How Should Agriculture Deal With Immigration?

[elcheapo]

BA you are right about the costumes they were wearing......even i find that in bad taste.

Imagine you got your grandkids laying on the carpet, watching the tv, and here they come on the tv.......

so grandpa BA is in his lazy boy in the living room with the tv on, and that pops on, and they all look up

and say "grandpa what's a xxxxxx ?"

that's when grandpa BA hollers out  GRANDMA !

You really think that if you pay them enough they will move there.......so what are you telling me, us down here need

to start with $100k, free house, utilities, health insurance, retirement and a vehicle ????????

dang......think i'll apply !!

[BA Deere]

I know the other day was Valentines, but my kids are in high school and college, I better not be a grandpa yet  🙂  I`m too young!  If one day the Grandkids see some filthy liberals on tv, I`ll just tell `em the truth, that they are dressed up like the backend of a cow, which no offense to a bovine but that is what they are...cunning twits.  And Grandpa wasted too much time arguing with them on a place called the Ag Forum   🙂

Now ElCheapo I don`t know where you are, I`m guessing a 1500 population town in Kansas, you`ve lamented many times how there aren`t any ice cream socials and community dances.  Well imagine yourself as a 18yr old, make you best case has to why you should stay in a small rural town where the average age is 58, the average wage is $13/hr and there are 10% more males to females....well???

Years ago a guy wrote to Dear Abby asking how to meet women in a "one horse town"?  Well, she said "Put a saddle on that one horse and ride it to the city"     so there you go.  There`s only so many feed truck drivers that are needed in a small rural community and when the young people graduate in their class of 25, they can`t wait to get out, you can`t blame them. 

When I moved to "this farm" in the late 80`s I drove by a nice country church, Sundays it was full of new Cadillacs, Lincolns and Buicks.  I thought "God is really blessing these people if I find a gal and get religion i`m going to that church!".   Well nearly 30 years later the church is closed, the kids graduated and moved away, the parents are in the nursing home or have a grave plot out back...that church in the community is a victim of it`s own success.  They raised decent, smart kids that moved away for more opportunities.

I see small businesses that open in the old closed hardware stores and banks on mainstreet, gun stores, fiberglass businesses, destination restaurants, stock car builders try to make it in those old buildings, some do, some don`t.  Bless them because they give employment opportunity to the few young people that stay, but they aren`t going to get rich, they might find a gal that works at the elevator and buy a fixer-upper house and their kids will be bussed to the consolidated school in the next town 15 miles away. 

Rural development is drastically needed, good high skilled technical jobs that will utilize these great smart kids that come from these small schools.  After a 2 yr stint in a community college, they can come back and raise a family in the fresh country air.  Then ElCheapo you will see ice cream socials, parades and community dances, but they need employment that they can start a family with.

[sw363535]

not mentioned in this thread........ the federal government openly(pre trump) and regularly forced UN refugees on the meat packing industry.  If you'd like to spend your working hours next a nonenglish speaking samalian with a knife, the job pays pretty good.

I'm sure he is a sweetheart, but the administrations contributions to the industry also make that employer a little less atractive.

Sometimes we all (agriculture and health care) need to step back away from our front row seat  and see the picture with a little more of a "worldly" perspective.  Contrary to what some in congress believe, most of the world does not live under our bill of rights. But would do a "dirty" job to get the chance.  The jobs the nurse is looking at are middle class jobs on a world view perspective.

I don't think we should illiminate entry level jobs( as we are destined to do with technology and the add on costs of labor).  We have the steps in place to move up in this society... not true in other parts of the world.... When we illiminate entry level jobs we take away the steps to exit poverty.  

[ncwinn54]

The seasonal guys like tobacco have their H2a visa system.  It is the year-round positions, like in livestock and packing, that suffer the most. 

We need to establish a true guestworker program, so that jobs can be filled, and somehow limit the "anchor baby" tide that comes with many immigrants.   Perhaps the thing to do is document them, and pass legislation that says the opffspring of a guestworker is deeme foreign-born. 

This is the issue that Europe has filled with immigrant Muslims, which is largely biting them in the *****. 

