Posted on 07/27/2005 10:22:47 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan
Michigan farmers say U.S. crackdown threatens labor shortage
7/28/2005, 12:18 a.m. ET
The Associated Press
OLD MISSION, Mich. (AP) — Farmers in northwestern Michigan's fruit belt say that fears of a federal crackdown on illegal immigrants are leaving them desperately short of labor this harvest season.
Farmers, migrants and state labor department officials say federal authorities have stepped up raids on fruit farms and nearby communities. The federal government says it is not so.
Josh Wunsch of Wunsch Farms on the Old Mission Peninsula in Grand Traverse Bay, a prime cherry-growing area north of Traverse City, says he and his sellers have lost $60,000.
"Anybody with a good suntan can get pulled in," Wunsch told the Detroit Free Press for a story Thursday. "We are safe from cherry pickers. God bless us."
Wunsch said a worker on his neighbor's farm was seized in church recently but released the next day after agents found that he had permission to work in the United States.
Rumors of a crackdown began circulating last year among migrant workers. Wunsch said he began planning for the possible shortage last winter by trying to use a federal program designed to help recruit workers.
Critics say the program works poorly and costs a lot to use.
"It requires lawyer-like skill to get through the paperwork," said Jim Bardenhagen, Michigan State University extension director for Leelanau County.
"It seems like a paradox," said Kevin Benson, an agricultural specialist in the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth. "We have a porous border, but on the other hand, we are up in Michigan deporting people in the middle of a harvest."
Benson said that 35,000 to 40,000 migrant workers come to Michigan annually. He said most work in southwestern Michigan in blueberry fields and apple orchards, and farmers there say they have no labor shortage.
Several thousand normally come to the cherry and grape region in northwestern Michigan, where they work on about 200 fruit farms in Antrim, Benzie, Charlevoix, Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties.
Bardenhagen said at least 70 of the workers hired in the area lack work permits.
Matt Albence, deputy special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement for the region that includes northern Michigan, denied there have been any sweeps for illegal workers and said there is no reason for fear.
"We just don't have the resources to go driving around picking people up," he said.
He said fears likely are the result of some random pickups.
Unfounded or not, the fear is real, observers say.
"A lot of people don't like to go to the grocery store," said Priscilla Sanchez San Juan, 19, who is married to an immigrant from Mexico. "When they do go, the husband usually stays at home."
Poor babies might have to pay some decent wages or maybe automate like the Australians.
The former cherry pickers are probably too busy hanging drywall. Once they get a foot in the country why would they want to pick cherries?
Sort of reminds one of the several reasons the Civil War began:
The areas of the United States had different economies. In the North, the economy was based on factories and wages . Everyday people worked in the factories. The South had large plantations, which grew cotton. The plantation owners needed the slaves to pick the cotton. They didn’t receive wages, but they were provided food and shelter. In the Midwest, wheat was the number one cash crop. It was harvested by a machine, so they didn’t need as many workers or slaves. These different economies caused divisions in the United States.
There are millions of freeloaders sitting on their arses, all over the place, Detroit comes to mind, put them to work!
I hope they all go bankrupt.
Time to bring back the WPA and make it mandatory for all welfare recipients.
A dirty secret about our illegal immigration problem is that its not so much "big business" strong arming our government into looking the other way (can't remember seeing too many illegals on the Boeing assembly line), its the agricultural and restaurant industries.
Hey..most business's don't hire illegals.
You will just have to raise the wages to attract legal employees. Seems to me a lot of kids used to do that kind of stuff,because it was enough pay to really amount to something. From grade 8 to 12 I worked every summer at the same kind of manual labor jobs and always got paid more than minimum wage, plus overtime due to labor shortage.
Equivalent wage today would be about $10-12 per hour.
ADM and Tyson are also the recepients of a considerable amount of federal largesse. The fact of the matter is that both BigAg and the family farmer are united in bringing "mas mojados" to the US.
Tell them not to worry. Nobody's gonna take away their illegal workers.
Victor Davis Hanson has interesting insights on the issue as a family farmer.
"Hey..most business's don't hire illegals. "
With all due respect, most businesses where I live do hire illegals.
Cry me a river!
Pay better wages and you will find LEGAL employees. If you have to raise prices to do so, so be it.
We put a man on the friggin moon, we can invent machines to pick a friggin fruit!! OR
Hire some unemployed people and pay some decent wages
ping
Great idea, except the disabled.
"Time to bring back the WPA and make it mandatory for all welfare recipients."
NO!!!!...imagine the Union they would form!!!
Selling crack is so much easier than picking fruit.
