Thread: Pennsylvania farmers begging for more cheap labor

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news ... 441056.htm

Seasonal workers a growing concern

By Nancy Petersen
Inquirer Staff Writer

HARRISBURG - Agriculture is Pennsylvania's number-one industry and it is headed for trouble unless Congress moves quickly to enact a practical guest worker program for the nation's farmers.

That was the consensus of a panel of experts at the Pennsylvania Farm Show yesterday. Failure to act could mean crops rotting in fields and orchards, higher prices for food, and a multimillion-dollar hit to the state's economy, they said.

"Immigration is the source of labor for all of our harvesting," said Sam Kieffer, a lobbyist for the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau. "There is not an alternative."

The 2006 election season saw the debate on immigration dominated by calls for building a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border, and cracking down on employers who knowingly hire illegal workers, he said.

But surveys show that the vast majority of the nation supports some kind of guest worker program that would provide a path to citizenship, Kieffer said.

The current guest worker program, known as H2A - for a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act - has been around for more than 60 years, said Lancaster County farmer Ed Herrmann, who sells his produce at the Glenside growers market.

First adopted in 1943 to obtain agricultural workers along the Eastern Seaboard during the war years, H2A has become outdated, enrollment is complicated, and it is for seasonal workers only, Herrmann said.

"It carries with it a lot of baggage," he said. Employers first have to prove they have a need that can't be met by U.S. citizens. Then, for each foreign worker they hire, they have to provide housing, transportation, and meals, plus pay $8.95 an hour in wages, he said. And at the end of the season, they have to pay for transportation home, he said.

In a state with more than 58,000 farms, only 38 growers are using the program, said Herrmann, adding that the needs of farmers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere aren't being met.

In California, Washington and Oregon, growers lost crops last year because there was no one to pick them, he said. Kieffer added that the same thing happened in New York state.

And it's not just farms that are affected by a worker shortage. Food processors, nurseries, and landscapers are all in the same boat, the panelists said.

Jim Angelucci, general manager of Phillips Mushrooms in Kennett Square, the nation's largest producer of specialty mushrooms, said he tried to use the current program five years ago and was told that the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn't consider mushroom production seasonal. But, he added, the industry is regulated by the Labor Department, which does consider mushrooms seasonal.

That needs to change if the state's mushroom industry is to survive, he said.

"Not as many people are coming through the door and applying for the kinds of jobs we have," he said.

And contrary to popular perceptions, jobs at Phillips and other mushroom operations in southern Chester County pay at least the minimum wage and deduct payroll taxes, he said.

With one out of every seven jobs tied to agriculture, it is an economic engine in Pennsylvania, said Keith Eckel, a Lackawanna County farmer and former head of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau. He said that failing to come up with a practical guest worker program could conservatively cost the state $97 million to $175 million a year.

"The issue is getting enough workers to get the job done," he said. "We can invest in a crop and find out at the end of the day there is no one to harvest it."


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Why would anyone want to come here legally, in order to work for peanuts on a farm, when it is far more lucrative to come here illegally, and pick and choose from all the jobs that Americans used to do?

Yea right! and they said there wasn't anyone who would fill the jobs at swift co. but I see legal citizens ran for those jobs.

These farmers just don't want to have pay fair wage. I rather see my prices go up a few penny's and know there isn't some illegal peeing on my lettuce!!!

This doesn't make any sense. Don't we have 12-20 million illegals here right now that came for these types of jobs? Now we want to bring more in. What has happened is they started picking lettuce, now have moved up to other jobs that pay more.

"It carries with it a lot of baggage," he said. Employers first have to prove they have a need that can't be met by U.S. citizens. Then, for each foreign worker they hire, they have to provide housing, transportation, and meals, plus pay $8.95 an hour in wages, he said. And at the end of the season, they have to pay for transportation home, he said.

