Most of what goes into the American salad bowl was picked by illegals

AP ^ | 12/2/5

[Crackingham]

Pushing back the silvery-green canopy of an olive tree, Don Stutsman examines clusters of ripening fruit and wonders whether he'll have enough hands to pick the blushing berries. He usually finishes his harvest by the end of October. But this year a number of unusual factors have collided to leave fruit hanging longer, jeopardizing his crop and highlighting the industry's dependence on illegal immigrants. A booming construction industry is offering better pay, and beefed-up patrolling along the Mexican border has made it harder for unauthorized workers to reach farms, offering a preview of what would happen if this source of labor dried up.

Men and women who have crossed the border illegally - mostly from Mexico - may number as high as 20 million, with 12 million to 15 million holding jobs, according to analysts at Bear Stearns in New York. An analysis by Barron's estimated they account for about $970 billion of the goods and services produced by the real economy. While other industries - service, construction, food processing - have larger total numbers of undocumented immigrants, the majority of farmworkers are illegal immigrants. They make up 53 percent of the approximately 1.8 million farmworkers in the country, up from about 12 percent in 1989-1990, according to the Labor Department's Agricultural Workers Survey.

"The fact is, the fresh produce industry couldn't exist without a foreign work force, but we don't have a mechanism to bring in foreign workers," said Tom Nassif, president of Western Growers Association, which represents more than 3,000 farmers in Arizona and California.

Nassif is asking federal lawmakers for a temporary program to allow workers into the country to pick winter vegetables and avert a labor shortage he says could cost the industry billions.

[pgkdan]

Most of what goes in my salad bar was picked by me or my wife.

[ClearCase_guy]

"The fact is, the fresh produce industry couldn't exist without a foreign work force"

The fact is, the fresh produce industry couldn't sell its product so cheaply if it adhered to the law.

[Puppage]

Most of what goes in my salad bar was picked by me or my wife.

You guys are illegal?

[SF Republican]

I remember in primary school a teacher asked; where does milk come from, someone piped up: the grocery store.

[hispanarepublicana]

same here.

[Dead Corpse]

Yeah right. Just like we needed slave labor to make picking cotton a "profitable" industry.

Bravo Sierra...

[frankjr]

I hope they washed their hands first. Or at least used some of that Purcell liquid hand sanitizer.

[Lokibob]

Lemons are picked in the summer/fall time in temperatures close to 100. Lemon trees have spikes (not thorns, spikes), razor sharp, that requires the picker to wear heavy duty leather, to keep from being cut. Heat, heavy leather, and it is a b***buster. A gringo will NOT do that kind of work for any wage.

Bring in workers for this job, but not hire the illegals.

[martin_fierro]

Related thread

[TheSpottedOwl]

Well I'll just say it again for the umpteenth time: use minumum security inmates to do the picking. Set up trust accounts for money earned, the rest can go to the state to offset the cost of their incarceration.

[ken5050]

Is the "American salad bowl" in the BCS this year?

[P-40]

A gringo will NOT do that kind of work for any wage.


I did that kind of work in those conditions but I didn't have much in the way of a choice. I lived.

[colorcountry]

No wonder I get sick when I eat lettuce.

[Phantom Lord]

A strange and fun contridiction I often notice and try to bring up in arguments when possible is that supporters of illegal immigration are usually liberals. And often they bring up the cost of produce in their arguments and ask "how much are you willing to pay for a head of lettuce?"

But these same liberals hate Wal-Mart and decry their low prices and say they are bad for America.

So low prices at Wal-Mart are bad for America, but illegal aliens resulting in lower produce costs are good?

[thoughtomator]

What a 'gringo' will do is use his industrial creativity to get the job done by machine, that is, when dirt-cheap illegal labor doesn't make it economically infeasible to do so.

[kinghorse]

Congratulations. Now what about the other 99.999 percent of us.

[frankenMonkey]

Most of what goes into the American salad bowl was picked by illegals

...as opposed to 20 years ago when it was picked by legal migrant labor.