5 ms·

Alabama immigration: crops rot as workers vanish to avoid crackdown (2011)

37 points by snow_mac 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ransom1538 10y ago
So crops rot. The price goes up. Now they can make more money selling crops. So they can pay people more. What I am missing here?
- cm2187 10y ago
  Inflation. More expensive cost of living for your customers. Not a problem when your Apple gadget budget is a multiple of your food budget. But not everyone has this luxury. Protectionism in international trade will have similar impact. Tax chinese imports and suddenly walmart will hike their prices.
  - Consultant32452 10y ago
    One thing that's worth noting is that we've had virtually no inflation for a very long time. The wealth class prefers it this way, but the worker struggling to pay off debts wouldn't mind a little inflation every now and then.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      What kinds of debts are you thinking of? I don't know any workers with long-term debts which aren't inflation adjusted (even if indirectly). The whole idea of inflation reducing the value of debts seems silly. "We'll trick those bankers with this well known, mostly predictable, small decrease in the value of money! They'll never see it coming!"
      - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        Mortgages. Now, you could argue that the expectation of future inflation is built into the mortgage interest rate at the time you obtain the mortgage. And you'd be correct. But once you have the mortgage, then inflation helps you. Or rather, it helps you when your wages rise in response to inflation.
        DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
        Unless you have a variable-rate mortgage, of course.
        Spellman 10y ago
        Which is why people tout going fixed rate
      - Consultant32452 10y ago
        Ignore Tucker Carlson, economist Mark Blyth got famous recently for being virtually the only economist who predicted Trump's win. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-hV_XS8dH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-hV_XS8dH4
        icebraining 10y ago
        Why point to Mark Blyth and not to Arthur Laffer?
      - Tsagadai 10y ago
        If I have a debt at an interest rate of 4% and inflation is 5% my debt is worth less every year relative to the value of other things. If I have a debt at an interest rate of 5% and inflation is 2.5% the value of the debt is increasing. This effect is increased if only interest is being paid and the asset the debt is for does not increase in value (like a car). Add to this that wages are relatively stagnant for most people outside of tech since the 80s in some countries and you have a problem. It can get even worse where wages are kept stagnant by government intervention and inflation goes up faster than 5%.
    - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
      Not necessarily - there can be inflation without worker's pay increases, and inflation leads to more costly credit - so someone in that situation is twice as worse-off as before.
      - Consultant32452 10y ago
        Try telling that to the working public who basically hasn't gotten a raise in 30 years in spite of sky-rocketing productivity.
- ap3 10y ago
  Why wouldn't more farmers just let their crops rot to make more money?
  - jksmith 10y ago
    Because you have nothing to sell even if demand goes up. Does you no good.
  - mcguire 10y ago
    Because unless last year was a good year, making no money this year means you will be out of business next year.
- groby_b 10y ago
  So many things. In a first approximation: You can't sell crops that did rot. And the next harvest is next year. Then there's of course the fact that almost nobody (with citizenship) actually wants to pick crops, no matter what you pay them, because it's back-breaking labor. Yes, there'd be a price at which they would, but that's not a price the public would pay for your crops. Of course, if you don't give a shit about people and treat the world solely as an economics textbook, sure, this is perfectly normal and the market is working.
  - Consultant32452 10y ago
    >but that's not a price the public would pay for your crops. Maybe the public needs to get used to paying premium prices for premium work instead of outsourcing slavery to other countries or importing cheap slave-wage laborers illegally.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Or some will just automate, while others go out of business, and then you're left with still more expensive crops than before without any workers getting paid to pick them. But I'm sure those "slaves" will thank you.
      - Consultant32452 10y ago
