[SJackson]

The current formula is based on wages in the overall agricultural sector, he said, which can set artificially high wages for field work. ...Kuegel and Hornback said they pay their H2A workers $8.24 an hour and cover housing, utilities and transportation costs for the field hands.

Not to worry, more legal laborers, costs will go down.

[gubamyster]

ping

[Rodney King]

For years, Shelby County tobacco farmer Paul Hornback has advertised locally for hired hands. The results are always the same - not a single offer to help tend to his burley crop.

If you only offer a wage that migrants will take, then you will only get migrants.

[calex59]

I believe all these stories by the pro-ILLEGAL press about as much as I believe in their polls, which is to say, I don't.

[piceapungens]

Sorry, but I don't want to subsidize your slave labor you greedy bum

[posterchild]

One summer in HS (early 1980's), I worked harvesting tobacco for $2.50/hr with no housing, utilities nor transportation costs included. Hard work, but I was seriously pumped that summer. It burned my a$$ to see taxes taken out of my tiny hard earned paycheck which in part helped make me a conservative.

I wish journalists would be more specific. The word 'migrant' can mean lots of things, including US citizens coming from other states.

[Obadiah]

...the availability of labor is a big concern in the burley belt, where tobacco is still cut and put in barns by hand for curing.

Dare I say that if access to cheap labor evaporated that these farmers would be forced to modernize and use machinery? The article then goes on to say how these guys are trying to pay less for this immigrant labor. The point is, that they are using outdated methods of harvesting and they will never be able to increase their productivity using these antiquated labor intensive means. That is one of the reasons you saw the rapid rise in the use of robotics in the auto industry - the cost of labor.

Finally, it is not legal migration that is the issue. (This farmer sounds like he is using legal means.) It is the illegal migration issue that is of concern.

[trebb]

Kick able-bodied folks off welfare and other freebies and many of these jobs would have waiting lines of Americans.

[mysterio]

I guess if people aren't taking the job at that price, he'll have to raise the wage. This notion that all of these jobs aren't going to get done unless we allow illegals to flood all over the country is just ridiculous. The job won't get done at that price.

I mean, I could say "I keep offering $2,000, but no one will sell me a brand new car, so that must mean there are no cars out there except stolen ones since that's the only new car I can get for $2,000."

[Glenn]

I'll pluck tobacco worms for $50/hour.

[epow]

How many healthy men and women in KY and surrounding areas are living on welfare or charity of some variety? If they didn't get their living by sponging off the working people of the state they might rather pick tobacco for a reasonable wage than go without shelter, frozen pizzas, beer, smokes, iPods, and cable TV.

An estimated $20 billion American dollars was taken out of the American economy and sent back home by immigrant workers to be fed into the Mexican economy in '05, and the amount will no doubt be even higher this year. Taxing American workers to pay other able bodied Americans not to work and put their paychecks back into the American economy while at the same time paying to haul in Mexicans who will send most of their paychecks home to Mexico doesn't make good economic sense to me.

[D-Chivas]

This is what happens when the American public wants cheap smokes, cheap meat, cheap daycare, cheap lawn service, cheap roofing...

[VOA]

You'd think the anti-smoking lobby would also be anti-illegal immigration
after reading this article!