Thread: Comparing apples, oranges and pears

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Comparing apples, oranges and pears
By Dan Moffett

HASH(0x145bfc

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Congress has not passed an immigration bill this year and probably won't. But the mere talk of closing the Southwest border and cracking down on illegal workers has been enough to have a dramatic impact on businesses across the country.

The New York Apple Association reports a "crisis situation" because of a 30 percent decline in the migrant labor force that threatens to leave fruit rotting on the trees, despite growers' willingness to pay pickers up to $13 an hour.

The California Farm Bureau Federation reports as much as a 20 percent reduction in employment of farmworkers - a shortage of about 70,000 - during the peak of the harvest season. Pear growers near San Francisco might have had a record year but could not find enough workers to pick the fruit before it was too late. Strawberry farmers have plowed under crops, and vineyards have grapes dying on the vine.

In South Texas, there aren't enough workers to get the onion harvest out of the ground. "We're seeing the wolf at the door," Texas Produce Association president John McClung told The Associated Press. The Potato Growers of Idaho say their workforce is down 18 percent. In Kentucky, the tobacco crop is burning up in the fields. The Wind River Mushroom Farm in Wyoming is closing because it can't find workers.

In Florida, Miami-Dade farmers are signing empty grocery bags and sending them to Congress with messages of support for a federal guest-worker program. Citrus growers face millions in losses if they can't overcome labor shortages soon. Belle Glade farmers lost hundreds of acres of corn this year because no one came to pick them.

Precise numbers don't exist, but the estimate is about 75 percent of the nation's 2.5 million farmworkers are here illegally. So far, only a small percentage - certainly less than 10 percent - of the illegal workers have left farming for other jobs, returned home or gone underground. Yet, they leave a powerful warning.

As much as the wolf at the door, this is the canary in the mine shaft. Again, Congress hasn't done anything yet. Most of the reaction so far is over what might happen. Federal immigration officials made a series of highly publicized sweeps of job sites this year, deporting illegal workers and arresting employers. The intimidating effect of the sweeps is apparent now in Florida's orange groves, California's pear orchards and what's in between.

The American Farm Bureau says if the government doesn't go beyond border enforcement and find a way for immigrants to work here legally, "the impact on fruit and vegetable farmers nationwide would be between $5 billion and $9 billion annually."

Beyond agriculture, business leaders along the Gulf Coast are committing millions to recruit and train up to 20,000 new construction workers by 2009 to help the rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina. The Louisiana Legislature will spend $15 million on training. The immigrants who were supposed to anchor rebuilding have migrated elsewhere to lower-profile jobs.

The National Restaurant Association is urging lawmakers to create a program that would allow undocumented workers to earn green cards. The government issues only 10,000 cards for service-industry workers each year. "Over the next decade," the NRA says, "the number of jobs in the food service business will grow one-and-a-half times as fast as the U.S. labor force."

Nick Vojnovic, chairman of the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association, says his members have to have foreign workers. "Immigrants are the lifeblood of our industry," he told Nation's Restaurant News. "Florida's unemployment rate is 2.8 percent. We've had stores unable to open because there aren't any workers."

There is an inescapable reality Americans will learn as the contentious debate in Washington sets off angry brush fires in communities across the country: The U.S. economy cannot sustain itself without immigrant labor. Congress can't build a wall high enough or long enough to change that.

Well, I guess those farmers need to increase their wages to get the crops out of the fields. Waaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Someone please tell me where all the picker jobs are in Miami-Dade. I searched three papers for a job. Didn't find a single one for picker or farm labor. If they need pickers, why aren't they advertising in the job section of the newspaper?

Miami Herald www.miami.com/
South Florida Sun-Sentinel www.sun-sentinel.com/
Miami New Times www.miaminewtimes.com/

Did find one for Mixon Fruit Farms but they were not looking for pickers.

Oh, cherry pickers are not farm labor, they are lift opperators.

Dixie

"Why aren't they advertising in the newspaper?"

Good question. My guess is that the ads would be read by Americans and they might apply for the jobs because the farmers prefer foreign illegal labor. They could hire Americans or they could fill out their forms and get Legal Foreign Labor in any quantity they want, but obviously they want neither. They want specifically foreign illegal Third World labor.

Farm Bureau...hmmm....Globalist, huh? Global Farm Bureau. Oooh...lots of members.

Ugh!

despite growers' willingness to pay pickers up to $13 an hour.

What is the average wage?

Up to 13 an hour--that's the problem, none of them will earn over 9 or 10. It should state starting at 13 an hour. AG jobs will have to compete with construction jobs and at the same wage.

I think from some articles I've read it's by the bushel and if you're really, really fast....it equals up to a certain price. I don't remember where I read it.....but it was an article about some teens who tried to do it and when they picked it the most they averaged was minimum wage for their efforts. Even around here at pizza joints and such they will advertise for drivers saying earn up to 15. and hour. But that's an extreemly busy day with half the drivers not showing up an unusually high tip day and doesn't include all the gas you had to buy. As with anything.....experience makes you faster so the highest wage would probably be earned by one that's done it for years in perfect conditions and not the norm.

Dixie: The only reason you can't find those jobs in the newspaper is because you looked in the English ones. They might have ads in the Spanish version of The Miami Herald or Sun-Sentinel or have them in obscure papers aimed at those from Mexico or Central America. The problem for the farmers is all the construction jobs out there that pay more. Then there were multiple ICE raid where many illegals got caught. This scared them and many of them did not show up to work or went elsewhere where they thought it was safer. In South Miami and Dade County in general there are areas where they lineup in the mornings looking for employers who need workers. They are then taken to the job so there is not too much advertising. Almost all the advertising is by word of mouth within the Hispanic community and the rest of the people who would do the work for $13 an hour never hear about it. Maybe we should start complaining about this discrimination.

It wouldn't suprise me if this is the case, the Miami Herald and other major newspapers printing in latin, exclusively for the latin. This would be discrimination big time. My signature says the rest.

If that is not bad enough, in todays Sun-Sentinel there is an article on how Broward County has to have assistance for Hispanic voters on election day as they have not yet complied to the law on that. What about them complying to using the official language: ENGLISH!