Thread: 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.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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.

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.

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?