http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21491778/
Reading this article made me a little angry at the farmers who want Congress to let in "Undocumented" workers from other countries to work on the farm. The farmers who spoke in this article complained that raising wages have done nothing to attract American workers.

Wow, a whopping pay increase from $6/hr to $9/hr. What this article forgot to mention is that the nursing profession and technology sectors pay a lot more than $9/hr. In many parts of this country, $9/hr will not even get a worker a 1 bedroom apartment and still leave enough money to take care of other basic needs. And then, there is the nature of farming work. Waking up at 3 AM to milk the cows, and do other physically demanding jobs demands that farm workers make more than a Walmart wage.

Sure, increasing the wages of farm workers will increase the price of food. But look at the obesity rate in America. If Americans have to give up some luxuries like Christmas shopping or junk food, I don't think it would hurt. It's not right that we should live a life of luxury on the backs of poor people doing back-breaking labor.

So,
Should Congress allow "undocumented" workers to work on our farms so that we can continue eating cheap food?
Or should the Farmers pay a living wage to their workers?

Nope, we don't need undocumented workers, period. We have greedy farmers and ignorant/lazy citizens that want thier cake and eat it too- I pay high prices for all that stuff, because I live in Alaska. We have been paying 4 dollars for a gallon of milk for years. US needs to deal with it. 9 freakin' dollars an hour- ya, that is ridiculously low for the labor. Farmers need to be thrown in jail for using illegal migrant workers. My own experiance has seen the abusive behaviors of many farmers that hire illegals, because they can simply call immigration on them if they get too "uppity". Farmers need to pay a payroll, payroll taxes, worker's comp benefits- just like every industry in the US. They need to face unionization when they are mean and evil to thier employees.

It boggles the mind that every legitmate business in the US has to play by these rules- except farming. Time to slap them up side the head with the realities in business that every other industry in america is supposed to comply with.

As far as I am concerned, farmers and thier labor complaints can get on thier tractors and ride them right to hell on this issue. We should be throwing them in jail for promoting slave labor- NOT coddling them as "poor things just trying to make a livin'" .

This is also the outgrowth of part of the end of the "family farm"- the family farm was largely independent of illegal labor, using co-ops and family to do 99% of the work- it is the new, large farm systems that relied on illegal labor to really shut down the "family farm"- it is time for them to "pay the piper".

Hopefully, this will lead to a resurgance of the family farm.

First off, it's not just farmers who hire illegal aliens, once euphemistically called migrant workers, but other outfits too. Denver had several busts in various businesses that had nothing to do with farming.

I hate the excuse that US citizens are not willing to do the work. Sure we are -- you're not willing to follow the labor laws. You don't want to compete with Wal*Mart and MacBlubberbugers. You want a cheap source of labor that is easily exploited.

("You" meaning those who hire illegal aliens.)

Since 1980 a small group of Americans have been out to destroy our society. They have the gall to say they are culture warriors, or some such nonsense. Real Americans, you know? Well, this is what it really is -- turn the clock back to 1890 and earlier, make the big bucks off the little people, and if they get uppity, shoot them. Or in this case, turn them in.

Farm work is hard, but so is a lot of manual labor. However, when I was a teenager and young adult, that's the kind of work I did. I peeled pulpwood, hauled mud, cut roadside grass with hand-held mowers, ground aluminum castings in a foundry, laid blacktop, resurfaced bridges using a jackhammer, all the work that Americans are not supposed to want to do. In college many of my friends worked on the southern MN farms or in the packaging plants (ho ho ho). I spent a summer working in the sewers of my hometown, a very slimming job because you don't want to eat while doing it or after. Forget about a big breakfast too.

The point is that Americans are willing to do crap jobs. I don't think this characteristic has changed since my youth. I don't buy it that the youth of America is fat and lazy. Or if this is true, guess what has made them that way -- the lack of opportunity because illegal aliens are favored over actual citizens.

A farmer down south of here was complaining about not getting farm labor and decided to bus illegals in. What? Why not send that bus north and get US citizens in? It would cost a lot less, and it'd be legal. I swear, and often, that certain people have lost their noodles. Shoot, I would have picked the peck of unpickled peppers for $9 an hour. Sure beats what I'm doing now, paywise, and it's healthy work.

Except for maybe the pesticides.

