Thread: Losing immigrant workers would double milk prices

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Farmers who want to hire foreign workers are advised to hire a labor lawyer to handle it because if you make a mistake either the government fines you and/or the workers sue you for something. The farmer has to pay for work permits, visas, etc. transportation, housing and utilities for workers. JD2
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"The minimum wage you pay H-2A workers is higher than minimum wage for domestic workers," Breaux said, "so people don't bring in visa workers to get cheaper workers."

H-2A employees are not paid overtime, however, because agriculture is exempt from overtime pay. They also are exempt from Social Security and Medicaid taxes, but not from state and federal taxes if they earn more than $3,900.

In addition to paying higher wages, farmers must bear the costs of visa fees, passports and transportation from their home country to the work area and back home at the end of the work, and provide free, inspected housing and utilities for H-2A workers.


"By the time you pay all that, that worker becomes expensive," Breaux said.


Thousands of migrant workers make trek to Louisiana's farms on temporary visas

Why does someone think minimum wage is the standard for this type of hard work? It's not, so any time you hear one of these foreign worker advocates claiming they're paying foreign workers more than the minimum wage, just remember, minimum wage is not the wage standard, prevailing wage is the wage standard, and THAT is the wage these growers are trying to beat because that is the standard from which they save by hiring foreign workers over American Workers.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

When native unemployed people are referred to North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA), they're almost without exception hired; between 1998 and 2011, 97 percent of referred applicants were hired. But they don't tend to last. In 2011, 245 people were hired out of 268 referred, but only 163 (66.5 percent) of the hired applicants actually showed up to the first day of work. Worse, only seven lasted to the end of the growing season . . .

It seems clear that it would take a quite large increase in agricultural wages to get native workers to do these jobs, an increase that could very well put the farms in question out of business . . .

North Carolina needed 6,500 farm workers. Only 7 Americans stuck it out.

@ http://www.alipac.us/f9/carson-%96-%...k-jobs-323305/

This is outrageous pro-foreign worker propaganda and isn't true at all.