If illegal immigrants go, produce prices would skyrocket

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If illegal immigrants go, produce prices would skyrocket
Orlando Sentinel
Mike Thomas

COMMENTARY

11:18 PM EDT, July 12, 2010

We are drawing up our own version of Arizona's immigration law.

Gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott — running on a platform that he will kick out more illegal immigrants than Bill McCollum — wants it passed in a special session this month.

Then we can get down to the round-up.

The problem is this. If we kicked out all the illegal workers today, Florida orange juice would cost $20 a gallon next week and probably be nonexistent next year. Our entire agricultural industry would collapse.

Here is why:

Kansas doesn't care about illegal workers. A farmer there simply hops into his combine harvester, slips some Pink Floyd in the CD player, heads out to the fields, and returns three hours later with 15,000 boxes of shredded wheat ready to go.

Florida farms, however, grow oranges, watermelon, beans, squash, tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and so on. These require pickin'.

That requires lots of bodies — bodies that climb, bend and stoop for 10 hours a day in the Florida heat with no overtime, no group health and no 401(k) plan.

Native-born Americans, wimps that we are, stopped doing this work long ago.

To prove that point, the United Farm Workers has begun a campaign called "Take Our Jobs,'' in which members of Congress are encouraged to refer their constituents to vacant farm jobs.

Even with unemployment close to 10 percent, there haven't been many takers.

There are no hard numbers for the number of illegal workers. I've heard that between 70 percent and 80 percent of the field hands are illegal.

They do the dirty work, dirt cheap. And then they turn the picked crops over to the legal workers — the truck drivers, the processors, the bottlers, the salesmen, the managers, the accountants, the marketers and so on.

There also are the mechanics who work on the trucks, the people who supply the farms with fertilizer, seeds, pesticides, irrigation, fences and machinery. There is the crop duster and the fruit inspector. There are the universities that provide the research. There are the government bureaucrats who live off the taxes.

If you think Florida is in bad shape now, subtract oranges and tomatoes from the economy.

So, can we pick the crops legally?

Well …

The government has created one of those Federal Bureaucracy Gone Wild programs. If a farm wants to hire an immigrant, it has to file multiple forms, pay fees, wrestle red tape, get hit with various costly and ridiculous requirements, and then go fetch him from across the border. It is one of those "We're from Earth and Washington is from Mars" deals.

So instead, the workers already here get bogus identification papers and the farms hire them. Don't ask, don't tell and pass the tomatoes.

This system is so big and so broken that the feds couldn't crack down if they wanted to. Crops would rot in the fields while paper-pushers at the U.S. Department of Labor drowned in application forms.

So I'm not seeing how the Arizona law fits in. It allows a cop who stops someone to question his legal status if the cop suspects he may be in the country illegally. Probable cause here would be any Hispanic with sweat on his brow and dirt on his hands.

There is a better solution pending in Congress. It is the AgJOBS bill.

It would allow farm workers who have a track record to get temporary worker status. For the next five years, they would work hard, pay fines for being here illegally at our wink-wink invitation, pay taxes and obey the law.

Then they would get permanent status, as in a green card. That would entitle them to keep picking our food for $10 an hour.

It's a win-win and has bipartisan support. One of the sponsors is Rep. Adam Putnam, a Republican running for commissioner of agriculture in Florida.

It would have passed by now except too many other Republicans are scared to death of supporting any bill that doesn't call for kicking down doors and pulling people out of cars.

Maybe a $40 salad bar would change their minds.
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BS!!! I think I'd rather grow my own fruits and vegetables. Actually, a $40 salad bar would be a hell of a lot cheaper than supporting one illegal on the public dole.

This is an outright lie. We were told that americans want cheap produce, well the illegals are still here and green peppers 2 days ago at walmart were $1.69 ea. in my area. How's that for the cheap produce we are able to get due to illegal immigration. The price has more than doubled.

Then they would get permanent status, as in a green card.

No Permanent status to anyone who disrespected our laws and sovereignty...And certainly NO voting rights for those same people...

Let's see here, cost of tomatoes double, however cost of health care, food stamp program,public school cost, etc, etc, go down, OK I will take higher cost of produce. Thanks the choice. :x

Quote:

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bodies that climb, bend and stoop for 10 hours a day in the Florida heat with no overtime, no group health and no 401(k) plan.

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Yeah but when you get amnesty you gotta pay ALL those things, then
what? You might as well pay American workers cus you're gonna have
the ACLU, La Raza and every civil rights and union group breathing down
your back making sure you treat and pay those wink-wink workers fairly.

Employers of illegals don't understand how bad they're gonna get screwed
if CIR ever passes.

Def

Our FL Legislature is in Special Session (because of the oil spill) today and are expected to try and pass an Immigration law similar to AZ's in the coming weeks. :)

Will it pass ? Maybe since our Legislature knows most Floridians favor a AZ type law.. They know their political life may be on the line come Nov. if they oppose IA reform law.

