Thread: Immigration Debate Has Significant Effect on U.S. Farms

Ongoing Immigration Debate Has Significant Effect on U.S. Farms
11-02-07 -

One California farmer got so fed up he moved his whole operation south of the border.

"The sad thing is I have to complete my American dream in Mexico because our government and our Congress don't have the will or the fortitude to take a known problem which is immigration and fix it," said Steve Scaroni, Valley Harvesting and Packing.

Scaroni moved his lettuce growing operation to Mexico because he could not find enough workers back home.

Immigration crackdowns and limits on the number of guest workers made labor scarce.

Scaroni now employs close to 500 workers on his lands and packing plant in central Mexico.

While labor is cheaper in Mexico, Scaroni says his costs are higher.

He spends about $10m a year to run his farm in Mexico.
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?secti ... id=5738327

While labor is cheaper in Mexico, Scaroni says his costs are higher.

And the point of moving was what??????

"The sad thing is I have to complete my American dream in Mexico because our government and our Congress don't have the will or the fortitude to take a known problem which is immigration and fix it," said Steve Scaroni, Valley Harvesting and Packing.

Wrong again steve. You had to move your farm to mexico because you wanted to be closer to the supply of cheap labor with the sole intention of increasing your profits, nothing more.
The current Ag visas allow for an UNLIMITED amount of workers to be brought in. The catch for the employer is that they have to provide healthcare and pay for housing costs.
Don't throw your stupid corporate farm rhetoric at us senior steve because you're full of crap.
And don't tell us that food costs are going to go skyrocket w/o the use of cheap labor because it simply isn't true. The University of Iowa did a study to debunk this crap almost ten years ago.

http://www.therationalradical.com/docum ... orkers.htm

http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=9357

http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=9380

If I find out that there are any vegetables coming out of Mexico I don't buy them plain and simple. It is just to dangerous to eat vegetables that are contaminated, just as it is to eat any food being prepared by Mexico or illegal immigrants. Just as it is dangerous now to by toys and dog food coming out of China, it is just as deadly in Mexico. I find it two faced that the media refuses to link China and Mexico as one in the same.

Good ridence!! We don't need anymore traitors here, I hope they build track home on your land in the U.S.. Most of my Veggies don't come from the United States anyway!!


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While labor is cheaper in Mexico, Scaroni says his costs are higher.

Yeah, those graft payments are a bitch, eh Steve?

Lettuce has NO NUTRITIONAL VALUE WHATSOEVER. LOL!

I think this farmer's problem is not immigration; he just has no acumen for business!

Offshoring farms
U.S. growers use Mexican land to avoid immigration trouble
12:00 AM CDT on Thursday, November 1, 2007
From Wire Reports Julia Preston, New York Times News Service

CELAYA, Mexico – California farmer Steve Scaroni looked across a luxuriant field of lettuce in central Mexico and liked what he saw: full-strength crews of Mexican farm workers with no immigration problems.

Farming since he was a teenager, Mr. Scaroni, 50, built a $50 million business growing lettuce and broccoli in California, relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexicans and many probably in the United States illegally.

But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields here. Now some 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk of deportation.

"I'm as American red-blood as it gets," Mr. Scaroni said, "but I'm tired of fighting the fight on the immigration issue."

A sense of crisis prevails among American farmers who rely on immigrant laborers, moreso since immigration legislation in the Senate failed in June and authorities announced a crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants.

Western Growers, an association representing farmers in California and Arizona, conducted an informal telephone survey of its members in the spring. Twelve large agribusinesses that acknowledged having operations in Mexico reported a total of 11,000 workers here.

"It seems there is a bigger rush to Mexico and elsewhere," said Tom Nassif, the Western Growers president, who said Americans were also farming in Central American countries.

Precise statistics are not readily available on American farming in Mexico. But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., displayed a map on the Senate floor in July locating more than 46,000 acres that American growers are cultivating in Guanajuato and Baja California.

She predicted that more American farmers would move to Mexico for the workforce and lower wages. Ms. Feinstein favored a measure in the failed immigration bill that would have created a guest worker program for agriculture and a special legal status for illegal immigrant farm workers.

In the past, some Americans have planted south of the border to escape spiraling land prices and to ensure year-round deliveries of crops they could produce only seasonally in the United States. But in the last three years, Mr. Nassif and other growers said, labor force uncertainties have become a major reason why more farmers have shifted to Mexico.

While Mexico benefits with the latest U.S. technology and techniques, economists say that thousands of middle-class jobs supporting agriculture are being lost in the United States.

Tromping through one of his first lettuce crops near Celaya, an agribusiness hub in the state of Guanajuato, Mr. Scaroni is more candid than many farmers about his move here. He had made six trips to Washington, he said, to plead with Congress to provide more legal immigrants for agriculture.

"I have a customer base that demands we produce and deliver product every day. They don't want to hear the excuses." Without legal workers in California, he said, "I have no choice but to offshore my operation."
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... b33c3.html

Let them move to Mexico and maybe we can stop handing out BILLIONS to these corporate farmers. Who cares.....they have expanded planting in the U.S. even as they complain about labor and then they wind up selling off huge surpluses on the world market.

Help the family farmers and let these fat cat, rich corporate types move!

They already grow too much and everytime I look at a vegetable, it's from South America or Mexico!