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That figure has to be an average for all foods. Labor costs for picking potatos is low and would be unaffected, products like tomatoes that are picked by hand will rise.
I believe I have read that labor comprises of 6% of the cost of a tomato. Without illegal workers the price would go up 3-6%.
You know there are probably lots of high school kids that would go out in the summer and pick the fruit if they had decent dorms and got decent pay for it.
Fruit and vegetables aren't at all cheaper now that there are 11 to 30 million illegals living here. Compare prices of a head of lettuce in 1980 with what it is today -- I've seen lettuce going for as much as $1.50 a head. Meat prices are going through the roof, illegals aren't doing much to bring prices down.
There are about 1 million jobs in agriculture, including fish hatcheries, with 11 to 30 million illegals living here, why would there be rotting produce? I suspect more illegals are living off welfare handouts than are picking fruit and vegetables.
Give them amnesty, there will be fewer willing to pick fruit.
They can get people living in Mexico be allowed to come across the boarder to work ;it happens all the time. Work visas are common just as they were in the past. I wouldn't blame workers tho with the history of abuse by such farmers in the past to say ;no thanks. This still goes on with Mexican in labor force by employers who want amnesty now.
Walmart -- the REAL reason we've got 30 million illegals here is that it was all part of the NAFTA deal. They knew when they signed that deal that it would destroy the livelihood of 25 million Mexicans, and also the only way that the Mexican government accepts Walmarts going up all over Mexico is by us taking in their unwanted impoverished displaced population.
The politicians don't care about unemployed Americans or sky high debt, they're sell-outs to the globalists who crave cheap labor and the cheaper the better. At the very most, 50% of the 1 million agricultural workers are here illegally, most estimate 25% because it's actually quite easy to bring in farm workers through the H2A visa program.
250,000 to 500,000 illegals are working in farm jobs --- and the occupational outlook of agricultural workers is not good, these jobs are declining because of mechanization and also fewer acres being farmed because of urban sprawl.
So, these Farmers think these illegals they have picking fruit will keep picking fruit if made legal? That right there is funny.
The farmers should be required to sponser the visa of their guest workers. Once the picking season is over, the workers must return to their home country or be sponsored by the next farmer whose different crop is ready for harvesting. That way the workers either have to do the job they were sponsored for or they cannot stay in the country.
What we need is not an amnesty bill, but a better 'guest worker' bill. Do you think places like Saudi Arabia bring in foreign workers, give them citizenship, and make them heirs to the national oil wealth? As Snoop Dogg might put it, "aw hell naw."
I am pro-immigration but it has to be metered. Where I live (Bellevue, WA) the population is about 30% foreign born. Why do dems insist on amnesty as opposed to guest-worker? It's quite obvious--a guest worker is not eligible to vote.
The "vote" part is fairly recent - it's always been about Union dues. Unions are against 'guest workers'.
It's a fallacy to believe that all these illegal aliens from Mexico want to live here full time. Many just want seasonal work in the US and then to return home to Mexico in the off-season. They really can't do that any more, so they stay and are taught how to milk the USA welfare system.
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