And as soon as they're legalized, most farmworkers leave agriculture for other fields, mostly construction and manufacturing.

Last I looked all the produce here is from Mexico and South America.

EXCEPT for my home garden.

I make it a point NOT to buy produce from Mexico.

For one thing, labor cost is not the entire cost of farming. They want us to think that produce would go up like ten times if there were legal workers. This is bs. The wage would not go up ten times, so why should the cost of produce? It might go up 20 percent. So what? It goes up anyway.

Most of the "farmers" are really corporations that stole the farming industry from the American family farmer back in the 80's. Those corporations charge whatever they can get for the produce. They dont pass on savings because of low labor costs to the consumer. Produce is perishable....they have to sell it for what the market will bear. But they are already selling it for what the market will bear, so I dont see it going higher because of increased labor costs....or not much higher anyway.

If they cant sell it, it will rot....so they have to sell it. They cant raise the price that much because we can all just grow our own if it come to that. What will happen is the corporations will make less money. So what? Also, if we have local growers, then we can just pick our own. That is really the best thing...to have local growers. If these corporations are so worried about labor costs why dont they just let people come in and pick their own?

And the savings from the federal handout programs will drop in the billions.
send them home! stop all incentives.
feed the families of 17. millions unemployed Americans. That'st who I support.!
This country is failing it's own peolpe who need us now more than ever.
no amnesty .

Most of the fruit being produced in the USA is sold out of the US. All of the fruit and vegies we get here in Texas come from Mexico and Central America. Fruit and vegie producers need cheep labor so they can afford to sell their products for foreign markets. They will do fine if they sell their fruit and vegies here and get rid of their slave labor.

Let's deport all illegal aliens along with their anchors and see if prices skyrocket :roll: I'd take the risk. :D

Yeah, I live in Michigan where we grow gobs and gobs of cherries. Yet when I went to the local WalMart, the cherries were from Washington State and $2.48/lb. Why is that? Could the price be high because those darn cherries were carried 2,500 miles?

The lead story should be IF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS GO, WAGES FOR AMERICAN WORKERS WILL SKYROCKET........ :o :!:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by topsecret10

The lead story should be IF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS GO, WAGES FOR AMERICAN WORKERS WILL SKYROCKET........ :o :!:

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LOL....that's the REAL story!

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That requires lots of bodies — bodies that climb, bend and stoop for 10 hours a day in the Florida heat with no overtime, no group health and no 401(k) plan.

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So when these workers are sick or injured on the job, they use our medical services for free. Would we rather pay more for produce or subsidize employers so they can have cheap labor. While ethical employers pay these costs, employers of illegals rely on taxpayers to provide necessary benefits to their illegal employees.

Quote:
"Kansas doesn't care about illegal workers. A farmer there simply hops into his combine harvester, slips some Pink Floyd in the CD player, heads out to the fields, and returns three hours later with 15,000 boxes of shredded wheat ready to go."

Reply:
Unfortunately for U.S. citizen workers who used to be able to command hourly wages of $14.50 and up in addition to full benefits and regularly-inspected working conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, Kansas cares a great deal about, if not illegal workers, at least cheaper foreign ones. Beside wheat, Kansas is a major producer of beef cattle, and Dodge City, KS, is one of many centers in the middlewest which is home to major meat packing plants. The mayor of Dodge City is now, I believe, of Spanish descent, and the population of the nearby smaller town of Ulysses, KS, where I spent time as a child, is now to my amazement listed as "49% Hispanic". And, while financially conservative, Kansans pride themselves on being liberal and compassionate on "civil rights" and its related "social issues", which ethno-centric national special interest groups unfortunately have managed to turn the question of illegal immigration into whenever possible. This has brought little "compassion" to U.S. citizens and legal residents who have been displaced from formerly good jobs in U.S. meatpacking facilities by imported foreign workers, both legal and illegal.

observations from a state native

And, the more the use of foreign workers, both legal and illegal, replaces native U.S. workers and serves to depresses wage scales across the board throughout the country for those who are employed, obviously the more that everyone will feel any price increase. However, I have read in other places that these predictions of "$5.00 lettuce", etc. that always are made at any suggestion that we enforce U.S. immigration laws either are grossly inflated or simply untrue.

They are forgetting the law of supply and demand. If prices go too high, no one buys. The price then must come down or growers go out of business. They also forget that thousands of small local farms will fill the gaps.
Part of the issue with the take our jobs idea is that millions have office jobs. These folks have never worked in a field and have never worked hard. It would be close to murder to put these guys out to pick tomatoes. There are probably lots of college age kids who need work, but the farmers want more permanent workers
I would expect qualified young men on unemployment assistance to be sent to fill these jobs, if they are physically able. We have got to stop the something for nothing mentality that has gripped this country.