        Wall Street's interests are diametrically opposed to workers. Wall Street wants to turn good jobs into shitty jobs and ship them to more desperate poor people in poorer countries, whereas workers want the exact opposite. We've had 30 years of free trade and basically no border. A nudge in the other direction isn't going to be the end of the world. A blip on the jobs radar which comes along with stronger worker rights is gonna be okay.
  - dikdik 10y ago
    >Then there's of course the fact that almost nobody (with citizenship) actually wants to pick crops... This is complete bullshit and needs to quit being touted. Americans are not afraid of hard, back-breaking labor. I grew up in the Midwest surrounded by corn and soy beans (and not too many illegal or legal immigrants). Tons of my white, middle class friends went out into the field to pollinate corn in the summers or went down to strawberry fields to pick when they came in season. What a sheltered life you must lead if you've never met an American that does manual labor or works in a field...
Animats 10y ago
95% of tomatoes in California are machine-picked. Farms that use toughened tomatoes can use very high powered machinery.[1] There are gentler machines for more fragile varieties [2]. Now in test, picking robots for more fragile fruit.[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3EpFTyN26E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3EpFTyN26E [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YeGOv87JE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YeGOv87JE4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS0coCmXiYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS0coCmXiYU
- openasocket 10y ago
  Seems to make sense with something like tomatoes, where you can destroy the plant during harvest like that. But looking at the apple one, I'm not sure if it's as fast as a human being, and if it would be cheaper than human labor.
  - jobu 10y ago
    Most tree-grown fruits fall off the tree easily when ripe, so something like this cherry harvester seems like it would be a lot more efficient - https://youtu.be/YKu6xwJptkc?t=2m4s https://youtu.be/YKu6xwJptkc?t=2m4s
    - shostack 10y ago
      Are most tree-grown fruits actually harvested when ripe? I seem to recall reading something a while back about how most fruit is picked before it is ripe, and picking is timed such that it ripens by the time it gets transported to the warehouse, grocery store, purchased, etc.
      - rjsw 10y ago
        The tree-grown fruit that is sold in the UK has been harvested before it is ripe, it is still too hard to eat when you throw it away.
  - Animats 10y ago
    The apple picker is a prototype, from Abundant Robotics, an SRI spinoff. It suffers from being a Silicon Valley R&D effort - the computer technology is cool, and the mechanical parts are too flimsy. Somebody needs to get those guys some hardass mechanical designers from John Deere or Caterpillar or Ponsse who know how to make machinery work reliably in the field. I think they're still at the angel investor stage. They'll need another funding round soon, and if they're lucky, their funder will know who to put in there to get the thing out of R&D and into production.
surfmike 10y ago
What happened in Alabama since? Would love to read a followup.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  Most of HB56 was eventually struck down in court or settled out of existence, and cops stopped trying to enforce whatever is left of it. It was a huge embarrassment for the entire state, and likely contracted the state economy by as much as 6% the year after it passed, most severely in agriculture, construction, and hospitality. In subsequent years, investment stayed away, because few outside the state wanted the blatantly racist and xenophobic policy to rub off on their PR. But Alabama politics did not learn from the experience; people in the state still overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 elections. Supporters of the measure still believe it would have worked if it was just allowed to operate as intended, rather than being blocked by the courts at every turn. To be fair, it did cause many of the prohibited aliens to leave the state, but it also caused their permitted and naturalized friends and family to leave with them, and it turns out all those people are actually a significant net benefit to the economy. Fewer crops have rotted, because farmers don't plant what they can't harvest. In short, the state is still ruled by bad hombres and nasty women that shamelessly pander to an ill-informed populace. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/what-alabamas-failed-anti-immigration-law-can-teach-us-about-donald-trump https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/what-alabamas-failed-anti...
