Thread: Americans show little interest in jobs created by Ala.'s law

Americans show little interest in jobs created by Ala.'s immigration law, those who do quit

ALICIA A. CALDWELL Associated Press
First Posted: October 20, 2011 - 5:42 pm
Last Updated: October 20, 2011 - 5:42 pm

ONEONTA, Ala. — Potato farmer Keith Smith saw most of his Hispanic workers leave after Alabama's tough immigration law took effect, so he hired Americans. It hasn't worked out: They show up late, work slower than seasoned farm hands and are ready to call it a day after lunch or by midafternoon. Some quit after a single day.

In Alabama and other parts of the country, farmers must look beyond the nation's borders for labor because many Americans simply don't want the backbreaking, low-paying jobs immigrants are willing to take. Politicians who support the law say over time more unemployed Americans will fill these jobs. They insist it's too early to consider the law a failure, yet numbers from the governor's office show only nominal interest.

"I've had people calling me wanting to work," Smith said. "I haven't turned any of them down, but they're not any good. It's hard work, they just don't work like the Hispanics with experience."

Alabama passed its law in June and it was immediately challenged by the Obama administration as it has been in other states. Unlike those states' measures, Alabama's law was left largely in place while challenges played out in court, frightening Hispanics and driving many of them away.

The agriculture industry suffered the most immediate impact. Farmers said they will have to downsize or let crops die on the vine. As the season's harvest winds down, many are worried about next year.

In south Georgia, Connie Horner has heard just about every reason unemployed Americans don't want to work on her blueberry farm. It's hot, the hours are long, the pay isn't enough and it's just plain hard.

"You can't find legal workers," Horner said. "Basically they last a day or two, literally."

Horner, who runs an 8½-acre organic blueberry farm, said she tried to use the government's visa program to hire foreign workers, but it was too costly and time consuming.

She plans to stop growing organically and start using a machine to pick the berries.

"I did everything I possibly could to be legal and honest and not part of the problem," Horner said. "Morally, I can't knowingly hire illegal workers."

Gov. Robert Bentley, a Republican who signed the law, started a program last week to help businesses, particularly farmers, make up for the lost labor. So far, about 260 people interested in temporary agricultural jobs have signed up. About three dozen of them have been hired, said Tara Hutchison, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations. She didn't know whether any had quit.

Sen. Scott Beason, a Republican, said he has received several emails and phone calls from people thanking him for helping them get jobs. He described one getting promoted from a part-time job with no benefits to a full-time job with benefits because some other immigrant workers left. He said none of the workers who thanked him have wanted to talk to the media.

"They are paranoid of publicity. They are like, 'I don't want to get shredded up like y'all are.' ... I really can't blame them," he said.

Over the past two weeks, The Associated Press has reached out to the governor's office and other officials to provide the names of Alabama residents who have taken immigrant jobs. Either they were not made available, or didn't want to speak publicly.

Brent Martin, an Alabama resident, started working on a tomato farm in an area northeast of Birmingham after the law was passed. On Thursday, he and two other Americans were clearing about 24,000 tomato stakes off a 4-acre plot. He said few Americans who would stick with it.

"There are plenty who could do it, but would they? I don't know about that. I don't see why they wouldn't as bad as the economy is right now," Martin said.

Relatively high unemployment rates — about 9 percent in the U.S. and 9.9 in Alabama — are not likely to push Americans toward farm work, said Demetrios Papademetriou, president and co-founder of the Migration Policy Institute. He suggested the problem may be more deeply rooted.

"This is a sector and an industry ... that a long time ago, going back to the 1940s and probably before that was abandoned," Papademetriou said. "It was abandoned to foreign workers."

Stan Eury, executive director of the North Carolina Growers Association, said location matters, too.

"Agriculture jobs are primarily in remote, rural areas. We see higher numbers of unemployed people in the big cities," he said.

Tomato farmer Wayne Smith said he has never been able to keep a staff of American workers in his 25 years of farming.

"People in Alabama are not going to do this," said Smith, who grows about 75 acres of tomatoes in the northeast part of the state. "They'd work one day and then just wouldn't show up again."

At his farm, field workers get $2 for every 25-pound box of tomatoes they fill. Skilled pickers can make anywhere from $200 to $300 a day, he said.

Unskilled workers make much less.

A crew of four Hispanics can earn about $150 each by picking 250-300 boxes of tomatoes in a day, said Jerry Spencer, of Grow Alabama, which purchases and sells locally owned produce. A crew of 25 Americans recently picked 200 boxes — giving them each $24 for the day.

It may make sense for some to sit on the couch. Unemployment benefits provide up to $265 a week while a minimum wage job, at $7.25 an hour for 40 hours, brings in $290.

Spencer said the Americans he has linked up with farmers are not physically fit and do not work fast enough.

"It's the harshest work you can imagine doing," Spencer said.
___

Caldwell reported from Washington. Phillip Rawls in Montgomery also contributed to this report.

http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/ ... ation-Law/

Obama wants his voter base nice and fat for slaughter!

No they aren't going to work as long as they are being paid not to work.

You have to train the Americans who have been shut out of this work for over 70 years. There's plenty of Americans who can and will learn how to pick tomatoes if given the chance, training and tips to do so. But you have to show them how to do it. Hiring them cold with no training or tips, letting them fail because they aren't doing it right and then calling the press is just so typical of this foreign farming operation we have here in the United States it makes me want to puke.

Americans have to get in shape, train their muscles, get over the soreness, acclimate to the heat, and all of that. You think my Dad's boilermaker union could take greenhorns off the street and put them on a scaffolding in 105 degree heat working with a welder and a rivet machine 100 feet in the air and declare success for the new guy the first 2 or 3 days? HECK NO!

Well, it's no different in farming. And trying to embarrass and humiliate our workers based on some alleged racist physical trait and work advantage of illegal aliens is well ... just plain racist. We go from blacks being the only ones that can take the heat and hard work during our slavery period to illegal hispanics being the only ones that can take the heat and hard work during our illegal period.

The problem isn't the workers and never was. The problem is the farmers who want anyone except a free legal worker and will stoop to any level to try to run their farms with illegal labor, and the more they talk and whine about it, the bigger a national disgrace it becomes.

Americans will do the work. Just show them how to do it or give them time to figure it out themselves.

Why is welfare paying people to sit on their ass in the big city? Move these people to the farms. Why were the migrants makin $150 a day and Americans only making $24 for the same amount? It has nothing to do with the work, it's the pay. Why is it okay to exploit illegals? If I can make $150-$200 a day, sign me up, I've broken my back for a lot less. Watch the movie "Grapes of Wrath" with Henry Fonda. Government and farmers working together putting people to work. Also shows how greedy farm owners can be without government intervention. The diffrence between now and then? WELFARE!

Originally Posted by cjnoho

. . . Why were the migrants makin $150 a day and Americans only making $24 for the same amount? . . .

Because a crew of 4 Mexicans picked 250-300 boxes in a day

and a crew of 25 Americans picked 200 boxes.

If you split the money 4 ways everyone gets more money than if you have to split it 25 ways.

A crew of four Hispanics can earn about $150 each by picking 250-300 boxes of tomatoes in a day, said Jerry Spencer, of Grow Alabama, which purchases and sells locally owned produce.

A crew of 25 Americans recently picked 200 boxes — giving them each $24 for the day.