Thread: GEORGIA'S ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION CRISIS

Gainesville advertises itself as “the poultry capital of the world” and it is the chicken-processing plants that are driving much of the city’s startling growth. Since 1990, the official population has nearly doubled to 32,000 and the number of Hispanics has quadrupled to compose nearly half the registered population — and far more when illegal immigrants are considered.

Regarding the relationship agriculture industries have with migrant workers:

“Reality speaks and it says that, absent Hispanic workers, we could not process chicken,” said Tom Hensley, chief financial officer for Gainesville’s largest chicken plant, Fieldale Farms. “There aren’t enough native American people who want to work in a chicken plant at any wage. We’d be put out of business.”

A dozen years ago, Fieldale employed fewer than 100 Hispanics. Today, Hispanics total 3,000 in a 4,700-person workforce that transforms live birds by the thousand into boneless chicken flesh. To win jobs that start at about $10 an hour, applicants must present at least two identity documents from a government list of 18.

Congressman Kingston has noted before the trends of illegal immigrants who start their journey in southern Georgia as seasonal migrant workers in then move north for higher paying poultry and textile jobs.

You can read his testimony from last November before a House Committee after the jump on this post or at his RedState diary.

It is estimated that in the year 2000 there were 228,000 illegal aliens in the State of Georgia. That was a seven-fold increase from the INS estimate of 32,000 illegal aliens as of October 1996. The number of illegal aliens has increased 613 percent since 1996 and 777 percent since 1992, giving Georgia the seventh largest illegal alien population in the country.

Georgia has two distinct experiences with illegal immigration. In the south, illegal aliens tend to be seasonal, migrant workers. This is especially true in the agricultural sector. Northern Georgia, however, has more permanent illegal aliens, especially in the textile and poultry industries. It is believed many of the seasonal workers who start in the south migrate north where they become more permanently settled. Georgia’s immigration problem is a classic Catch 22: Send the illegal aliens home and America’s produce will rot in the field. Keep the illegal aliens here and you will put unnecessary strain on local governments and taxpayers.

Congressman Kingston stood with U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) to send a message to the Senate that the House will not accept any plan for amnesty and that America must address border enforcement first.

http://kingston.house.gov/blog/?p=140

I can tell you there are a lot more than 228,000 illegals in Georgia.

They did not even mention the thousands of them In Metro Atlanta - Roswell, Doraville, Chamblee, Buford Highway (mexican businesses from Gwinett County all the way in to Buckhead Atlanta about 30 miles.

Chamblee Police have given up. Gwinett County From I 285 to Gainesville Georgia is sfilled with them Jimmy Carter Boulevard was upper middle class business, it is now low class hispanic. Gang violence is out of control - Police won't go into apartment complexes. Nice subdivisions have Graffitti all over them

Ask the people in Gainesville about how the Huge Hospital is now a free clinic for the "immigrants with papers" that the chicken plants have hired. Right.

Ask the People of wealthy Gwinett what has happened to their schools.

Roswell used to be this cute charming town - now folks have to post signs on the doors of retail "shoes and shirts must be worn."

Then there is Marietta, Smryrna area all the way to Acworth and Cartersville.

Places that had Luxury Office Parks and Singles Apartment Complexes are now slums.

We can also go south to Jonesboro, Macon, etc. Out of control.

Nobody is talking about What they did to neighborhoods in all of these areas.

My property taxes increase every year for an old condo to support these people. I can hardly afford to live here anymore. The thing is they increased traffic so much and destroyed most of the small suburban villages, that now everyone wants back into the city. Everything is being re developed and they are going to be pushed out of most of intown - but middle class will be pushed out soon thereafter.

I used to oversee roofing contracts. A large influx of cheap labor discourages inovation in a paticular sector. You would think thing like chicken processing, Americans would be battling machines not cheap labor for jobs.

But when you don't have to pay ancillary costs of cheap labor like most illegal employers you have little incentive for R&D and innovation.

10.00 an hour in the south or anywhere is a paltry (or is that poultry)sum.

Like any other industry, if faced with a labor shortage, Meat and poultry proccessing would find ways to get the best and brightest to redo there industry. (And I hope we are raising our kids that that wont be H1B workers.)

We need to foucs the boycotts and I think perishables is a good place to start. That and contractor, devlopers. Picket Sunday home sales at one or two national housing developers and contractors using illegal labor. You won't need to court the press. You will have all the attention you can handle.

www.bighornmusic.com/bushton/

Like any other industry, if faced with a labor shortage, Meat and poultry proccessing would find ways to get the best and brightest to redo there industry. (And I hope we are raising our kids that that wont be H1B workers.

I agree 100%. These industries are importing the 3rd world into America. With their high birth rates they will create more problems than they solve.

You can see by what he is saying that the onion producers and chicken plants are bringing these illegals into georgia on a guest worker program but when the onion season is over and they are tired of plucking chickens they move north he says to better paying jobs and permanent residency. Then the next year they have to bring more in for the onion crop, so they keep bringing more and more every year. So when they brought in as guest workers on a temporary work permit they don't leave when their visa is up, so the next year they bring more and on and on it goes. This being proof that the guest worker program does not work!

Are we ready to get serious about the poultry boycott?

Those chickens won't last long in storage. They have a very fine tuned assembly going from egg houses to hatcheries to broiler houses and egg houses, and then to the processing plant. They cannot ride out a real boycott. They just can't.

We have to get together, though. I can't say it had anything to do with it - but when we announced the boycott to start in April - chicken companies, here anyway, began 'dumping' - as low as .19 a pound. I think they feared that the boycott would work and food is so expensive now, they just thought if they dumped it out there - people would have to buy it. It worked, I guess.

So we just need to try harder.

Yes, if not for all this cheap (subsidized, not cheap to us) labor, some smart American would come up with all kinds of mechanized ways to do the jobs. As long as they have an unending supply of labor that is cheap to them, they would not purchase any innovation.

We will become stagnant.

I haven't bought any chicken for a month, but I have to say I have never seen chicken that cheap here in Indiana. Tyson chicken a couple weeks ago was $1.87 a lb. I haven't ate at mcdonald's since jan. and before that I had not ate there for a year. I really think we need to pick 3-4 to boycott and try to encourage everyone we encounter to do the same. Make an example out of these 3-4.

I think a lot are following the boycott. I haven't purchase poultry, eaten at McD's or Burger King since middle April.

But I think it's good to remind people here. I am sure if we kept together they will feel the effects.

I won't buy poultry, any mexican products, No fast food (all mexican workers here in Atlanta) and very few restaurants (as they all employ mexicans in the kitchen)

I can assure you I have sent all of the Poultry folks email.

I think it is also time to ask County officials why they are not enforcing housing ordinances.