Crops in California going to rot due to immigration crackdown (unemployment, wage)
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And as I stated above, for at least the last 20 years the state has cut off water to the farmers. That's rarely, if ever, mentioned as a reason for failures.
Some Americans dont want to relocate with their families, live in a car or tent, for a seasonal job paying squat. Legal Hb2 visa holders could have those jobs also but its the business owners who do not want to pay the going rate or deal with paperwork to hire legal workers.
I have family members who own farms and at least according to them it's not the paperwork or the fees involved in H-2A, its the inability to accurately predict how many workers you need far in advance of harvest. If you have a bad harvest you are stuck paying 3/4 of the contract period even if you don't need the workers, you also have to provide housing & transportation. I think the only way the program will work for farmers is to issue individual workers guest visas, maybe for no more than 8 months out of the year.
And as I stated above, for at least the last 20 years the state has cut off water to the farmers. That's rarely, if ever, mentioned as a reason for failures.
Well then there shouldn't be any crops rotting right? Problem solved
That is tangible evidence that Trumps crackdown is working.
Additionally, it exposes the lie that the Democrats claim about the limited numbers of illegals. Heck if CA were serious about welfare reform and wanted to save the crops, they should mandate that to collect welfare and other tax payer handouts, they must work some hours in the jobs that illegals were doing.
Best of all, any Republican business owners that are losing crops due to hiring illegals, are exposed as hypocrites. You cannot on the one hand want the ills of illegal aliens to go away, while still hiring them for greater profit margins.
Additionally, it exposes the lie that the Democrats claim about the limited numbers of illegals. Heck if CA were serious about welfare reform and wanted to save the crops, they should mandate that to collect welfare and other tax payer handouts, they must work some hours in the jobs that illegals were doing.
I guess you're aware that most of the people on "welfare" are women with children right? I'm not sure how much use they would be to farmers who need crops harvested or fruit picked
I can only rep you once and since I just did yet you keep saying everything exactly right, I'll just comment here:
I would like to know how anyone on the left can be ok with the fact that the illegals are out there in the hot sun for far more hours than is legal, bent over picking crops which is going to hurt your back after awhile no matter what age you are and how healthy you might be, and their living accommodations are tiny little shacks or huts, if they are lucky to have a building, many get tents, the ones I saw when I lived in WA state didn't even have glass where the windows were, and no a/c in the summer despite it being in Eastern WA which is hotter than hell for the west coast, they share those shacks or huts or tents with multiple people....
It's a really horrible way to treat people, it IS near slavery...so how the hell can anyone on the left who opposes slavery, or you liberal whites who enjoy your white guilt so much because of slavery in the past, how can you actually support this?
Do you hear yourselves? What's the first thing that you talk about? The price of fruits and vegetables will go up.
Not a damn bit of concern for the way these people are being treated, NO, you might have to pay 10 cents more for an apple. OH BOO HOO.
You're not going to be paying more for an apple, or any other produce for that matter because as was proven on page 1, this story gets trotted out almost every single year. I just went to the store today, IN CALIFORNIA. The produce was no differently priced than it normally is, it was well stocked full, there were a few sales, but not a thing was different. For all the rotting produce on the ground, doesn't seem to have affected the store at all.
Oh, and I'm way ahead of you on the "maybe it was shipped from somewhere else"...a habit I've had since I was a kid is to look at the boxes with the logos and the names and location of the growers. Since I went early, the produce guys were out with their carts restocking the surprisingly busy store this morning. I got to look at a lot of boxes. Much of that produce was from right here in CA.
The left doesn't like to talk about that. It makes them uncomfortable.
Who is this post in reference to? You sound like you completely made up a person and an argument.
If it's to me (I brought up the American people's willingness to pay more for their goods - an issue CENTRAL to offshoring and companies seeking cheaper labor around the world/country), I suppose I'll respond...but just be aware, you are putting words in people's mouths that were never spoken/written. That is a very bad thing to do in a debate - please adjust your tactics and just address the words that people speak/write (just some friendly advice).
I want what you want. I don't want these people to work in horrible conditions. I want them to be legal citizens or legal immigrants, and I want them to be paid more (a legal, fair, and hopefully "living" wage).
I want that AND I'm willing to pay for it. I will pay more for my produce and other agriculture goods (I don't really eat meat anymore (been years now), but I eat plenty of cheese and other animal-related). I already do this for as many goods as I can in this world, and I would love to be able to do this for my food, too.
Why do I bring up price? Because it is highly relevant to why these kind of things are happening in the first place. We as Americans (nothing to do with politics, by the way) want, as a whole, cheap goods. It's why Wal-Mart, Target, and Amazon are so successful, and why local versions of those stores are hurting tremendously in the face of that competition.
I personally don't subscribe to "cheap is better" - but many do. And that's a problem when you want an entire industry to move away from cheap labor (which I want). So, with this very real issue in mind, how do we solve this problem? I agree, going after people that employ illegal immigrants or pay under-the-table wages should be targeted heavily. Legal people should do that work, instead. Or automate it, if needed.
But we need to be realistic - prices will likely have to go up. Or the companies need to take a smaller cut. Realistically, a company will not just willingly do that...so prices go up. Are we aware of this? Are we going to pay these higher prices? If not - then what?
This matters and cannot just be brushed to the side as some political argument - get out of your political "black and white" nonsensical argument loop. This isn't about being "liberal" or "conservative" - it's simply about wanting people who make the goods that we consume to be treated well and paid fairly - and us being willing to pay for that (or at least, be aware of its cost on the system). Many of these costs are currently being externalized and not being looped into the total price that we pay for these goods (think: tax breaks for companies, subsidies, or external costs like pollution being thrown into the atmosphere for cheap goods today at the expense of tomorrow's environment, etc.).
Also, slightly outside of the scope of this discussion, but a good read (further illustrating how difficult of a problem this is to solve, globally - companies WILL try to get around paying for expensive labor - they just will. It sucks, but this is the real reality we have to address!!): http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/a...hical-shopper/
Last edited by HockeyMac18; 08-09-2017 at 02:52 PM..
2) Average American isn't willing to pay that cost. Many Americans eat fewer fresh fruits and vegetables than they should be eating. Why? It's considered cheaper.
Isn't it amazing that the raw goods that go into processed foods often are more expensive to buy than the processed version? It's insane, to me at least, that something that has gone through harvesting/picking, full-on processing by dozens/hundreds of people at some plant/facility, and packaged up/shipped out can be less expensive than something that was simply picked fresh off of a vine or tree. It boggles the mind when you think that through...
Not a perfect analogy (of course), but it would kind of be like if a car was somehow cheaper than some of the parts that went into it.
I understand why it is this way...part of it is because that one raw good can go to make a lot of processed pieces of food...most of which are stripped of their nutritional value as it is processed...
And the other part has to do with how we subsidize certain sectors of the agriculture industry by crazy amounts - thereby the costs associated with these goods is built into the system (so of course they can turn around and out-compete fresh food - they have an inherent head start because we incentivize these systems at a government/tax level).
But these points are for another discussion entirely.
Last edited by HockeyMac18; 08-09-2017 at 03:44 PM..
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