U.S. Letting in More Immigrants for Farms
Written by Sam on October 7th, 2007With a nationwide farmworker shortage threatening to leave unharvested fruits and vegetables rotting in fields, the Bush administration has begun quietly rewriting federal regulations to eliminate barriers that restrict how foreign laborers can legally be brought into the country.The effort, urgently underway at the departments of Homeland Security, State and Labor, is meant to rescue farm owners caught in a vise between a complex process to hire legal guest workers and stepped-up enforcement that has reduced the number of illegal planters, pickers and middle managers crossing the border.
“It is important for the farm sector to have access to labor to stay competitive,” said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. “As the southern border has tightened, some producers have a more difficult time finding a workforce, and that is a factor of what is going on today.”
These people are coming legally, so I have no issue with this in that regard, but I have a better solution to this problem. How about Congress cancels all of the welfare checks instead. I bet we won’t have a shortage of farm workers then.
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1. The second sentence of your post contains a flagrant grammar error. Did you not learn about the subjunctive mood in middle school?
2. What an outrageous thing to say. You are apparently unaware that most people who collect public assistance work full time. Furthermore, since AFDC was replaced with TANF in 1996, there really is no “welfare” program that guarantees an income indefinitely. But, like most ignorant people, you prefer to shoot off your mouth instead of actually becoming informed about this. Like most of my students, you apparently don’t even know what “welfare” is, exactly (i.e. what program exactly are you referring to?).
Complaining about welfare queens sitting on their porches collecting welfare checks has been passe since the late 90s. Get with the times. Consrevatives nowadays drone on about terrorists to get the idiots riled up.
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I do not think cancelling welfare benefits would solve the problem seeing we have a high percentage of the unemployed concentrated in cities when we have low unemployment rates in rural areas. For example, many of the Great Plains states have very low unemployment, but a city like Detroit has unemployment around 15%. If you cancel benefits, these people in these areas would not migrate to Nebraska. Many of them would protest and probably riot.
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the people we are taking in now, worked as farmworkers in mexico, so they are accuatly pretty good at what they do compared to a 50 year woman on welfare who would be useless on the farm.
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I have a better idea. How about if we stop subsidzing the agricultural industry. Once our government stops maintaining an antiquated industry that is inefficient on a world market level, most of these jobs will dry up. If we actually let the market do its job, our country wouldn’t be involved in a labor-intensive industry like farming, and we wouldn’t need all the immigrants.
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the problem is, many of those welfare checks go to those whom are disabled and cant work, or dont have the money to go to school to get the skills to work since their disability limits their ability to work jobs that require little or no education (ie farm jobs).
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Abby, you are correct but that will never happen because farm subsidies are how politicians by votes from the people in the plains states.
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There we go — something we can all agree on. Those farm subsidies are the biggest boondoggle in the US, and outrageously distort a market that would work pretty well on its own.
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Publius, the last sentence in your first comment has a flagrant spelling error. Did you not learn proofreading in middle school?
My college history professor always told us that there were no such things as typos, just spelling errors.
Just a gentle reminder that we don’t really need acrimony and name calling in these discussions–you could adequately make your point without calling Sam “ignorant”.
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The farm subsidies are the worst government program in my mind. They benefit a very small portion of the population and the economy and they are the biggest sacred cow for some reason. The vast majority of representatives live in districts where these subsidies have no impact. Eliminating farm subsidies sounds like a good way to reign in the deficit and begin debt reduction.
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Don’t forget about AmTrak.
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Eh, I don’t know about Amtrak. We don’t expect Interstate highways to generate a profit.
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“If we actually let the market do its job, our country wouldn’t be involved in a labor-intensive industry like farming, and we wouldn’t need all the immigrants.”
You had me with the first half — I completely agree that farm subsidies need a complete revision. If we keep subsidizing the farming industry in some way, at least we should be subsidizing responsible, sustainable agriculture (ie family farms, organics, etc.) not Agribusiness.
But seriously, we shouldn’t as a country have anything to do with farming? That sounds like a recipe for disaster. First: do we want to be dependent on other countries for all our food supply? Second: do we want to be further dependent on fossil fuels to ship said food supply? Third: food is most nutritious and flavorful when it hasn’t traveled thousands of miles. (Hence, my love for local and organic food.)
Just some thoughts from a girl who grew up in an apple orchard. And whose home town is currently suffering from a lack of farm workers.
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Alright, lets start with the fact that we are completely inefficient in agricultural production. Basic economics dictates that America has a compartive advantage in highly educated workers, primarily in the service industry. That trend started way back in the beginning of the 20th century. By virtue of the fact that we don’t have cheap and abundant labor, we do not have a comparative advantage in farming.
Then lets move on to the fact that history dictates that an economy blossoms by moving from farming to manufacturing to service. That’s the natural progression of economic development. Therefore, other countries that rely on farming as a primary source of revenue are hurt because we subsidize our farmers, they produce too much, and we proceed to flood the international market with cheap produce, and what we don’t sell, we waste.
So we have two effects of our stupid agricultural subsidices: 1) inefficient production that lead to American consumers to have to pay more for food and 2) we are hurting the countries that actually rely on agriculture. (And of course our government counteracts this with copious international aid which is also STUPID).
As for buying local, you are free to do so. Those farmers are not recieving subsidices. And as for relying on other countries for our food, I personally don’t have a problem with that because I believe in the market, and I don’t have some sort of fear of impending trade malfunctions with Africa. It’s a ridiculous notion that we should try to be self-sufficient with food because that would lead to the presumption that we should be self-sufficient with everything else. We have a comparative advantage, lets use it and stop wasting money/resources on the damn agricultural industry.
Oh and frankly, I could care less about the oil situation. The cost of oil will rise accoding to supply, and that will be factored into the price of food, and the market will regulate itself. Maybe at that point, the market will dictate that it’s more beneficial to buy local produce, and like any other business, people will start growing crops.
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Amtrak is subsidized commuter rail. Highways allow for transport of goods and services as well as people. Not exactly apples to apples.
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So, hypothetically, you wouldn’t support government-subsidized roadways if they didn’t carry commercial traffic? Everyone should just pay for whatever roads he wants to use himself?
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Abby, thank you for breaking that down. I’ve got to agree with many of your points (especially that our buying food from outside markets helps those economies/populations). You reminded me of a section from The Ethics of Eating, and the problems that can come with insisting on buying local (if a local farmer grows food in a greenhouse through the winter, it can actually take *more* energy than to ship it from a country currently experiencing summer, etc.). But I do think food supplies are different from other imports, insofar as contamination becomes more of a factor… especially laws regulating pesticide use, additives, etc… because while I trust Africa isn’t going to stop selling to us, I don’t trust China *not* to add toxic chemicals to bulk up protein content. Between varying pesticide/purity standards and the failure of our FDA to inspect more than what, 1% of imports? I’ve got to say, I don’t really trust many imported products as much as the local ones.
But as you noted, if we continue to rely almost exclusively on oil that is not going to last much longer at current growth/consumption rates, this might become a non-issue. And in that event, I’ll certainly be glad that we haven’t made our domestic food system completely obsolete by importing all our products.