I agree with you AM, I worked HARD as a teenager- and I see teenagers working hard today- and 20 somethings too. In fact, as a nation, it could be argued we work TOO hard for our money- and one of the factors here is because biz owners are allowed, even encoraged to go outside the law and not abide by labor laws.

Screw the farmers that are complaing about this, and the horse they rode in on. I place far more blame on the illegal immigration problem on scumbag farmers willing to exploit illegal immigration than I do on the poor souls that are running here for a better life.

In fact, we should be arresting the farmers for admitting they use illegal labor, and throw them in jail for a decade or so, to make an example of them.

This is SOO harmful to the US, allowing biz to skirt our labor laws by hiring illegals, and then allowing them to complain about not having enough illegals?

I'm in agreement 100% with your take too CR, and I do think those busted in Denver had to pay stiff fines. I'm okay with that. It is just doing business, so make hiring illegals very expensive. That in turn makes bona fide citizens attractive again.

I also have nothing against the Mexican people. I think they are great folks and admire their dedication to spirit and family. I sympathize with how their government has screwed them over so much that taking life-threatening risks to try to get a better break here, and in some cases winding up worse than slaves, is worth it. It's disgusting. The penalties in those extreme cases, for the slave masters, should be banishment to Alaska in January, airdropped way back there with a match and a knife. No coat, gonna have to kill that first. Actually that sounds like fun, waltzing with a Kodiak

Just read about how Chilean miners were treated in the 19th century. Is that where we're headed? These poor guys worked three weeks straight and then got only two days off with their families. But the kicker is that the miners liked it because working on the farms was way worse!

Which brings me to this thought about Americans and work. We got a brand spanking new Wal*Mart up here a few months back, and it's got nothing but mountain people working in it. I know they appreciate having employment. I even thought of applying, but have to build up the freelance writing business or nothing. Besides, I really don't like getting that big a dose of the public. As a retailer I suck. But the point is, the place is doing a pretty good business and the workers are happy, and none of them are illegally in this country (as far as I know). Americans like to work. And you know what? The prices aren't any better, but we don't care. We care about working, and it's nice to know that spending at Wal*Mart helps my neighbors.

Should Congress allow "undocumented" workers to work on our farms so that we can continue eating cheap food?
Or should the Farmers pay a living wage to their workers?

No, Congress shold not allow this to continue. I echo virtually everything that has been said thus far. I do not accept the premise that we as Americans will not step in and handle the labor necessary. The question is how much more will farm owners have to pay before finding that point of equilibrium where they have enough workers to handle the job.

Before I moved to a small, So. Ca. town over a year ago I did not think Americans as a group worked much in the fields. Since arriving here I have been amazed at the numbers of citizens who actually do. As an aside, I stroll through any fast food joint and see a significant percentage of both African-American & Caucasian workers (many high school aged) in a predominantly Latino populace.

Should Congress allow "undocumented" workers to work on our farms so that we can continue eating cheap food?
Or should the Farmers pay a living wage to their workers?


What is it about this that we are forgetting? ... ... Right! In this country, farmers are paid NOT to produce. We can continue to have cheap food if we cut farm subsidies. Farmers will no longer be paid to stop producing crops and the actual market will determine prices. The argument that cheap labor is necessary for cheap food is disingenuous.

The again, certain states (such as NY) are creating programs and probably spending millions for drivers licenses for illegals. Does this make them legal illegals? I am confused. Not withstanding the fact that no illegal would go out and get a document that proclaims their status of being "illegal".

Seems pretty strange, doesn't it. It's like the System encourages illegal aliens to come here, then all of a sudden guys like Tancreado wake up and go, "Hey . . . This ain't' right! It's all those bleeding heart liberals' fault! I can fix it, vote for me!"

Except some of us have been paying attention all along. The System made this problem, and the liberals were just trying to help people caught in a jam, and then we get the blame. How $%^&-ing moronic.

Farming has gone corporate. That's why all those liberal musicians got together to do FarmAid, and it makes you wonder about Willie Nelson getting busted for pot and shrooms, not to mention the IRS battle.

Then we get poison fastfood from the CorpAgra types, can't do a thing about it. Except look in hindsight and go, "Huh. Well I suppose that's understandable," unless you ate the spinach.

Back in the 1970s I joined a food co-op in the cheap rent district of S. Minneapolis known as Whittier. I'd work a few hours a week there to get a discount on Raw Bits and veggies with added bug protein, AKA organic produce. Also cheese whacked off these huge wheels from Wisconsin. