Posted on 07/02/2011 12:52:33 PM PDT by La Enchiladita
WRAY, Ga., - One of the toughest laws yet to fight illegal immigration went into effect today in Georgia. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the most controversial provision - requiring police to check the immigration status of suspects who don't have proper identification.
But it is now a felony to use false documentation to apply for a job. CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann says Georgia farmers have been anticipating this day, and the law is already having a big effect.
In south Georgia, it's a banner year for blackberries - but a bad year for berry farmer Gary Paulk.
"There's a lot of what appear to be good berries," Paulk said. "If we had the workers."
On one corner of this family farm, twenty acres of blackberries rot away.
"This is a healthy field. And it should have been picked," Paulk said. "But there's nobody here."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
“”You can believe it or not but there really ARE jobs which Americans won’t do and hard, manual labor working in the fields is one of them. Farm labor nationwide is scarce and getting scarcer. Many farm laborers WANT to be paid under the table and in cash preferably and they all make well above minimum wage.”
I hope your crop rots and you go out of business.”
He is right VA, a lot of the unemployed are not willing to take them jobs. He is wrong in that the labor shortage should have forced a mechanization of our farms rather then retarding the same mechanization.
With mechanization of course comes many higher paying jobs Americans WILL do.
I can get a crew of white College educated workers to pick her farm for under 2 Billion dollars.
Paid a lot of farm labor, have you? Please see my reply to Racer1 further down the thread.
Never forget. The reason we had slaves brought into in the USA was predominantly the greedy farmers in the south that wanted the cheapest labor possible for their cotton fields.
These farmers still want the cheapest labor possible and their cheap labor has created ENORMOUS costs and another under class for generations of Americans to support whether it be for their berries or cotton.
I’d like to tell this GA farmer exactly what I think of his perpetual strategy of importing cheap labor and saddling centuries of American generations with the bill.
Bingo! We have a winner.
Since slave labor is out, berry farmers might consider it’s time to modernize and develop berry picking machines! You’ll need fewer pickers, but you’ll need smarter people to run and maintain the equipment. Production will go up, but you’ll have to pay realistic wages to Americans.
If only more Americans felt that way. People bitch and complain about the "high" cost of groceries all the time. Please read my reply to Racer1 further down the thread.
I'm not advocating employing illegals. But farm labor nationwide is scarce and getting scarcer. Please read my reply to Racer1 further down the thread.
Damn, org.whodat, we meet again and lo and behold for once it's not a Perry thread. :-) And not surprisingly, we disagree again. :-)
Seriously, have you studied the provisions in those "fourteen different federal programs"? Written by the same people who brought us the clear, understandable, easy to comply with tax code. Please see my reply to Racer1 further down the thread.
So our only choice is illegals then?
I don’t buy that.
I’ve said before that I am OK with a guest worker program, IF, we can guarantee that it’s legit and above-board, simple to follow, and they GO BACK HOME when they are done...if, in fact, the labor cannot be provided any other way.
Believe me, if there's a mechanical harvester that will harvest their crop, a farmer will have it. The only way lots of crops can be harvested is by hand labor. Strawberries, squash, okra, avocados etc. and most, if not all of the fruits: apples, grapefruit etc. Also, believe me, somewhere there is an ag engineer working on designing machinery to harvest every crop there is.
Hired a lot of farm labor (legal or not) to pick your crops, have you? Please see my reply to Racer1 further down the thread.
This is true, The big operations hire labor contractors, well because they're BIG and need a lot of labor and need that labor to be there at exactly the time they need it. Otherwise a year's investment and work will be lost. Labor contractors don't bother with little operators. Why should they when nationwide, farm labor is so scarce. It's more profitable to take a crew to a big operation and stay a while instead of moving every day. And it's NOT cheap. Labor contractors are regulated by the government just like almost everything is.
Farmer Dean, I'm curious to know what part of the country you're in and your experience with farm labor if you're willing to share. Thanks.
I’m in North Central Ohio.When I need hired help it’s mainly during hay season-I pay local kids 9 dollars an hour to stack bales.
Hired a lot of labor to pick your orchards, have you? Please see my reply to Racer1 further down the thread.
It also would have resulted in the development of automated mechanical pickers.
Believe me, if there's a machine to work any crop, a farmer will have it. Even a little farmer. And somewhere an ag engineer is working to invent machines for every crop that's grown commercially.
>> Come on, you high school and college kids, get out there and pick!
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the idea of college credits/breaks for kids who work the farm. An idea that could extend to the service industry.
Yep, I can tell you EXACTLY that. Please see my post to Racer1 further down the thread.
>> the current generation of young Americans (regardless of race) are too lazy and too entitled to even consider doing manual labor
Kids today are no more lazy than kids of decades past. The perceived laziness is merely a symptom of the environment the adults created. It’s a legal liability to have your neighbors kid cut your grass, and it’s beneath the potential of little Johny and Suzie when the “parent knows” there’s a migrant worker to do the job.
As I mentioned in post #116, it might make sense to consider college credits/assistance for kids who spend a season or two in the fields.
Don't know the age/health of this particular farmer but the median age at the grower convention we attend yearly is over 55. And I believe that holds true nationwide. Mr Blackberry farmer wouldn't get very far handpicking a 20 acre field alone.
Young people aren't going into agribusiness unless by inheritance. And most not even then. It takes too many acres, too much capital, too much risk, and too hard a work to be profitable. The only way a young person stays in farming is if he LOVES it inspite of the difficulties. (And it helps to have a wife with an off the farm job :-). Or is there crop insurance available for 20 acres of blackberries?
I assume you mean government subsidys. Ahhh, don't get me started. :-(. I could be wrong but I don't believe there is a government subsidy for blackberries.
I can almost guarantee you that an ag engineer somewhere is trying to do that very thing. And for any crop that's grown commercially.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.