So in other words it is better to break the law and pay slave wages? It seems to me that is what they are saying. $8.95 an hour doesnt go that far these days.

http://washingtontimes.com/national/200 ... -8763r.htm

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

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Blue-card bill eyes farmhand illegals
Published January 11, 2007

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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Backers of liberalizing immigration rules began a congressional push yesterday to give temporary legal status to up to 1.5 million illegal-alien workers to provide a labor pool for U.S. agriculture.
The proposal is a recycled version of parts of a bill that stalled after passing the Senate last year. House Republicans blocked negotiations on the measure, sticking with a get-tough stand against illegal aliens before the November elections.
Those wanting to loosen immigration laws hope the combination of a Democratic majority in Congress and support from President Bush will help their proposals.
"The reality is, Americans have come to rely on an undocumented-migrant work force to harvest our crops," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, said in a press conference.
Under the bill, illegal aliens who can show they have labored in agriculture for at least 150 workdays for the past two years would become eligible for a "blue card" bestowing temporary legal status. Their spouses and minor children also could get a blue card if they already live in the United States.
People with these cards who work an additional three years, at least 150 days a year, or five years, at least 100 days a year, would be eligible for legal residency. But they first would have to pay a $500 fine, be up to date on taxes, have no record of committing crimes involving bodily injury or threat of serious bodily injury or have caused property damage of more than $500.
The blue-card program would end after five years, unless it is renewed. The bill would reduce the time it takes to get a visa for an alien who wants to come to the United States to work in agriculture.
Among those supporting the bill are Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat and a chief architect of last year's Senate immigration bill, and Republican Sens. Larry E. Craig of Idaho and Mel Martinez of Florida. Reps. Chris Cannon, Utah Republican, and Howard L. Berman, California Democrat, are sponsoring the House version.
Opponents say immigrants provide cheap, exploitable labor to the industry and deflate wages for American employers. They also contend such workers become a drain on taxpayers because those workers, once eligible, turn to welfare, Medicaid and other social programs.
Proponents are getting support from growers who saw their crops left to waste in fields because of farmworker shortages last year.
California grower Toni Scully said growers in her county, Lake County, started last year's harvest with half the approximately 900 pickers needed to bring the crop in on time. She said more than 26 million pounds of the county's fruit crop went to waste.
"If Congress doesn't pass real reforms this year, we could see the apple industry outsourced to South America or China," said Kelly Henggeler, chairman of the U.S. Apple Association, which represents pickers and growers from 36 states.
The blue-card proposal probably will be in broader immigration bills to be introduced in the House and Senate in late winter. Mrs. Feinstein and the other lawmakers said they have enough votes to pass the bill separately and would do so if the broader bill does not advance.




Copyright © 2007 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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What about all those illegal workers that we "need"? Many of the illegals are working in agriculture, producing crops that have been in chronic surplus for decades. These surplus crops are costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars in government storage costs and in the inflated prices created by deliberately keeping much of this agricultural output off the market.


Do we "need" illegal workers to produce bigger surpluses?


In California, surplus crops grown and harvested by illegal immigrants are often also subsidized by federal water projects which charge the farmers in dry California valleys far less than the cost to the government of providing that water — and a fraction of what people in Los Angeles or San Francisco pay for the same amount of water.


Surplus crops grown with water supplied at the taxpayers' expense and raised by illegal workers can be grown elsewhere with water provided free of charge from the clouds and raised by American workers paid American wages.


Naturally, when the real costs of those crops have to be paid by the farmers who raise them, less will be grown — that is, there will not be as much of a surplus going to waste in government-rented storage bins.

With some crops, we don't really "need" any of it. If the United States had not produced a single grain of sugar in the past 50 years, Americans could have gotten all the sugar they wanted and at lower prices, simply by buying it on the world market for half or less of what domestic sugar costs.


Sugar has been in chronic surplus on the world market for generations. It can be grown in the tropics far cheaper than it can be grown in the United States. All the land, labor, and capital that has been spent growing sugar here has been one huge waste.


We don't "need" to grow sugar, with or without illegal workers.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell032906.asp