tubehouse 10y ago
California voters roundly approved a similar law in 1994. It even passed in Los Angeles County. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_187 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_187
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
alistproducer2 10y ago
I remember this. "Be careful what you wish for" is going to be a running theme for the next couple of years. I suspect a lot of folks are going to be wishing things had just been left alone.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  No. I would rather automation replace the abuse of illegal immigrant labor.
  - myowncrapulence 10y ago
    If it was more cost effective, that would happen already. Produce prices will likely rise if this becomes an issue.
    - BrandonMarc 10y ago
      ... rise to a level that reflects a fair and honest competitive market, as opposed to one where the labor pool has two populations following two sets of rules. Sounds like progress to me.
      - myowncrapulence 10y ago
        Yep and people will buy the cheaper produce from South American markets boosting the economy down there. Similar to how people buy Chinese manufactured products in Wal-Mart then complain about manufacturing being overseas.
        toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Tariffs.
        BrandonMarc 10y ago
        Sounds good to me. * consumers would be paying a fair price with rational decision-making * there would be "made in the usa" marketing for local / national produce * voters would look much more carefully at minimum wage increases
rtnyftxx 10y ago
they should call trump and as for the national guard
- nickff 10y ago
  IANAL, but I believe that the state is the only one with the authority to deploy a national guard within its borders; the president can only deploy the army domestically if the insurrection act is invoked.
swang 10y ago
See also the documentary 9500 Liberty. I believe you can find it free online legally.[0] TL;DR: Prince Cook County in Virginia instituted a similar check required by police officers to ask for legality if there was "probably cause." The Police Chief was against it but when it was enacted, enforced the law. This caused a bunch of the immigrant families living there to leave, thus nearly crushing the entire county's economy. You get hot takes like "9/11 was caused by illegals" and people saying they wanted to get rid of those who are, "Speaking Spanish, playing Latin music, owning a chicken, growing corn, not having health insurance" And also a whole bunch of people essentially saying, "i'm not racist, but..." [0] https://vimeo.com/128386646 https://vimeo.com/128386646
- candiodari 10y ago
  You also get a lot of people saying that the lax immigration is specifically designed so that farmers (and restaurants, and even private persons) could exploit labor instead of paying livable wages. Since lax immigration's net result is a serious deterioration in labor conditions, it shouldn't exist. And frankly, let's just not pretend this i meant to increase the chances those people have in life, therefore it should not be done. These people would generally be referred to as "leftists". And please just don't make the argument that people should "allow" themselves to be exploited if they want to. It should simply not be possible to exploit labor. That means no illegals and strict enforcement of immigration laws, especially against employers. Immigration laws protect people, among other things, against competing in a global labor market. Why ? Because global labor conditions are disgustingly bad. Global median wage is $18000 PPP dollars (yearly). There are 2 terms that require definition. Firstly median means 50% make less than that and you should generally expect to make slightly less than that if you're not exceptional. Second is PPP dollars. The "real" global wage in real dollars is about $3000, but because bread is generally cheaper outside of developed economies. To put it inaccurately but easily, you can buy $3000 worth of iPads with PPP dollars, but $18000 worth of bread. If you are unwilling to work for a yearly wage of somewhere between $3k and $18k, and you think the law needs to prevent such a situation from arising, then part of that law needs to be that illegal immigrants can't work in the US. Otherwise such a law is crippled/sabotaged. I get that the "gig economy" cannot exist under those conditions. And that you will have to walk 200m if you want pizza in the weekend, or pay 40$ or so for that pizza. That's what it takes for everyone to be able to live, and the gig economy, frankly, deserves to be laid waste.

