Thread: Poll: US Farmers Not 'Document Police' (MAKING EXCUSES)

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007 ... 1733.shtml -
By the NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...


Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2007 11:15 a.m. EST
Poll: U.S. Farmers Not 'Document Police'
Bush: 'Responsibility Rests With Me'




Nine out of 10 American farmers surveyed said they have an unfair burden to ensure the workers they employ are here legally, a process some believe should be better handled by the U.S. government, according to a Reuters poll released on Tuesday.

The agriculture industry has grown increasingly dependent upon immigrant workers - employed at meat packing plants and dairy, fruit and vegetable farms - to help prevent labor shortages. But up to 70 percent of U.S. farm workers are estimated to be undocumented, totaling about 500,000 people.

"We can check but we can't be the document police," said Rodney Buss, an Illinois tree farmer who suspects many of the agriculture workers in his area near Chicago are in the United States illegally.

"We don't have the ability or the access to the database to be able to check if the cards or other information we are getting is actually legal or correct," he added.




Currently, most farmers are required to ask for one or two documents that establish identity and work eligibility within three days after hiring an employee. Farmers cannot question legitimate-looking documents without facing discrimination claims, according to agriculture and industry groups.
Congress was divided in 2006 over what to do with the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. The farm labor portion of a Senate bill would have revised the agricultural guest-worker program and offered a pathway to legal status. The Senate bill stalled in the Republican-led House.

Workers "should be legal in this country, but why should the farmers make sure they are legal if (the U.S. government is) letting them cross the border?" said Tom Fisher, an Ohio corn and soybean farmer.

The American Farm Bureau estimates that without a guest-worker program, U.S. agriculture could lose up to $5 billion in revenue annually, including 30 percent of fruit and vegetable production going to foreign growers.

A Reuters survey of 653 farmers at the Farm Bureau's annual meeting in Salt Lake City found that 56 percent supported establishing a non-amnesty/guest worker program. The farmers sampled were responding voluntarily to the straw poll from about 4,800 in attendance at the meeting.



Are Pheromones a Secret Weapon for Dating?
New Stock Market Report ? Limited Time Offer!
Stop Drinking Water Now
Top Funds for 2007 - Plus 10 to Sell Now!


Some agricultural groups think a Democratic-controlled Congress this year will be more willing to make changes to immigration policy.
"If (these workers) all went away tomorrow, everything collapses," said Craig Regelbrugge of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform. "I'm not saying it's going to be simple by any stretch of the imagination, but the environment has improved to get legislation," he added.

The odds for reform to happen appear to be improving given that immigration officials have intensified a campaign in recent years to rid workplaces of illegal immigrants. Officials investigating identity theft conducted raids in December on six plants operated by U.S. beef and pork company Swift & Co. More than 1,280 people were arrested.

Agents also arrested 28 illegal immigrants at a farm in New York last October and 51 individuals at an Oklahoma saddle factory two months earlier.



© Reuters 2007.

Do these farmers want to pay my taxes! They are aiding and abetting illegals and my taxes and everyone elses have to foot the bill!

They don't want to cut into their new found ill gotten profit. If they pay illegals, then more money for the agra business so I can buy up huge chunks of land and family farms. They are lazy and don't want to have to compete. That's just a big old Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Dixie

"We can check but we can't be the document police," said Rodney Buss, an Illinois tree farmer who suspects many of the agriculture workers in his area near Chicago are in the United States illegally.

If the farmers cannot make a living by using legal labor, then let them sell out to big corporations who can afford the machinery needed to bring in the crops. Just as smokers in America are being forced little by little to give up their addiction with nicotine, because it is not good for us or other people they tell us,Farmers and all other businesses and corporations, need to give up their addiction to "cheap illegal labor" because it is making the farmers break our laws by hiring them in the first place and it dam sure is lethal to the rest of us Americans!