm foreclosures of the 1970s and 1980s? Do you think that there was any connection? Mechanizing farm work was a mixed blessing. More work was done more efficiently, but farmers were also locked in to much higher debt loads that made crop failure, or even market fluctuations, crippling. Many of the mid-sized farms have disappeared over time, and I really don't know when this trend started. Family farms were replaced with the corporate farms. I don't know that I consider this progress.
1
As I read this, I see another possible unintended consequence of expelling immigrant workers, which is the increase in cost for perishable (and healthy) fruits and vegetables. If farmers choose to change to less perishable crops or choose to move their operations to Mexico, Americans will have less of these foods grown in the US, leading to price increases. A lot of Americans already don't find fruits and vegetables affordable, which, along with corn and soy subsidies, has led to a very unhealthy diet, which, in turn, has led to an increase in chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer (with the concomitant increase in National healthcare costs). This problem will only worsen if fruits and vegetables become even more expensive due to lack of labor.
30
So you would rather have poor immigrants living in canyons and tents being paid sub minimum wage amounts, so we can have cheap broccoli? You are also forgetting that these immigrants have wives and kids with them, and they impact the local towns and schools and hospital and churches. If you are proposing a guest work program which imports migrants to pick some crops for 3-6 weeks and then sends them home to Mexico, then I am all for it, kind of use them up and send them home mentality. But most farmers don't want a guest worker program, because then the farmer would have to house and feed and insure the works and that adds to his cost. The farmer would rather just have illegals living in the canyons show up and he pays them the bare minimum, usually per pound or bushel never by the hour. If a small business man makes widgets he is subject to min wage and daily overtime and workman's comp, but a farmer is exempt and a farmer is nothing more than a business man, seems like a double standard.
17
Unaffordable fruit and vegetables are more a result of the grocery chains' stocking and pricing policies than anything related to the supply of produce. For this matter, prices at the newfangled fruit/vegetable markets on average are less than half of the supermarket price, places are mobbed with the shoppers, and owners are minting money - so there is quite a bit of room to improve the farm workers' pay without increasing most of the produce prices.
3
"Even if the Trump administration were to deploy the 10,000 immigration agents it plans to hire across the nation’s fields to detain and deport farmhands working illegally, farmers are very unlikely to raise wages and improve working conditions to attract American workers instead."
Oh, so it's ok to keep foreign workers here for de facto serf labor for crap wages and work conditions then? Sorry, if you can't afford to pay your labor properly and provide decent working conditions, you can't afford to be in business. Wherever your labor comes from and whatever your business.
81
But you know what ??? If it wasn't because the life of millions of people would be badly disrupted, I wish the expelling would take place to finally find out whether their presence is positive or negative.....to put an end to constant debate and bickering ...........if the price of tomatoes goes up, you can always replace them with SPAM.............
12
Wouldn't the price of Spam (so to speak) also increase? Deporting immigrant workers would include those that work in meat processing.
3
Not exactly............
You do have a point.
Tom Russell said it best years ago in his great song "Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?", whose chorus runs:
Who's gonna build the wall?
Who's gonna build your wall, boys?
Who's gonna mow your lawn?
Who's gonna cook your Mexican food
When your Mexican maid is gone?
Who's gonna wax the floors tonight
Down at the local mall?
Who's gonna wash your baby's face?
Who's gonna build your wall?
10
Immigrant jobs? Oh, you mean robot jobs. All produce will be picked by robots in a decade.
19