Farmers tie labor shortage to state's new immigration law, ask for help (Georgia)

Atlanta Constitution ^ | 5-26-2011 | Jeremy Redmon

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Migrant farmworkers are bypassing Georgia because of the state’s tough new immigration enforcement law, creating a severe labor shortage among fruit and vegetable growers here and potentially putting hundreds of millions of dollars in crops in jeopardy, agricultural industry leaders said this week.

Meanwhile, the state’s Republican labor and agricultural commissioners are discussing issuing a joint statement in the coming days about what they intend to do about the labor shortage, a Labor Department spokesman confirmed Thursday.

Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, said he has been in close contact with Labor Commissioner Mark Butler and Agricultural Commissioner Gary Black about the shortage, calling it the most severe he has seen. Hall said it's possible state officials could hold job fairs to steer some of Georgia’s unemployed workers to these farm jobs, which pay $12.50 an hour on average. The state’s unemployment rate is now at 9.9 percent.

Farmers, however, say they often have little luck recruiting Georgia residents to work in their fields because it is temporary, hot and physically demanding. To recruit more workers, some farmers are offering signing bonuses, Hall said.

The law doesn't take effect until July 1 but is already making migrant Hispanic farmworkers skittish, said Dick Minor, a partner with Minor Brothers Farm in Leslie in southwest Georgia who says he is missing about 50 of his workers now, threatening as much as a third of his crops.

Some farmers who work in Georgia’s $1.1 billion fruit and vegetable industry are now reporting they have only two-thirds or half the workers they need now and for the weeks of harvesting to come, Hall said. Farmers said the full extent of the shortages won’t be known until the coming weeks as they harvest their remaining crops, including watermelons and sweet corn. Hall estimated such shortages could put as much as $300 million in crops at risk this year.

John McKissick, who teaches and researches agricultural economics for the University of Georgia, said the farmers’ assertions about the labor shortage are plausible, but he could not independently confirm them.

“I have certainly heard reports of shortages,” he said. “There are certainly a lot of dollars on the line with timely fruit and vegetable harvests.”

This month, Gov. Nathan Deal signed House Bill 87 into law. Among other things, the law punishes people who transport or harbor illegal immigrants here. It also authorizes police to investigate the immigration status of suspects they believe have committed state or federal crimes and who cannot produce identification, such as a driver’s license, or provide other information that could help police identify them.

Georgia’s agricultural industry -- the largest in the state -- vigorously opposed HB 87 in the Legislature, arguing it could scare away migrant workers and damage the state’s economy.

Minor, who is also president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, said the Mexican workers he normally depends on to harvest his cucumbers and squash are staying away from Georgia over concerns they will be harassed.

“People are just saying: ‘I am not going to Georgia. The law is terrible. We are going to get in trouble there. Let’s just go on,’ ” Minor said. “They have got options. And what they are saying is ‘Georgia is not the place to go.’”

Minor said his farm is struggling with a shortage of workers even after boosting pay to attract more of them. He added his farm works with the state Labor Department to ensure his hires are eligible to work in the United States.

Manuel De La Rosa, who recruits workers for Minor’s farm, confirmed many migrant workers are skipping Georgia for other states, including Florida. He said these workers became afraid after they heard Hispanic television news programs comparing Georgia’s new law to a stringent one Arizona enacted last year.

“Some of the people who were coming over here to [pick] cucumbers said: ‘No. They are going to catch us. They are going to put us in jail,’ ” said De La Rosa, a U.S. citizen. “Some of them were going to try another state where they have not passed this law yet.”

The author of Georgia’s HB 87 -- Republican Rep. Matt Ramsey of Peachtree City -- repeated Thursday that the law is not set to take effect until July 1.

“And there is nothing in House Bill 87 that anybody that is in our country legally has to worry about,” he said.

[TexasRedeye]

Isn’t this the exact same argument made by the agri-crop growers when slavery was made illegal?

[DH]

And just how does Georgia avoid the FEDERAL minimum wage act?

[kittymyrib]

You mean with all those thousands of welfare recipients in GA, there are no able bodied workers available to harvest crops? The Bible says, “If any would not work, neither should he eat.” Food stamps should not be issued to loafers.

[BobL]

“Offer minimum wage and they will probably have hundreds of applicants daily.”

Dream on. American High Schoolers are WAAYYYY too sophisticated to do ‘manual labor’ as they see it. Why bother, when you can mooch off your parents and play X-box in your air conditioned house, while taking decades to decide where you want to go in life?

As for adults, I suspect that blacks may have a tough time, as it may remind them of the slavery in their earlier years (i.e., when Republicans were president). For whites...they might do it, but only when the unemployment checks start to run out. No one in their right mind would trade an unemployment check for real work, at the same pay.