37 points by snow_mac 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

So crops rot. The price goes up. Now they can make more money selling crops. So they can pay people more. What I am missing here?

cm2187 10y ago
Inflation. More expensive cost of living for your customers. Not a problem when your Apple gadget budget is a multiple of your food budget. But not everyone has this luxury. Protectionism in international trade will have similar impact. Tax chinese imports and suddenly walmart will hike their prices.
- Consultant32452 10y ago
  One thing that's worth noting is that we've had virtually no inflation for a very long time. The wealth class prefers it this way, but the worker struggling to pay off debts wouldn't mind a little inflation every now and then.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    What kinds of debts are you thinking of? I don't know any workers with long-term debts which aren't inflation adjusted (even if indirectly). The whole idea of inflation reducing the value of debts seems silly. "We'll trick those bankers with this well known, mostly predictable, small decrease in the value of money! They'll never see it coming!"
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      Mortgages. Now, you could argue that the expectation of future inflation is built into the mortgage interest rate at the time you obtain the mortgage. And you'd be correct. But once you have the mortgage, then inflation helps you. Or rather, it helps you when your wages rise in response to inflation.
      - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
        Unless you have a variable-rate mortgage, of course.
        Spellman 10y ago
        Which is why people tout going fixed rate
    - Consultant32452 10y ago
      Ignore Tucker Carlson, economist Mark Blyth got famous recently for being virtually the only economist who predicted Trump's win. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-hV_XS8dH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-hV_XS8dH4
      - icebraining 10y ago
        Why point to Mark Blyth and not to Arthur Laffer?
    - Tsagadai 10y ago
      If I have a debt at an interest rate of 4% and inflation is 5% my debt is worth less every year relative to the value of other things. If I have a debt at an interest rate of 5% and inflation is 2.5% the value of the debt is increasing. This effect is increased if only interest is being paid and the asset the debt is for does not increase in value (like a car). Add to this that wages are relatively stagnant for most people outside of tech since the 80s in some countries and you have a problem. It can get even worse where wages are kept stagnant by government intervention and inflation goes up faster than 5%.
  - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
    Not necessarily - there can be inflation without worker's pay increases, and inflation leads to more costly credit - so someone in that situation is twice as worse-off as before.
    - Consultant32452 10y ago
      Try telling that to the working public who basically hasn't gotten a raise in 30 years in spite of sky-rocketing productivity.
ap3 10y ago
Why wouldn't more farmers just let their crops rot to make more money?
- jksmith 10y ago
  Because you have nothing to sell even if demand goes up. Does you no good.
- mcguire 10y ago
  Because unless last year was a good year, making no money this year means you will be out of business next year.
groby_b 10y ago
So many things. In a first approximation: You can't sell crops that did rot. And the next harvest is next year. Then there's of course the fact that almost nobody (with citizenship) actually wants to pick crops, no matter what you pay them, because it's back-breaking labor. Yes, there'd be a price at which they would, but that's not a price the public would pay for your crops. Of course, if you don't give a shit about people and treat the world solely as an economics textbook, sure, this is perfectly normal and the market is working.
- Consultant32452 10y ago
  >but that's not a price the public would pay for your crops. Maybe the public needs to get used to paying premium prices for premium work instead of outsourcing slavery to other countries or importing cheap slave-wage laborers illegally.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Or some will just automate, while others go out of business, and then you're left with still more expensive crops than before without any workers getting paid to pick them. But I'm sure those "slaves" will thank you.
    - Consultant32452 10y ago
      Wall Street's interests are diametrically opposed to workers. Wall Street wants to turn good jobs into shitty jobs and ship them to more desperate poor people in poorer countries, whereas workers want the exact opposite. We've had 30 years of free trade and basically no border. A nudge in the other direction isn't going to be the end of the world. A blip on the jobs radar which comes along with stronger worker rights is gonna be okay.
- dikdik 10y ago
  >Then there's of course the fact that almost nobody (with citizenship) actually wants to pick crops... This is complete bullshit and needs to quit being touted. Americans are not afraid of hard, back-breaking labor. I grew up in the Midwest surrounded by corn and soy beans (and not too many illegal or legal immigrants). Tons of my white, middle class friends went out into the field to pollinate corn in the summers or went down to strawberry fields to pick when they came in season. What a sheltered life you must lead if you've never met an American that does manual labor or works in a field...

Animats 10y ago

95% of tomatoes in California are machine-picked. Farms that use toughened tomatoes can use very high powered machinery.[1] There are gentler machines for more fragile varieties [2]. Now in test, picking robots for more fragile fruit.[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3EpFTyN26E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3EpFTyN26E [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YeGOv87JE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YeGOv87JE4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS0coCmXiYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS0coCmXiYU

openasocket 10y ago
Seems to make sense with something like tomatoes, where you can destroy the plant during harvest like that. But looking at the apple one, I'm not sure if it's as fast as a human being, and if it would be cheaper than human labor.
- jobu 10y ago
  Most tree-grown fruits fall off the tree easily when ripe, so something like this cherry harvester seems like it would be a lot more efficient - https://youtu.be/YKu6xwJptkc?t=2m4s https://youtu.be/YKu6xwJptkc?t=2m4s
  - shostack 10y ago
    Are most tree-grown fruits actually harvested when ripe? I seem to recall reading something a while back about how most fruit is picked before it is ripe, and picking is timed such that it ripens by the time it gets transported to the warehouse, grocery store, purchased, etc.
    - rjsw 10y ago
      The tree-grown fruit that is sold in the UK has been harvested before it is ripe, it is still too hard to eat when you throw it away.
- Animats 10y ago
  The apple picker is a prototype, from Abundant Robotics, an SRI spinoff. It suffers from being a Silicon Valley R&D effort - the computer technology is cool, and the mechanical parts are too flimsy. Somebody needs to get those guys some hardass mechanical designers from John Deere or Caterpillar or Ponsse who know how to make machinery work reliably in the field. I think they're still at the angel investor stage. They'll need another funding round soon, and if they're lucky, their funder will know who to put in there to get the thing out of R&D and into production.

surfmike 10y ago

What happened in Alabama since? Would love to read a followup.

