5 ms·

Here in america farmers hire illegals to harvest crops, claiming that no american would do the work. This has always struck me as a really terrible excuse. I'

Here in america farmers hire illegals to harvest crops, claiming that no american would do the work. This has always struck me as a really terrible excuse. I'm sorry, you can't simply break the law because you'd have to pay an american $20 / hr to do the work. Sure, it means that your tomatoes are more expensive, but also, now there's a hell of an incentive to apply automation to the problem yes? If you don't like the law, maybe pressure your representatives to reform immigration instead of just hoping everyone turns a blind eye to your exploitation.

FireBeyond 6y ago
A couple of years ago, a serial offender food producer was raided, multiple times. 600+ undocumented workers were found, and all spoke of management knowing their status. The workers were detained, deported, and so on. After several raids, not so much as a misdemeanor was levied against a single person, nor a fine to the company in general.
- aaron-santos 6y ago
  Kind of makes me think, what's the point when these laws aren't actually enforced?
  - abxytg 6y ago
    The point is to punish and cause pain to the immigrants. Regardless of the original justification of a system, the point of a system is what it does or will do. That is what this system does and will do unless changed.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law." Getúlio Vargas had it all worked out.
- Animats 6y ago
  See Postville Raid [1] That was in 2008. The company owners were some prominent Jews, and the political fallout was so severe that immigration raids pretty much stopped after that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postville_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postville_raid
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    I don't know anything about it, but from the Des Moines Register, it seems like a lot of people felt there was a miscarriage of justice: "There was false testimony and willful manipulation, and that makes this a shocking case of prosecutorial misconduct." "An unprecedented letter, recently sent to Kevin Techau, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, signed by 107 former high level Department of Justice officials, FBI directors, federal judges and prestigious law professors attests to the extraordinary prosecutorial misconduct which exacted the most possible punitive sentence for Rubashkin" https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/iowa-view/2016/05/18/prosecutors-judges-decry-rubashkin-witch-hunt/84545848/ https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/i... Trump commuted Sholom's sentence in 2017, apparently. I'd suggest a different phrase than "prominent Jews"; the family are "ultra-Orthodox Jews of the Lubavitcher hasidic movement" not representatives of some sort of Jewish privilege in general.
greeneggs 6y ago
Of course it isn't that simple. If your farm's tomatoes are more expensive than your neighbors' tomatoes, then nobody will buy them. You'll quickly go bankrupt. It is also difficult because of the two tiers of labor. A farmer will try increasing wages by $1/hour, and still struggle to find enough workers. Wages would probably have to be doubled before new workers—Americans—would start to enter the industry.
- jandrese 6y ago
  This is the reason tariffs exist. You levy a fee that makes the imported food cost as much as food picked using domestic labor.
  - mixedCase 6y ago
    Or, you know, you let unprofitable endeavors be substituted by profitable ones, and you just import food from different places where it is profitable. Just make sure not to wage war with them all. That's always an alternative to subsidies and tariffs, but it's not as politically useful.
    - jandrese 6y ago
      This is how the US gave up its ability to manufacture so many goods.
      - yellowapple 6y ago
        It's also in general how we end up with monopolies. Well-funded companies operating at a loss until they're the only noteworthy players ain't exactly unheard of.
      - mixedCase 6y ago
        "gave up" sounds like an unnecessarily ominous take on "delegate". But what's your exact point? Do you believe this is an irremediable situation or that know-how has been lost to time in the age of information? I'm assuming you're implying a conversation about China and their manufacturing capabilities. But worst case scenario short of nuclear war, assuming US-China burns bridges and somehow for some reason now US is fully unable to import Chinese manufactured goods; how does this eliminate the US and all other countries from investing in an area that has now become more profitable? You could argue that prices would increase, but then again you aren't owed cheap manufacturing, and subsidies and tariffs are paid by either the taxpayer or the consumer (which tends to have a knock-off effect on the rest of economy, anyway). There was never a free lunch.
lisper 6y ago
> reform immigration That's easier said than done. The problem is that in order to reform immigration you have to do one of two things: 1. Start treating people fairly, with the result being higher food prices, which will make some of your constituents very unhhappy 2. Codify the current class structure into law so that you can continue to exploit cheap labor legally. The optics on that are really bad. Exploiting people off the books is the path of least resistance for everyone, including the workers (manifestly so, or they wouldn't risk life and limb to be here).
colinmhayes 6y ago
If farmers paid enough to get Americans to do seasonal farm labor their produce would cost twice as much as central/south American produce and they would immediately go out of business as everyone buys cheap imported fruit.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  A labor-protectionist strategy has to be paired with a goods-protectionist strategy (tariffs or bans on imports).
- freen 6y ago
  Sounds like they don’t have a business, and should shut down.
- rjmunro 6y ago
  You can fix this with import duties. If the country you are importing from doesn't have good labor laws, you charge them 100% extra.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    People get really pissed off when food gets more expensive. Politicians realize that and will therefore never pass legislation that would cause such drastic price increases on food.
    - wing-_-nuts 6y ago
      If they enforced the laws already on the books, they'd have to pass new laws to fix things. I see that as a net positive. If you selectively enforce against illegal immigrants, well, that's very much a 'rules for thee, not for me' situation isn't it?
  - pg_bot 6y ago
    Now everyone is poorer.
    - 6y ago
reaperducer 6y ago
Here in america farmers hire illegals to harvest crops, claiming that no american would do the work This is a political talking point that has been repeated so often that people believe it is true. During the recession of 2008, there were stores on local TV news in many places showing unemployed Americans waiting in long lines for the opportunity do do those jobs that the politicians kept saying no American wanted to do for those wages. Meatpacking plants, especially, had more than enough Americans to choose from who were willing to work for low wages. Because these things happened in "flyover" states, they were only very rarely shown on television on the coasts, and so the meme stuck. A similar oft-repeated lie is that American farmers are all a bunch of Republican hillbillies who hate brown immigrants. Around 2010, I attended a conference in Seattle for farmers in the Pacific Northwest. The main topic of discussion was how to increase legal immigration from Mexico so that they could have more farmworkers to pick the cherries and apples and mint and whatnot. These people were talking about goals of making people from Mexico and Latin America U.S. citizens in staggering numbers. The more you actually go places and do things and meet people and talk to them, the more you realize that the words coming out of the political organizations on the coasts are mostly for their own benefit, and do not reflect reality.
- jbroson 6y ago
  My somewhat educated guess is that these farmers in the PNW don't share the same politics as farmers in the rural south or midwest. That and Republicans have grown way more hostile to immigration since 2010, so it's an interesting anecdote but not sure how well it translates across the US, where polling shows farmers are overwhelmingly Republican who tend also tend to hate immigration legal or not.
  - enriquec 6y ago
    "where polling shows farmers are overwhelmingly Republican who tend also tend to hate immigration legal or not." source?
    - jbroson 6y ago
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/03/why-your-flight-attendant-is-probably-a-democrat/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/03/why-y...
Animats 6y ago
About half of US hired farmworkers are illegal immigrants, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.[1] It was only 12% in 1991, but passed 50% by 2000. [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor

