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I hear many people say that we need illegals, as they are the only ones that will engage in manual farm labor, and are thus "essential" for our society.
1. When I was a kid (I am white), I picked strawberries, detassled corn, and cleaned dairy barns (you were covered in liquid cow crap). I did it because I needed money for college any my parents were poor.
Me too, even though my family wasn't poor. Most kids I knew took occasional jobs involving hard physical labor and worked quite a bit in the summer. It was normal and nobody thought it was work fit only for brown foreigners.
Quote:
Now I am a physician
Wow, really? After that thread on CO2 during the depression I am pretty surprised to hear that you have some background in science.
Last edited by The Dark Enlightenment; 08-23-2015 at 08:44 PM..
I hear many people say that we need illegals, as they are the only ones that will engage in manual farm labor, and are thus "essential" for our society.?
This is not true. IF we had no illegals we would have plenty of farm labor.
I hear many people say that we need illegals, as they are the only ones that will engage in manual farm labor, and are thus "essential" for our society.
...
Perhaps it is circumstance and policies created by the federal government which provide disincentives to work that have resulted in this "shortage" in farm labor?
Are poor black and white Americans falling over themselves for these jobs?
I hear many people say that we need illegals, as they are the only ones that will engage in manual farm labor, and are thus "essential" for our society.
1. When I was a kid (I am white), I picked strawberries, detassled corn, and cleaned dairy barns (you were covered in liquid cow crap). I did it because I needed money for college any my parents were poor.
2. Why does the citizenship make any difference whether someone will work manual labor jobs or not? Does it mean that it is easier to go on welfare, do nothing, recieve money, and sit at home rather than to pick crops?
3. Do illegals pick crops better than citizens?
4. Do illegal Hispanics pick crops better than citizen Hispanic, whites, or blacks?
In my experience, you do what work you need to do to achieve your goals, If the feds were giving me money, when I was a kids, to sit on my ass and do nothing, I would not have worked. However, this option was not available, so I did hard labor.
Now I am a physician and am fairly wealthy. So is my brother{ (physician and wealthy)- my father (who was a laborer, takes pride in relating this)}.
Perhaps it is circumstance and policies created by the federal government which provide disincentives to work that have resulted in this "shortage" in farm labor?
When I was a kid (I am white), I used to pick watermelons until the farmer chased me out of his patch. I don't think illegals picked them any better than I did, no special skill required, all you need is a young back and in my case a fast set of legs. I think the only non-illegals that would want a job picking crops would be kids and they would eventually tire of it.
Historically, farm labor, and its more-desperate "cousin" -- tenant farming, a/k/a "sharecropping" -- were always viewed as the absolute bottom of the American labor pool. I grew up on a dairy farm only one generation removed from the days when idle labor in nearby small and/or "light" manufacturing communities worked in the fields during the harvest season, (sometimes with cooperation from local manufacturers familiar with seasonal employment patterns), and were often paid in part in produce and milk. The loss of this labor supply with the establishment of Federally-mandated and -overseen Unemployment Compensation in the late Thirties caused my grandfather to close the small independent dairy he'd run for twenty years. And most of the local youngsters, myself among them, were quick to recognize that better opportunities were forthcoming in town.
Agriculture survived and adapted via the same methods as everything else -- by mechanization of much of the work, by concentration of the enterprise in fewer, but larger farms run by entrepreneurs with a better grasp of the market realities, and by adaptation of a few of the scientific and economic measures which sometimes tend to upset urbanites with a simplistic, and even paranoid position on issues like genetic engineering, "animal rights" and "factory farming". If the hue and cry becomes great enough, these issues will find their way further into the political process, and the dissenters already have a personal alternative in the form of "organic foodstuffs". But as with any product touched by the practice of statecraft, we will all end up paying a bit more -- albeit indirectly.
The choice is yours, and ours, and everybody's.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 08-23-2015 at 10:03 PM..
I hear many people say that we need illegals, as they are the only ones that will engage in manual farm labor, and are thus "essential" for our society.
1. When I was a kid (I am white), I picked strawberries, detassled corn, and cleaned dairy barns (you were covered in liquid cow crap). I did it because I needed money for college any my parents were poor.
2. Why does the citizenship make any difference whether someone will work manual labor jobs or not? Does it mean that it is easier to go on welfare, do nothing, recieve money, and sit at home rather than to pick crops?