Looks like we need a "War on Ags (farmers and Agricultural industries)" to match the war on drugs with the same kind of penalties. If a farmer or Ag industry is using illegal workers, shut them down and sieze the property. Then auction it off to the highest bidder and use the funds to reimburse the local communities that have had to bear the burden of costs, e.g schools for illegal's children and destruction of healthcare infrastructure because of indigent illegals, for the illegal immigrants. Some of the current illegal immigrant crap would cease post haste if the employers involved knew they would lose everything they had because of their actions.
Absolutely.
Oh the developers would love YOUR idea.
Is $89,000.00 all???
: )
And doing a multitude of other American jobs that supported American families in the past. In California you can hardly find a construction crew that speaks English. Ditto that for gardeners, warehouse workers, nannies, restaurant workers, tile setters, plumbers, etc. etc.
Good deal for them, bad deal for American workers.
See, here is a job that even a Mexican won't do. Boo hoo.
"In California you can "hardly" find a construction crew that speaks English. "
Correction my sweet......."cannot" find is the correct verbiage!
Love,
Tim
To hell with them, pay a decent wage for American workers buckos. I am sick of whining employers on the cheap destroying America just to make a buck.
"And our bosses in Washington don't have the cajones to tell us to do so anyway," he added.
Well unless Uncle Sam can crack down evenly across the board, or at least at random, it will be a game of chicken between the producers as to who will toe the line first and suffer losses from the rest who aren't following the roolz.
Ostensibly the tight rules are to cut down on illegals being able to get in that way. It has a Kafkaesque perversity to it. Rules that work most of the time, while leaving it mostly up to the Feds themselves to crack down on credential counterfeiters rather than mostly to the employers to play super sleuth, would have a better overall effect.
"many wetbacks" shame....
For a detailed study that lays out the facts see The High Cost of Cheap Labor
Like you, I was also one of them. But over the years the socialist mommy-knows-best-government ended the practice. In these litigous and PC times it would never work. The ACLU would no doubt find a reason to file a lawsuit.
But at the time it had the obvious benefits, both for farmer and child, as well as others:
Brought in some spending or savings money
Laid the foundation for a work ethic.
Accepting responsibility.
I current times it might encourage idle, overweight kids to be active, especially when Phy Ed has been all but dropped as a requirement in school. But there is no incentvie today when they are being raised to expect something for no effort.
My first job at the age of fourteen or so was packing fresh peas that others harvested from the field just outside the building door. I remember that the farmer who offered me the summer job through my schoolfriend (his daughter), made a very big deal out of me having to first obtain a social security card/number before he could/would put me to work.
I don't know what's wrong with the same policies today for hiring. 'Course, I applied for and got a SScard the right/legal way, but it sure should not be such a big deal for any potential employer to verify a number before he actually employs anyone.
I read that the illegal workers have problems there/this article, but I don't see anything mentioned about any penalties levied against the farmers/employers...they complain about a "worker" problem and yet seem oblivious to their own bad deeds in having hired - and apparently still seeking - illegal workers.
I also notice that the people quoted in the article complain about enforcement issues and yet make no attempts to apologize their own behaviors..."husbands can't go when grocery shopping" and such, but what about, hey, "we're sorry, we here illegally."
They have to hide and complain about the inconvenience, yeet make no offer of apology for being here illegally, having housing and jobs, groceries from local stores, churches, all that and yet in the country illegally.
The people who employ them along with the people themselves who continue to insist on normalacy and complain about it when it's interrupted and yet refuse to hone up for their own disrespect for immigration laws (among others almost certainly being violated) are so disappointing to my view to read about, daily.
They're in the country by illegal means. They stay in the country by illegal means. People employ them by illegal means. That means, they're committing criminal behavior.
How inconvenient, can't show a face in the local grocery store...so...~hey, blame the store!~
more and more produce is coming from other countries. even whole foods who blathers on about local farmers gets massive amounts of produce from south america and mexico
Exactly right! That's why this doesn't pass the smell test. Cherries in particular, are not picked, but rather the tree is shaken by a machine designed for the job. At least that technological achevement was touted at the last Traverse City Cherry Festival I attended. Hell, most years they bring in cherries from Washington state because of weather or they're not ripe yet.
The laborers set up the machines, drive the trucks, empty the trucks, etc.
"Sort of reminds one of the several reasons the Civil War began: "
Oh come on now, don't be a history revisionist. *Everyone* knows the civil war began over slavery.
/sarcasm.
Make employers pay the deportation costs if found to have knowlingly hired illegals.
Send your elected representatives a peso for their campaign contribution.
Start using chain gangs for cheap labor.
If an illegal wants to become legal, put him to work on the border building a wall first.
Any more ideas out there?
I want to know the particulars of his business model, and why it is he needs stoop labor in the new high tech era.
Agreed. Haven't seen and crackdown where I live- and I'm right in the middle of blueberry country.
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