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I think it's hilarious that liberals will call allowing prisoners to volunteer for this work "slavery" but it's ok to use illegal migrants and pay them almost nothing. That's not slavery apparently. Hypocritical idiots.
This is anecdotal as it relates my cousin's experience with H2A but it's consistent with most of the articles you find online. One of my cousins owns a large farm in Central California and she said that no one she knows uses H2A, it's a program that just doesn't work well. You have to prove you can't find local labor and then you have to put in your request far in advance of knowing how many workers you need for the harvest, and you have to provide free housing and transportation for the workers. She said it's common to request 30 or 40 workers and only receive 5 and that's after you have invested in acquiring housing for all 40. She is convinced that the only thing that will work is a guest worker program that does not require providing housing and allows workers to follow the harvest which is what they want to do, and what they have been doing for 100 years.
I didnt see anything about requiring free housing and transportation.
It appears the problem is federal/state employees not getting the certifications processed in a timely manner. We have that same problem getting our federal permits. Its been one year since our application and nothing yet. Permits must be renewed yearly. Many businesses have to go thru bureaucratic red tape, why should farmers get a pass so they can get cheap labor?
Also workers must apply for a H2A if I read the requirements correctly. If they are getting work illegally why go thru the process of applying for an H2A.
I didnt see anything about requiring free housing and transportation.
It appears the problem is federal/state employees not getting the certifications processed in a timely manner. We have that same problem getting our federal permits. Its been one year since our application and nothing yet. Permits must be renewed yearly. Many businesses have to go thru bureaucratic red tape, why should farmers get a pass so they can get cheap labor?
Also workers must apply for a H2A if I read the requirements correctly. If they are getting work illegally why go thru the process of applying for an H2A.
Correct, just follow the laws and Guide lines of the US. The Problem the workers are so accustom to just going to the US they have not even considered in the past getting a permit. How sad when Mexico enforces all their laws to the letter.
These Migrant workers do not want to be managed or tracked while on US Soil.
Same thing happened when neighboring Georgia tightened up checks on undocumented / illegals. Despite getting prison labor to take up the slack, about $140 million in produce was left rotting in the fields. So either be willing to pay more for produce at the grocery store, or keep the status quo on migrant workers. Or at the very least loosen the requirements for guest workers. Nothing in life is free and certainly no good thing is. You gotta figure out all the prices of the decision before buying into the decision.
Want to cut down on illegals? Start paying farm workers more AND be prepared to pay more for vegetables.
Wanna keep buying your vegetables cheap? Then accept migrant workers to pick it for you, even if they are not hear legally.
Vegatables really arent all that cheap. And again its been shown when the %$ of the finished product paid to the crop pickers increases it does not have a significant affect on the retail price.
Perhaps farmers should buck up, pay a bit more and suffer the paperwork and aggravation of going the legal route and hiring legal migrant workers instead of trying to squeeze more profit.
They tried not hiring Mexicans to pick watermelons a year or so ago in Alabama. They only hired Americans. Well as if we didn't know the results. Americans would takeoff and never come back. Americans don't want to do that kind of work. It's too hard. We are kind of spoiled and won't do that kind of Manuel Labor.
Why do back breaking work like picking watermelons when you can just sign up for Social Security Disability instead? Many communities in "Real America" pretty much exist solely on handouts like SSDI, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps.
"Across large swaths of the country, disability has become a force that has reshaped scores of mostly white, almost exclusively rural communities, where as many as one-third of working-age adults live on monthly disability checks, according to a Washington Post analysis of Social Security Administration statistics."
They tried not hiring Mexicans to pick watermelons a year or so ago in Alabama. They only hired Americans. Well as if we didn't know the results. Americans would takeoff and never come back. Americans don't want to do that kind of work. It's too hard. We are kind of spoiled and won't do that kind of Manuel Labor.
Why didn't they use the unlimited visas for legal, foreign workers? Simple, it was about greed. Crop picking isn't a career job for Americans and is only seasonal work. That's not being spoiled but planning for a real future with a real job. Many Americans don't even live in rural areas. There are many other manual labor jobs that Americans have always done for a fair wage such as construction until millions of cheap, illegals flooded our border. Start telling the whole story instead of demonizing Americans.
I can't imagine that you would get many native-born young Americans to do farm labor, and if you wanted to attract them you would have to offer much higher wages that illegals or migrant laborers get.
And then retail food prices would sky-rocket, and people would begin buying cheaper imported food....and kerplop! there goes the whole point of the thing.
Millions of young men and women do hard work on farms, family farms. We are talking about big ag here. You'd have to witness it to see what a deal it is.
Same thing happened when neighboring Georgia tightened up checks on undocumented / illegals. Despite getting prison labor to take up the slack, about $140 million in produce was left rotting in the fields. So either be willing to pay more for produce at the grocery store, or keep the status quo on migrant workers. Or at the very least loosen the requirements for guest workers. Nothing in life is free and certainly no good thing is. You gotta figure out all the prices of the decision before buying into the decision.
Want to cut down on illegals? Start paying farm workers more AND be prepared to pay more for vegetables.
Wanna keep buying your vegetables cheap? Then accept migrant workers to pick it for you, even if they are not hear legally.
See my prior post. Also, only 2% of illegals are picking crops so why would prices raise much? The growers that use them only pocket the profits for themselves.
Why do back breaking work like picking watermelons when you can just sign up for Social Security Disability instead? Many communities in "Real America" pretty much exist solely on handouts like SSDI, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps.
"Across large swaths of the country, disability has become a force that has reshaped scores of mostly white, almost exclusively rural communities, where as many as one-third of working-age adults live on monthly disability checks, according to a Washington Post analysis of Social Security Administration statistics."
In ain't just some anglo white people who CAN do that kind of work, you forgot about Blacks and non Rez American Indians who don't work but can.
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Also, only 2% of illegals are picking crops so why would prices raise much? The growers that use them only pocket the profits for themselves.
