Thread: Effects of Crackdown on Illegals

http://www.11alive.com/news/news_articl ... ryid=76507

Provided By: The Associated Press
Last Modified: 2/22/2006 4:53:57 PM

By RUSS BYNUM
Associated Press Writer

LYONS, Ga. (AP) -- Every spring, farmer Paul Gore hires about 175 workers to harvest his Vidalia onion crop. Almost all of them are migrants, most from Mexico -- but how many are in the U.S. legally, Gore admits he's not really sure.

"A guy comes to your office and brings his Social Security and his Green Card, it figures he's legal," Gore said Wednesday. "But I don't know if it's real or not."

As Georgia lawmakers consider proposals to crack down on illegal immigration, and tougher federal standards loom, growers of Georgia's prized Vidalia onion and other crops worry that tougher enforcement could dry up their labor pools.

About 55 farmers and other agricultural employers gathered Wednesday for a U.S. Department of Labor seminar on migrant worker issues. They said they're making extra effort to follow the letter of the law.

The problem is illegal workers easily slip through the cracks using fake Green Cards and other forged documents -- and the farmers need those migrants to stay in business.

"The bottom line is if we don't have migrant labor available to us, we won't be able to harvest our crops," said Ronnie Mcleod, who grows Vidalias, corn and soybean on 1,000 acres in Tattnall County. "We'd be out of business without the migrant help."

Like his fellow farmers, Mcleod says he asks each of his workers for documentation to show they can legally work in the U.S. The federal government requires employers to fill out a form for each employee showing they checked.

But chances are, even when migrants show employers their documentation, those workers are still illegal, said Scott McCormack, senior special agent for U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement in Savannah.

"Most of the documents are going to be false," McCormack said.

Still, the government doesn't expect farmers and other employers to play detective in snooping out fake Green Cards and other IDs. As long as they file the proper paperwork, they're not penalized for getting duped.

"Immigration does not expect you to pull out a magnifying glass and quiz people," McCormack told the seminar group Wednesday. "We just want you to fill out the form."

But the current system, in which employers can essentially hire illegal immigrants while following the letter of the law, may soon hit a snag.

In 2007, resident aliens seeking work will be required to have Green Cards adopted in the late 1990s that are practically impossible to fake -- on the back, each has tiny images of every U.S. president from George Washington to Bill Clinton.

"If they start requiring us to send them a register of the Green Cards, we're in trouble," Mcleod said. "I'd have to go out of business."

Meanwhile, state lawmakers are debating a sweeping immigration bill that, among other things, seeks to punish employers of illegal aliens through the tax code. Employers would be prohibited from claiming tax deductions for wages migrant workers without proof of their legal status.

R.T. Stanley, who hires almost all migrants to harvest his 1,000 acre Vidalia onion crop, said he's afraid tougher immigration laws will scare away as many legal migrants as illegal ones.

Anticipating a crackdown, a number of farmers said they're considering enrollment in a government program where workers in Mexico get a special visa to work for a single employer, with a strict contract guaranteeing their wages and limiting how long they can work in the U.S.

It's more costly, requiring employers have to pay higher wages than the $5.15-an-hour minimum wage. Alex Cornelius, a blueberry farmer from Maynor, said he's looking into the visa program to avoid any potential trouble with illegal workers. But that would also mean raising the price of his crop.

"You need a higher return -- that's the bottom line," he said. "You're going to have to sell your produce for more money."

I can honestly say that I would prefer the higher prices.

Me too pinestrawguys. I don't see how paying a few cents more per pound of tomatoes could possibly cost us as much as supporting 20,000,000 illegal aliens.

You've been paying higher prices all along, only they were hidden in the higher taxes you pay to support the social costs of supporting illegals. They use food stamps, medical care, our schools, etc etc. We've been subsidizing cheap labor with our taxes for a very long time. It's time for the farmers to pay for their own labor costs.

It would go up by a lot more than a few cents. They pay illegals a fraction of what they would have to pay an American.

But our taxes wouldn't keep going up. The illegals can't live on the wages they pay, anymore than Americans can. So, the illegals supplement their income with social service programs, which you and I pay for with our taxes. I read somewhere recently (can't remember where), that a study was done to figure out how much more we'd have to pay for food each year if the work were done by Americans, rather than illegal aliens. It said we would pay about $8.00 more, per person, per year. I would gladly pay that. Don't let employers of illegals fool you. They just want the cheap labor and they want you and me to subsidize it with our taxes. Think how much money is spent by our federal government rounding these people up and deporting them every day. If we enforced our existing labor laws and prosecuted the employers of illegal aliens, and cut off all social benefits to illegals, there would be no jobs for them and they would, 1. stop coming and, 2. if already here, eventually leave, since they would have no jobs and no support system. Can anyone show me how it would be otherwise?

Originally Posted by daydreamer

It would go up by a lot more than a few cents. They pay illegals a fraction of what they would have to pay an American.

With your way of thinking, shouldn't prices be driven down by employing illegals? Yet they keep going up.

Originally Posted by daydreamer

It would go up by a lot more than a few cents. They pay illegals a fraction of what they would have to pay an American.

I read somewhere that labor is only 10% of the total cost of produce. Besides, I'll pay more for lettuce, apples, etc. if we can stop the invasion!

It would go up by a lot more than a few cents. They pay illegals a fraction of what they would have to pay an American.

If you take into consideration what it costs us to support twenty million people who can't support themselves on the few bucks they make picking produce, you would know that your statement is full of holes.

But I know that produce prices aren't low by any stretch of the imagination. Even the warehouse stores like Costco are much higher now than the grocery stores used to be just a few years ago. And the fresh produce markets run by the farmers are higher than the stores in most cases anywhere I've been in the past few years.

Bottom line: lower priced produce is nothing but a myth anyway. Better we get rid of the illegals and the big farming conglomerates that put all the little farmers out of business have to worry about where they are going to hire the workers to harvest what the farmers used to do for themselves.

Teen age boys used to harvest crops when I was a kid and the school schedules worked around the harvest so that those kids could work. Not one of them died from the experience of having worked, either.

Farmers had big families and they worked as a team. Now illegal aliens have big families, one out of 20 of them works at all and we get to feed the rest of them, which includes their kids. In addition, we get to hire teachers to teach their kids in their own language, we get to give them free educations all the way through college, and we pay for their medical care while our elderly decide whether to buy medicine or food this month. What kind of trade off is that?