After Trump’s immigration order, anxiety grows in Florida’s vegetable fields

a reply to: Logarock

That takes $$$ and I and that could reduce profits. I would imagine a heavy lobby effort against that.

Why would they be worried?? They are allowed to come here as seasonal migrants to pick produce? Could it be that they are worried because they are abusing and exploiting the system.

The day is coming soon when machines will harvest all the crops......then were gonna be stuck with a bunch of unemployable tomato pickers...out to make ends meet...one way or another

The farmers are pretty poor around here but farmland never stays on the market for long even at $10,000 an acre. The hopp farmers have been buying up all the land pulling the grapevines and planting hopps. hopps don't need migrants

well i picked peaches along side them . that was 30 years agaio now but at the time we got between 19 and 53 Cents a bushes we picked . A bushel of peaches a bag about the same size as a army duffel bag . (9 ooo around 75 pounds of peaches . the time it took me to fill a bag 5 mints minum ( them 3 mints ) (told not to pick rotten or unripe fruit i listened they did not . half of what they picked was throun out .
anyway after making 17 $ a day for a few days i walked 50 miles to the next town .
there is now way in heck even they can even clear minim wage and this is the reason farms are NOT required to pay it .
Ill tell you this much if they could make that or even ten a hour they would not be taking over the construction field . whats even funnier is your veges and fruit will be taking one heck of a price jump in the next few years then maybe you mite start missing illegals .
with out them the railroads would have never been built -with out them the fruit and vegs you eat will cost 10 times as much .The old saying don't bite the hand that feeds you is accutly true for them .
O and being legal means you can now get a good paying legal job so why would they pick fruit then lol.
God you people are so naive . It is always the poor who have no way to fight back who are attacked and that is because there is not a person here who has the guts to stand up to our true oppressors and true people who are robbing us of our jobs .
So much easer to fight thous who can not fight back .
ever notice most witches are old haggs well you would think having magical powers tehy would be 60 years old rich and young . humm funny that .

originally posted by: jkm1864

I think You might have a hard time understanding the word ILLEGAL but I'll clue You in to the fact that it means You are breaking the law.

Think about it, Slavery was once a law.
It was once law that black people couldn't use the same water fountain.
The only thing that changed these laws or any law was to actually break them.

You could think of a law as a way to corner the market. You should also ask yourself who wrote the laws and more importantly on whose behalf.
The law was not written equally for all men.
So how do you change them?
Follow any unjust law and it will lead you to an old white man with deep pockets and a corporate interest. Period.
Try it for yourself, seriously

a reply to: Liquesence

by definition, illegals is criminal activity...lol

Jaden

a reply to: Liquesence

let me help you then.... lol

criminal activity = breaking the law.

illegal immigration = breaking the law.

therefore illegal immigration = criminal activity...

I understand that logic isn't something most liberals can easily understand, but anyone above a 70 iq should be able to understand the above...

Jaden

a reply to: ThoughtIsMadness

Think about it, Slavery was once a law. It was once law that black people couldn't use the same water fountain. The only thing that changed these laws or any law was to actually break them.

There was never a law that stated that a person had to own slaves. It was accepted by society that people could own other people. The law abolished slavery from being an acceptable practice.

Black people drinking from White Only fountains is not what got rid of the signs. New laws were written, and even when those laws where in place, it didn't stop people from practicing slavery or racism. It was the enforcing of those laws that eventually changed the practice.

I'm sorry racist food corps cant ship in cheap labor from brown people countries.

I'm sorry the US public is complicit- no, demanding we have anonymous brown cheap workers grow and pick out food for us.

Grow up america, get teenagers and work-able welfare recipients out there.

Talk about American(white) privilege, get out there and work

originally posted by: seasonal
Trump has made illegal immigrants nervous with his deportation talk and what many believe is going to be actions. And a prominent Farmer claims that pickers can make $15-20 an hour, they still can't get Americans interested in picking produce for a living. (I have never heard that kind of $ for pickers) So they need the illegals help.

I would bet that there are a few billion people around the planet that would love to come here and work legally on a work visa. For anyone to suggest that we NEED illegals is a false statement and it seems places like Hollywood and much of the left do not think that they are supporting human trafficking....

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: seasonal
Trump has made illegal immigrants nervous with his deportation talk and what many believe is going to be actions. And a prominent Farmer claims that pickers can make $15-20 an hour, they still can't get Americans interested in picking produce for a living. (I have never heard that kind of $ for pickers) So they need the illegals help.

I would bet that there are a few billion people around the planet that would love to come here and work legally on a work visa. For anyone to suggest that we NEED illegals is a false statement and it seems places like Hollywood and much of the left do not think that they are supporting human trafficking....

This is ages old. Field workers have always been underpaid and treated like slaves. People have been coming to America to work the fields from the birth of America. Americans and other groups have worked the fields if times were tight.

• 1930s: The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl (a period of drought that destroyed millions of acres of farmland) forced white farmers to sell their farms and become migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages. Due to the Great Depression, more than 500,000 Mexican Americans were deported or pressured to leave during the Mexican Repatriation, and the number of farm workers of Mexican descent decreased.

Finally, in this period, the U.S. government also passed a series of labor laws to protect workers, but that excluded farm workers and domestic laborers, the jobs that were historically held by African Americans and immigrants. These laws specifically exclude farm workers from basic labor protections such as overtime pay, workers’ compensation, protection for unionizing and collective bargaining, workers’ compensation, and child labor laws.

Timeline of Agricultural Labor

a reply to: midnightstar

whats even funnier is your veges and fruit will be taking one heck of a price jump in the next few years then maybe you mite start missing illegals .

The land will be converted to a different crop, prices will drop for that crop.
I am totally ok with fruits and veggies with low calorie yields going up in price, they are luxury produce.
Countries are fed on cereals, corn, potatoes, and rice, not peaches and strawberries.

If almonds and almond milk went sky high in price, nothing would change.

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn

This is ages old. Field workers have always been underpaid and treated like slaves. People have been coming to America to work the fields from the birth of America. Americans and other groups have worked the fields if times were tight.

Agree, but this is 2017 and human trafficking is a big issue. We have the means to document all the workers we need, we have the means to allow anyone from around the planet to come here and work documented, so why not do it then. Do you know that in many other countries a foreign worker that is in the country longer than 12 weeks is paid though a 3rd party agency and monitored by the Government for their protection?