FireBeyond 6y ago

A couple of years ago, a serial offender food producer was raided, multiple times. 600+ undocumented workers were found, and all spoke of management knowing their status. The workers were detained, deported, and so on. After several raids, not so much as a misdemeanor was levied against a single person, nor a fine to the company in general.

aaron-santos 6y ago
Kind of makes me think, what's the point when these laws aren't actually enforced?
- abxytg 6y ago
  The point is to punish and cause pain to the immigrants. Regardless of the original justification of a system, the point of a system is what it does or will do. That is what this system does and will do unless changed.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law." Getúlio Vargas had it all worked out.
Animats 6y ago
See Postville Raid [1] That was in 2008. The company owners were some prominent Jews, and the political fallout was so severe that immigration raids pretty much stopped after that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postville_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postville_raid
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I don't know anything about it, but from the Des Moines Register, it seems like a lot of people felt there was a miscarriage of justice: "There was false testimony and willful manipulation, and that makes this a shocking case of prosecutorial misconduct." "An unprecedented letter, recently sent to Kevin Techau, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, signed by 107 former high level Department of Justice officials, FBI directors, federal judges and prestigious law professors attests to the extraordinary prosecutorial misconduct which exacted the most possible punitive sentence for Rubashkin" https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/iowa-view/2016/05/18/prosecutors-judges-decry-rubashkin-witch-hunt/84545848/ https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/i... Trump commuted Sholom's sentence in 2017, apparently. I'd suggest a different phrase than "prominent Jews"; the family are "ultra-Orthodox Jews of the Lubavitcher hasidic movement" not representatives of some sort of Jewish privilege in general.

greeneggs 6y ago

Of course it isn't that simple. If your farm's tomatoes are more expensive than your neighbors' tomatoes, then nobody will buy them. You'll quickly go bankrupt. It is also difficult because of the two tiers of labor. A farmer will try increasing wages by $1/hour, and still struggle to find enough workers. Wages would probably have to be doubled before new workers—Americans—would start to enter the industry.