3. Do illegals pick crops better than citizens?
4. Do illegal Hispanics pick crops better than citizen Hispanic, whites, or blacks?
In my experience, you do what work you need to do to achieve your goals, If the feds were giving me money, when I was a kids, to sit on my ass and do nothing, I would not have worked. However, this option was not available, so I did hard labor.
Now I am a physician and am fairly wealthy. So is my brother{ (physician and wealthy)- my father (who was a laborer, takes pride in relating this)}.
Perhaps it is circumstance and policies created by the federal government which provide disincentives to work that have resulted in this "shortage" in farm labor?
The pay is very poor. I picked strawberries, beans, apples, and raked blueberries when I was a teen, about 20 years ago. Strawberries were good for about $30 a day, but blueberries were the worst. 6 hour day, back breaking work, $17. Only did it once.
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As a teen I use to walk crops for weeds.. With new modified crops those days are gone. If I were unemployed and had a young back I would do anything. Asking for anything is more "below" me than working.
Some of the farmers in our state were paying $25/hour due to a shortage of workers. Eventually their usual people get old, and their children spend more time texting than picking. It's illegal to pay by the bushel if it comes out less than minimum so they just get fired. The problem is that the potential "poor" workers are in the populated areas, and can't afford to move during harvest season and then back again but are not anxious to work that hard anyway.
25 dollars an hour?! Crazy because if the farm jobs paid those "white collar" wages here in Arizona; many of us anglo white and Chicano people WOULD work them and be happy. I def would.
The vast majority of people that are out of work are lazy. You won't find many that will do those jobs, they are too much work. BTW, I picked fruit at local farms from about 12-15, then spend a couple summers tossing hay bails. My nephew's son started bailing around here-he was making $10-$14 per hour, at 15 years old. He, and the rest of the crew eventually quit..."it was too hard".
ITA with the bold.
I know so many people in my area who say there are "no jobs" even though there are a lot, they just don't want to work. My nephew recently too, a job in manufacturing, which he describes as constantly moving around and packing boxes. He said it is fast but not very strenuous and he is only working there on a temp basis right now until he starts college in a couple weeks. He's been there about 2 months and said he is the only one who has been on the job more than a week. They get paid $12 an hour and the place is actually "temp to perm." After 3 months, they will hire in those that make it and give them a $2 an hour raise, which is really good in our area as it is super inexpensive. He said he asked and they usually only hire in about 10 people a year out of hundreds because people are so lazy and don't want to work.
That said, I am lazy in regards to farm work lol. I've never done it and am a "city" person. I garden and that is hard. I can't imagine being out in the sun and picking crops all day. I am way too out of shape for that and would probably fall out and die lol. I think most Americans today just aren't cut out for it. And FWIW, my family is WAY removed from farm work. On my dad's side, my great great grandmother moved to our city in the early 1900s. She is the most "recent" ancestor I have to sharecropping (I am black) and she was born in the 1880s. Her son never worked on a farm. My dad's mom moved here in the 1940s but they were from Appalachia and her family worked in the mines, not farms. Hard, dangerous work, but not agriculture. They moved because, like farming, mining got more technical and black miners were basically shut out since they didn't need as much labor and so they were the first fired. Ironically, miners used to be about 40-50% black but now they are over 80% white due to mechanization.
I hear many people say that we need illegals, as they are the only ones that will engage in manual farm labor, and are thus "essential" for our society.
1. When I was a kid (I am white), I picked strawberries, detassled corn, and cleaned dairy barns (you were covered in liquid cow crap). I did it because I needed money for college any my parents were poor.
2. Why does the citizenship make any difference whether someone will work manual labor jobs or not? Does it mean that it is easier to go on welfare, do nothing, recieve money, and sit at home rather than to pick crops?
3. Do illegals pick crops better than citizens?
4. Do illegal Hispanics pick crops better than citizen Hispanic, whites, or blacks?
In my experience, you do what work you need to do to achieve your goals, If the feds were giving me money, when I was a kids, to sit on my ass and do nothing, I would not have worked. However, this option was not available, so I did hard labor.
Now I am a physician and am fairly wealthy. So is my brother{ (physician and wealthy)- my father (who was a laborer, takes pride in relating this)}.
Perhaps it is circumstance and policies created by the federal government which provide disincentives to work that have resulted in this "shortage" in farm labor?
I saw a show on picking crops, if you don't pick like 8-9 baskets full of oranges per day, you aren't carrying your weight and you get fired.
The guy running the show could only do like 3-4.
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