I’m not defending the Illegals one bit, I’m just saying that our society has to get serious about encouraging people to work for a living, instead of giving them so many ‘options’.

[BobL]

“Some Illegals will work 8 hours for 75 cash. When I was young I would have jumped at it.”

Yea, I don’t think that people have ANY CLUE how just well paid these illegals are. I saw it when my house was being built. They don’t risk their lives and spend thousands to come here, just to earn Mexican wages.

[bcsco]

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[wiggen]

I’ve lived in the city all my life so i’m no farmer and i’m not going to say i know what conditions are. I am however no stranger to physical work. Its hot and humid in Ga so pick real early in the morning and again when the sun starts to go down. Whats the big deal? Any problem can be overcome.

[Apple Pan Dowdy]

You are exactly right! Americans are NOT going to work for minimum wage as long as they are getting an unemployment check that is more.

[PapaBear3625]

Where is the innovation and ingenuity???

Cheap illegal labor killed it.

Cheap illegal labor means that there's not much of a market for vegetable-harvesting machinery. If we didn't have illegal aliens picking lettuce, we would have robots doing it, thus promoting our robotics industry.

[Snuph]

Federal min wage only applies to business which have locations in more than one state.

[HiJinx]

Ping!

The other side of the coin - good point in first comment; how cheap is it, really, when it’s illegal?

[Georgia Girl 2]

There’s a lot of able bodied college students looking for summer work. $12.50 an hour is not a bad wage.

[PATRIOT1876]

This is VERY good!

Maybe the farmers will have to pay people a decent wage now. They’ve been getting away with cheap labor for too long. I’m willing to pay an extra nickel for a peach if it gets rid of the illegals. If I was a teenager, I’d be glad to work in the fields for $12.50 an hour instead of a fast food place for minimum wage. If I was out of work I’d pick vegetables for $12.50 an hour.

Enough with the bellyachin’-it win win win all the way around for legal citizens.

[PATRIOT1876]

* Some Illegals will work 8 hours for 75 cash. When I was young I would have jumped at it.*

I would’ve jumped at it when I was young too…although back then rent was $250, a house cost about $40,000 and a good used car was about $300…

[PATRIOT1876]

*Americans will do any kind of work; they’re entitiled to negotiate wages like anyone else without illegal aliens tilting the playing field against them.*

Exactly!

Most people are not going to put in 40 hours of work if payment at the end of the week is a tictac.

[Iscool]

With 13 million folks out of work, I would be quite surprised if these farmers have no interested workers, but paying South American wages, as they likely have been used to, might not cut it anymore. Offer minimum wage and they will probably have hundreds of applicants daily.

Don't know about Georgia but in Michigan, the illegal migrants get a place to live, food stamps, free medical care, free day care all paid by you and me, plus their wages...

Offer that to legal citizens and the farmers will be over run with potential employees...

[Kenny Bunk]

The idea of working eight hours and picking up $75 in cash is practically gone now.

The meth-crazed, tattooed young white inhabitants of rural areas, and that apparently seems to include practically all who were not smart enough to leave for, or attend school, or join the service, IOW, a majority; are no longer fit for day, or any other kind of labor. A reasonably healthy 70-year-old can work'em into the ground in 45 minutes.

"Aha!" you say. We will send buses into the "urban "ghetto" and offer this sweet deal to young unemployed blacks!

Sorry, Pepsi. They are the same as the low-end rural whites, except that they have more cash and smoke crack instead of using meth, it being more lucrative and easier to refine than meth. They are also better at basketball.

So, if you need farm help, can you say, ¿"Buenos Días, mis amigos del sur. Bienvenidos a mi hacienda?" They'll do the job, take your cash, and unfortunately, they'll also take every cent of welfare cash your county has, while flooding your schools, hospitals, housing, and jails.

Sorry, Pepsi, the big picture ain't any prettier than the snapshot. OBTW, Eisenhower died and this ain't really the America you remember.

[kearnyirish2]

It’s a shame, and now what illegals have done to America’s unskilled workers Asians are doing to white-collar workers (though legally). I work with banks, and the number of very obvious Asian names replacing the “American” names I used to deal with is incredible - and they’re here, not in Asia.

[kearnyirish2]

That’s exactly why southern Europe has the siesta; the mid-day sun is too hot. The illegal aliens are stealing these jobs from LEGAL Mexican-Americans if temperature is the issue.

[Razz Barry]

Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, said he has been in close contact with Labor Commissioner Mark Butler and Agricultural Commissioner Gary Black about the shortage, calling it the most severe he has seen. Hall said it's possible state officials could hold job fairs to steer some of Georgia’s unemployed workers to these farm jobs, which pay $12.50 an hour on average. The state’s unemployment rate is now at 9.9 percent.

No way, do I believe they're paying $12.50 an hour. Now is when we should start pushing to force unemployed workers, like those on Welfare, into these jobs.