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Be careful what you wish for!
I have said all along that if we were able to drive all the illegal immigrants of of the US we would all starve to death. In May Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed an Arizona like illegal immigrant law which sent illegals fleeing the state. Well guess what? It’s looks like I was right.
The resulting manpower shortage has forced state farmers to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.
Barely a month ago, you might recall, Gov. Nathan Deal welcomed the TV cameras into his office as he proudly signed HB 87 into law. Two weeks later, with farmers howling, a scrambling Deal was forced to order a hasty investigation into the impact of the law he had just signed, as if all this had come as quite a surprise to him.
The results of that investigation have now been released. According to survey of 230 Georgia farmers conducted by Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, farmers expect to need more than 11,000 workers at some point over the rest of the season, a number that probably underestimates the real need, since not every farmer in the state responded to the survey.
“The agriculture industry is the number one economic engine in Georgia and it is my sincere hope to find viable and law-abiding solutions to the current problem our farmers face,” Deal said in announcing the findings. In the meantime, Deal proposes that farmers try to hire the 2,000 unemployed criminal probationers estimated to live in southwest Georgia.
Of course the lawmakers were warned this would happen but ideology and bigotry trump truth and consequences any day of the week.
12 Responses to “Be careful what you wish for!”
People should be very worried about politicians who are arguing that Americans are so soft, so lazy, so incapable that we must import all of the tax payers so that the parasite class can continue to be parasites.
I wonder if they have called around construction companies in Atlanta to find out if they cannot find Americans who can use a hammer or lay bricks. I wonder if the politicians have called around to all of the lawn care companies to find out if there are no Americans capable of mowing lawns or operating a leaf blower.
Why are Democrats and Progressives so excited about replacing middle class white Americans with poor third world immigrants. Is maintaining political power that important?
Ron, what you’re saying is no argument whatsoever for amnesty.
Interestingly (didn’t you hear or read about it?), a solution to the lack-of-agricultural-workers* problem in Georgia is to use, not prisoners, but people on probation. It’s still slave labor to me.
http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/263400/28/Georgia-program-encourages-probationers-to-pick-crops\\\
I wonder if the probationers doing this would be at least paid minimum wage. (Living wage? No way. Any big money would be shared between the courts and local-state government, maybe also larger farm owners. [grin])
* A logical, albeit extremist, liberal solution to unemployment is: Ban farm machinery, or at least large, automated “combines.” (Tractors are touching, and could still be used, though some might prefer to use livestock to avoid Evil Machinery and Technology completely. That includes using fertilizers and insecticides, of course. All organic, all natural farms!) Make most or all farm work manual (or rather, unmechanized). (Using antitrust devices to break up corporate farms and give the pieces to “homesteaders” would be an additional clever tactic.)
The idea that we would starve is just silly. I was going to use a bigger fancier word but then I realized that was giving the idea to much credit buy even treating it as that serious of a point. Of course US workers would pick crops. The problem is that it’s seasonal and only so so on the pay side. If the wages increased you would see a great increase in US workers. Now of course someone will pull out the $10 head of lettuce idiocy. Right now farm workers in California get over $10hr average. It’s different for different crops but lets use $10. That comes out to pennies per head of lettuce. Double or triple the wage and see people take the job. Sure it will add a bit to the cost of food. So? Also did this law even effect anything at all? In one month did 11,000 undocumented workers flee the State? Did all the workers that normally came to pick crops suddenly go on vacation?
There are solutions between [radical left] amnesty/citizenship and [radical right] run-em-out-of-the-state AZ copycat laws. There is a reason that one of the principle opponents of these draconian measures is the U. S. Chamber of Commerce…the Chamber was the lead plaintiff in the recent Supreme Court case seeking to overturn AZ’s business license law related to illegals. The Chamber lost the case, of course.
Closing the borders is fine, to the extent it can be accomplished, but that still leaves 12 million or so already here. We can’t deport 12 million; we don’t have the resources to do it. The sooner folks come to grips with the realities, the sooner we can find real, non-radical [left or right], practical solutions.
George W. Bush proposed a foreign worker status. That was a good start to a serious dialogue. It’s a shame our leaders are all off in their ideological purity zones. This is a problem that needs to be addressed at a pragmatic level.
Well let’s see who ends up having more influence in the long run, the xenophobes or the agricultural industry. You can guess where my bet will be placed.
JSpencer,
There are a lot more middle class whites who live in the suburbs and send their children to public schools that produce farmers in Georgia. Why should the suburban whites pay higher taxes, higher insurance premiums, and private tutors so that the produce farmers do not have to pay a market wage?
“[radical left] amnesty/citizenship”
When did the way that almost all of our ancestors came over here become the “radical left” option?
Logan,
If there is substantiation for your claim that “almost all of our ancestors came over here” by means of violating U. S. immigration law and were thereafter given amnesty and citizenship, kindly provide a link to your source. I will be happy to read it.
If, on the other hand, you are simply making an unsubstantiated claim to provoke a fight, I’m not interested.
Of course that is a catch-22 because many of our ancestors did not live in a time of such byzantine and transparently racial immigration laws as we have now. They also did not exist in a time where transportation made immigration more difficult to control. But I will note that “amnesty” was not “radical left” when President Reagan signed on to it in 1986. It is only since immigration has become a cause celebre for the racist elements on the right in a curious-bedfellows alliance with protectionist elements among the labor-union left that it has become to “extreme” to even tolerate discussion about.
I also note once again with disappointment your proclivity for predicating your reactions based on your perceptions of other people’s motives. When matched with a tendency to assume that nearly everyone who disagrees with you has bad motives, it forecloses reasonable debate from the very outset. The over-the-top, foaming-at-the-mouth intolerance of many here (almost entirely from the ideological left) to even the slightest deviations from “required thought” continues to be a major failing of this forum.
Thank you,Logan, for admitting that your prior claim is unsubstantiated.
ROTFLMAO…
You really should read some of the crap you spew on a regular basis…
tidbits
“the Chamber was the lead plaintiff in the recent Supreme Court case seeking to overturn AZ’s business license law related to illegals. ”
Despite the political posturing, here is where the reform of low pay, illegal worker reform can only take place.
As I have proposed before, make hiring undocumented workers a corporate “death penalty,” corps who hire lose their state incorporation, and the 12 million who currently fly under the radar suddenly have no jobs to “steal.” Of course, The Chamber of Commerce is scared to death that a law such as this would make the business community responsible for their actions within society.
The call for $10 an hour wages for picking seasonal vegetables is ironic on its face. The current enforcement is designed to squeeze the undocumented of a fair wage by design. The xenophobia, the racism, and the calls for “shipping them back from where they came from” all are spawned by those who like to increase profits at the expense of a working class who are made and kept invisible by economic design.