immigration agriculture posts

On his June 23 show, Keith Olbermann supported cheap, illegal foreign labor working in sometimes dangerous conditions rather than legal workers working for acceptable wages under safe conditions. And, he either fell for or tried to promote pro-illegal immigration propaganda. On the show (transcript at [1], video at bcove.me/9c9fn6v5), Olbermann claimed that Georgia's growers were "at least 11,000...

Republicans in Georgia have introduced two Arizona-style immigration bills: House Bill 87 and Senate Bill 40. They'd require businesses to use the eVerify system with new hires and would also allow police to question suspects about their immigration status. Needless to say, that would cut into the profits of companies that employ large numbers of illegal aliens, and they've responded with an open...

Mike Thomas of the Orlando Sentinel offers "If illegal immigrants go, produce prices would skyrocket" (link), a breezy attempt to put a happy face on the United Farmworkers of America's anti-American, pro-exploitation takeourjobs effort. The UFW's satire dares Americans to take farmworker jobs, falsely claiming that Americans are too lazy to do hard work. At the same time as smearing Americans,...

The United Farmworkers of America are playing a cute, anti-American game (link): Take Our Jobs - please. That’s the message from the United Farm Workers union, which is turning the tables on Congress after years of inaction on comprehensive immigration reform. Through the campaign, United Farm Workers plans to push members of Congress to make a plea to constituents across the country: Put illegal...

From this: [Pending Bush administration rules would make] controversial changes to the so-called H-2A guest-worker program [that] could cut wages and speed worker recruitment. They also would relax requirements for providing foreign workers with housing and transportation. A Labor Department spokesman said Wednesday night that the final rules would be made public Thursday and published in the...

I'm pretty sure that Collin Peterson (D-Minnesota) is a liar, but we won't know for sure until the "worst" happens: Consumers could see the price of fruits and vegetables double if the nation does not address a looming farm labor shortage in the wake of tightening immigration enforcement, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson said [collinpeterson.house.gov]. Peterson, D-Minn.,...

John Quinones of ABC Nightly News offers "Pear Crop Rots as Field Hands Kept from Crossing Border", a brazen pro-cheap labor slab of propaganda that reports on what growers say without offering even the slightest bit of contradictory information. It is so biased it could have been - and might have been - written by the growers themselves. It even includes a grower being emotional: If the migrants...

Some Florida orange growers are getting smart and using machines rather than foreign serf labor. From the NYT: IMMOKALEE, Fla. - Chugging down a row of trees, the pair of canopy shakers in Paul Meador's orange grove here seem like a cross between a bulldozer and a hairbrush, their hungry steel bristles working through the tree crowns as if untangling colossal heads of hair. In under 15 minutes,...