jandrese 6y ago
This is the reason tariffs exist. You levy a fee that makes the imported food cost as much as food picked using domestic labor.
- mixedCase 6y ago
  Or, you know, you let unprofitable endeavors be substituted by profitable ones, and you just import food from different places where it is profitable. Just make sure not to wage war with them all. That's always an alternative to subsidies and tariffs, but it's not as politically useful.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    This is how the US gave up its ability to manufacture so many goods.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      It's also in general how we end up with monopolies. Well-funded companies operating at a loss until they're the only noteworthy players ain't exactly unheard of.
    - mixedCase 6y ago
      "gave up" sounds like an unnecessarily ominous take on "delegate". But what's your exact point? Do you believe this is an irremediable situation or that know-how has been lost to time in the age of information? I'm assuming you're implying a conversation about China and their manufacturing capabilities. But worst case scenario short of nuclear war, assuming US-China burns bridges and somehow for some reason now US is fully unable to import Chinese manufactured goods; how does this eliminate the US and all other countries from investing in an area that has now become more profitable? You could argue that prices would increase, but then again you aren't owed cheap manufacturing, and subsidies and tariffs are paid by either the taxpayer or the consumer (which tends to have a knock-off effect on the rest of economy, anyway). There was never a free lunch.

lisper 6y ago

> reform immigration That's easier said than done. The problem is that in order to reform immigration you have to do one of two things: 1. Start treating people fairly, with the result being higher food prices, which will make some of your constituents very unhhappy 2. Codify the current class structure into law so that you can continue to exploit cheap labor legally. The optics on that are really bad. Exploiting people off the books is the path of least resistance for everyone, including the workers (manifestly so, or they wouldn't risk life and limb to be here).

colinmhayes 6y ago

If farmers paid enough to get Americans to do seasonal farm labor their produce would cost twice as much as central/south American produce and they would immediately go out of business as everyone buys cheap imported fruit.

nitrogen 6y ago
A labor-protectionist strategy has to be paired with a goods-protectionist strategy (tariffs or bans on imports).
freen 6y ago
Sounds like they don’t have a business, and should shut down.
rjmunro 6y ago
You can fix this with import duties. If the country you are importing from doesn't have good labor laws, you charge them 100% extra.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  People get really pissed off when food gets more expensive. Politicians realize that and will therefore never pass legislation that would cause such drastic price increases on food.
  - wing-_-nuts 6y ago
    If they enforced the laws already on the books, they'd have to pass new laws to fix things. I see that as a net positive. If you selectively enforce against illegal immigrants, well, that's very much a 'rules for thee, not for me' situation isn't it?
- pg_bot 6y ago
  Now everyone is poorer.
  - 6y ago

reaperducer 6y ago

Here in america farmers hire illegals to harvest crops, claiming that no american would do the work This is a political talking point that has been repeated so often that people believe it is true. During the recession of 2008, there were stores on local TV news in many places showing unemployed Americans waiting in long lines for the opportunity do do those jobs that the politicians kept saying no American wanted to do for those wages. Meatpacking plants, especially, had more than enough Americans to choose from who were willing to work for low wages. Because these things happened in "flyover" states, they were only very rarely shown on television on the coasts, and so the meme stuck. A similar oft-repeated lie is that American farmers are all a bunch of Republican hillbillies who hate brown immigrants. Around 2010, I attended a conference in Seattle for farmers in the Pacific Northwest. The main topic of discussion was how to increase legal immigration from Mexico so that they could have more farmworkers to pick the cherries and apples and mint and whatnot. These people were talking about goals of making people from Mexico and Latin America U.S. citizens in staggering numbers. The more you actually go places and do things and meet people and talk to them, the more you realize that the words coming out of the political organizations on the coasts are mostly for their own benefit, and do not reflect reality.

jbroson 6y ago
My somewhat educated guess is that these farmers in the PNW don't share the same politics as farmers in the rural south or midwest. That and Republicans have grown way more hostile to immigration since 2010, so it's an interesting anecdote but not sure how well it translates across the US, where polling shows farmers are overwhelmingly Republican who tend also tend to hate immigration legal or not.
- enriquec 6y ago
  "where polling shows farmers are overwhelmingly Republican who tend also tend to hate immigration legal or not." source?
  - jbroson 6y ago
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/03/why-your-flight-attendant-is-probably-a-democrat/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/03/why-y...

Animats 6y ago

About half of US hired farmworkers are illegal immigrants, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.[1] It was only 12% in 1991, but passed 50% by 2000. [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor