Tom Vilsack promotes illegal activity, uses bogus "crops rotting" line

At the Department of Agriculture's 2012 Agricultural Outlook Forum, Ag secretary Tom Vilsack once again promoted illegal activity now and an amnesty or guest workers program for illegal aliens in the future. From this:

[Vilsack said:] "The sad reality is that crops will be raised in this country this year that may not be harvested because there simply is not the workforce... All of America, but especially farm country, needs comprehensive immigration reform, and we need it now."

Vilsack called on Congress to have the "political courage" to fix the system, which he said leaves farmers with too few workers for the amount of acreage to be harvested.

"There's a risk of rotting crops, and with that risk, there's no excuse for the efforts of some seeking to demonize immigrant labor or prevent meaningful reform of a system that everyone in the Congress and in the country admits is not functioning."

1. Vilsack is using the crops rotting in the fields talking point, one that growers have been using for decades; see the link.

2. Vilsack is promoting comprehensive immigration reform aka amnesty, see the link for several huge downsides of that plan that he would never acknowledge. Parts of the reform he has in mind would involve a guest workers program and AgJobs; see those links for the downsides.

3. What Vilsack refers to as "immigrant labor" is to a good part in fact illegal alien labor. Even without "reform", Vilsack thinks it's acceptable that growers should use illegal labor and is smearing those who oppose illegal immigration by referring to opposition to illegal activity as demonization. Vilsack is promoting illegal activity rather than encouraging growers to follow our laws.

4. To cap it off, Vilsack also used the system is broken canard, see the link. The problem isn't so much that our immigration laws themselves are flawed, it's that those laws aren't enforced due to corrupt politicians such as Vilsack.

See Tom Vilsack, immigration agriculture, and Department of Agriculture for more.