[sw363535]

Also seldom addressed ---- The real cost of labor to the employer... a $13 an hour job on the "line"  What is the real cost to the employer in mandated costs.... I would off the cuff guess that it is probably close to $20 an hour or closer to $24.  Will the robot that eventually takes that job need a mandated paid prayer service, a union or medical care on site?  Would the foreign worker say keep your retirement and benefits and give me $20 an hour if he had the choice?

These are interesting times and our attitude on the workplace and its confliction with technology will be interesting to watch.

I was in South Africa a few years ago and watched a modern green sprayer using gps spraying just a 1/4 mile away from crops being planted by hand by crews of women,  every seed one finger at a time... By law a farmer there could not buy a JD planter because it displaced jobs for the poor.  But a sprayer was ok.  

We might get to see something similar in the US eventually.... Laws against technology....

[sw363535]

Kay you tough on lots and good comments.

The do nothing politics needs to address a lot of things ....... we talk about amnestys and documenting, a wall, and controling borders and can never get around to the real issue of the immigration laws that have not been updated in 100+ years.

I applaud something we have not seen in several administrations..... an attempt to enforce our immig. laws.  There are so many illegal issues it just gets bigger and bigger.

If a young couple legal wants to make $80-90K a year it is easy as BA pointed out and I saw several doing this this last year.

The husband works and at that $13-15 an hour level can gross $40K a year working less than 60 hour weeks. Husband gets medical for himself only.  "friend" living with --not married---has three children and applies for social benefits under all the single parent programs possible'-- takes care of all herself and children through public health clinics.......

I wont list all  and Im sure some of it is illegal.... 

But who's inforcing...........

[Blacksandfarmer]

Two key points to ponder. 

1) A worker from Mexico comes to the U.S to work "low" paying jobs along side American workers, but at the end of the season, that immigrant returns to Mexico and the "low" wages earned in America are nearly doubled with the difference in currency. The only loser is the American working for low wages with a much higher cost of living than the Mexican immigrant. 

2) Money isn't everything. If you pay $30 an hour, but you expect somebody to work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, 52 weeks a year on a farm that isn't theirs, you will struggle to find help. 

[JimMeade]

As long as we are using illegal, refugee or other low priced labor, we are relying on new workers routinely.  The children of the people on the kill floor will not bleed hogs; they'll drive trucks or run a roach coach; their children will go to college.  So we always need more cheap labor.

[BA Deere]

This "anchor baby" issue is really a bunch of crap, okay someone comes over here ILLEGALY in other words they are felons and they drop a dozen kids while here illegally and those kids become magically citizens...gimmee a break!   That`s a bigger problem than those sneaking in here...and it`s not Constitutional. 

Open border proponents will point to the 14th amendment, now if a French couple vacationing here has a baby in the US, that baby is a French citizen and will go back home to France with it`s parents. Only a group of judges as insane as the "9th Circus" could glean that felons birthing a baby here would make that baby a citizen.  The original intent of the 14th amendment was to insure that the children of slaves would be citizens after the Civil War.   But perhaps congress had better clarify the 14th while we still have a majority of sane people in government and can accomplish it.

https://thebottomlineusa.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/history-original-intent-and-the-14th-amendment/  

Proponents of Birthright Citizenship claim that when the 14^th amendment says “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” it means that all you have to do is be born in this country because everyone is subject to the jurisdiction of America’s laws. On the surface it seems like a pretty sound argument, which is why even Republicans are talking about fixing this problem by repealing the 14^th amendment, but what they don’t realize it that the amendment need not be repealed; it only needs to be understood correctly, and to do this one must go back and look at the original intent of the author.

In 1997, Edward J. Erler gave testimony before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims in Congress. In doing so he quoted Sen. Jacob Howard (the author of the 14^th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause) about what the meaning of “Subject to the jurisdiction thereof” actually is:

“[E]very person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country.” (Howard) (3)

[ncwinn54]

This isn't just poor, illegal immigrants busting our citizenship system, though.  Wealthy Chinese and other nationalities utilize it, to be assured of a stable place to go, our preferential treatment for their offspring down the line, when citizenship might count more...say, in terms of college admittance, high-paying employment, etc. 

Just the chaos of this immigration ban for one example: What if you have grown up in one of those seven nations, but ARE an American citizen, by virtue of birthplace alone?    Nobody can keep you out.