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.
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