logfromblammo 10y ago
Most of HB56 was eventually struck down in court or settled out of existence, and cops stopped trying to enforce whatever is left of it. It was a huge embarrassment for the entire state, and likely contracted the state economy by as much as 6% the year after it passed, most severely in agriculture, construction, and hospitality. In subsequent years, investment stayed away, because few outside the state wanted the blatantly racist and xenophobic policy to rub off on their PR. But Alabama politics did not learn from the experience; people in the state still overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 elections. Supporters of the measure still believe it would have worked if it was just allowed to operate as intended, rather than being blocked by the courts at every turn. To be fair, it did cause many of the prohibited aliens to leave the state, but it also caused their permitted and naturalized friends and family to leave with them, and it turns out all those people are actually a significant net benefit to the economy. Fewer crops have rotted, because farmers don't plant what they can't harvest. In short, the state is still ruled by bad hombres and nasty women that shamelessly pander to an ill-informed populace. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/what-alabamas-failed-anti-immigration-law-can-teach-us-about-donald-trump https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/what-alabamas-failed-anti...

tubehouse 10y ago

California voters roundly approved a similar law in 1994. It even passed in Los Angeles County. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_187 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_187

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

alistproducer2 10y ago

I remember this. "Be careful what you wish for" is going to be a running theme for the next couple of years. I suspect a lot of folks are going to be wishing things had just been left alone.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
No. I would rather automation replace the abuse of illegal immigrant labor.
- myowncrapulence 10y ago
  If it was more cost effective, that would happen already. Produce prices will likely rise if this becomes an issue.
  - BrandonMarc 10y ago
    ... rise to a level that reflects a fair and honest competitive market, as opposed to one where the labor pool has two populations following two sets of rules. Sounds like progress to me.
    - myowncrapulence 10y ago
      Yep and people will buy the cheaper produce from South American markets boosting the economy down there. Similar to how people buy Chinese manufactured products in Wal-Mart then complain about manufacturing being overseas.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Tariffs.
      - BrandonMarc 10y ago
        Sounds good to me. * consumers would be paying a fair price with rational decision-making * there would be "made in the usa" marketing for local / national produce * voters would look much more carefully at minimum wage increases

rtnyftxx 10y ago

they should call trump and as for the national guard

nickff 10y ago
IANAL, but I believe that the state is the only one with the authority to deploy a national guard within its borders; the president can only deploy the army domestically if the insurrection act is invoked.

swang 10y ago

See also the documentary 9500 Liberty. I believe you can find it free online legally.[0] TL;DR: Prince Cook County in Virginia instituted a similar check required by police officers to ask for legality if there was "probably cause." The Police Chief was against it but when it was enacted, enforced the law. This caused a bunch of the immigrant families living there to leave, thus nearly crushing the entire county's economy. You get hot takes like "9/11 was caused by illegals" and people saying they wanted to get rid of those who are, "Speaking Spanish, playing Latin music, owning a chicken, growing corn, not having health insurance" And also a whole bunch of people essentially saying, "i'm not racist, but..." [0] https://vimeo.com/128386646 https://vimeo.com/128386646

candiodari 10y ago
You also get a lot of people saying that the lax immigration is specifically designed so that farmers (and restaurants, and even private persons) could exploit labor instead of paying livable wages. Since lax immigration's net result is a serious deterioration in labor conditions, it shouldn't exist. And frankly, let's just not pretend this i meant to increase the chances those people have in life, therefore it should not be done. These people would generally be referred to as "leftists". And please just don't make the argument that people should "allow" themselves to be exploited if they want to. It should simply not be possible to exploit labor. That means no illegals and strict enforcement of immigration laws, especially against employers. Immigration laws protect people, among other things, against competing in a global labor market. Why ? Because global labor conditions are disgustingly bad. Global median wage is $18000 PPP dollars (yearly). There are 2 terms that require definition. Firstly median means 50% make less than that and you should generally expect to make slightly less than that if you're not exceptional. Second is PPP dollars. The "real" global wage in real dollars is about $3000, but because bread is generally cheaper outside of developed economies. To put it inaccurately but easily, you can buy $3000 worth of iPads with PPP dollars, but $18000 worth of bread. If you are unwilling to work for a yearly wage of somewhere between $3k and $18k, and you think the law needs to prevent such a situation from arising, then part of that law needs to be that illegal immigrants can't work in the US. Otherwise such a law is crippled/sabotaged. I get that the "gig economy" cannot exist under those conditions. And that you will have to walk 200m if you want pizza in the weekend, or pay 40$ or so for that pizza. That's what it takes for everyone to be able to live, and the gig economy, frankly, deserves to be laid waste.