Posted on 01/11/2007 1:44:37 PM PST by PissAndVinegar
Kyle Clark (Clifton Springs, N.Y.) - It's the immigration issue played out in reverse.
Upstate New York dairy farmers are heading to Mexico to better understand what drives their workers thousands of miles to find jobs in our neighborhood.
Willow Bend Farm in Clifton Springs started 50 years ago with just one employee and a few cows. As the cattle grew into the thousands, the need for help grew, and in the 1990s the Mueller family turned to immigrant workers from Mexico for farm hands.
Most migrants, who come and go each farm season, but permanent workers who stay year after year and develop deep bonds with their American co-workers.
John Davies is headed to Veracruz next week in a trip organized by Cornell Cooperative Extension to help dairy farmers relate to their workers. The farmers will spend a week in Mexico, learning about traditional farming, customs and life in their workers' home villages.
John Mueller went last year, he said, in order "to try and understand about their culture and understand why they are the people that they are, and why they come here to help us milk cows and farm the way we do."
One of the ironies is that Mueller's trip to Mexico is something his workers dream about. They'll be in New York for two, three years at a time before they're able to go home and see their families.
"To leave their families behind and let their kids grow up for two or three years and not ever see them. I can't believe that. I can't understand. And that's what they do," Mueller said.
Mueller returned from Mexico with a better appreciation for the sacrifices his workers make.
There are plenty of HS kids and others in Clifton Springs that could have helped on his farm....
"better understand what drives their workers thousands of miles to find jobs in our neighborhood."
Free food
free housing
free eduction
free medical
There, saved them a trip.
ping
What brings these people here is the INVASION known to them as RECONQUISTA. Taking back this country, (was the Southwest), now theyve become empowered thanks to lax enforcement by the feds they feel the U.S. is theirs for the taking...
Can they really be this dumb?
Please let the rest of us know which leftist sources you read. I myself like to keep track. I've always been amused by the argument that we should burden our own farmers because they might put someone in Mexico out of business.
NAFTA is criticized by some Mexicans for that. However, NAFTA has brought a lot of jobs to Mexico, too. A lot of maquiladoras (factories) have sprung up in northern Mexico to cater to American businesses. That is why northern Mexico is generally wealthy (rivaling poorer American states, in some cases), and most illegal aliens come from southern Mexico (with its abandoned small farms).
While too many Mexicans do seem to consider the formerly Mexican part of the United States as still being part of Mexico, most aliens come for work, pure and simple, not with the intent of returning California, Texas, and the other relevant states to Mexican control.
Did dhs12345 type that American farming should be made more difficult to help out the Mexican farmers? No, he didn't. An neither did his reference to his news source. All he reported was that NAFTA put small farmers (Mexican) out of business because they couldn't compete with large, American ones. It didn't state that this was wrong. And, indeed, it causes cheaper food for all involved. It also explains one of the reasons for why so many Mexicans are illegally coming over to the United States, along with corruption, legal difficulty starting businesses, and racism.
Nah! My guess is that it was a recruitment trip.
And for the "Mexican aliens are becoming Muslims/Mexican aliens are coming over to initiate the Reconquista/et cetera, et cetera" crowd, oppose illegal aliens, but don't stoop to such ludicrous ideas. Try to do so rationally and fairly (i.e. illegal immigration is illegal; many drug cartels come over; many aliens could have dangerous diseases; too much influx from one country promotes isolation and threatens American cultural integrity).
I disagree with your assessment of the comment.
Half of Mexico's farm land is in the collectives known as ejidos and they are mainly sustinence farming, not adequate for feeding mexico. 18 percent of the Mexican workforce works on the farm, of this 18%, 80% farm 36 acres or less. The farmers in the collectives do not own the land, tho they have rights to farm it. They can't borrow against it. They can't sell it. It can't be leased.
The elaborate plan that Mexico created was to transfer title of the collectives to the farmers, foreign capital would flow in and all the small farms would accumulate into larger ones.
As with most problems associated with NAFTA, much of the capital investment never materialized.
Actually, I heard it on Fox.
that they will admit to.
Me too.
There was a highly similar article - but about a Wisconsin dairy farmer - previously at this link:
madison.com/tct/opinion/column/krome/index.php?ntid=91741
The link doesn't seem to work right now and I can't find a cached version. One wonders why there'd be two highly similar programs in different states.
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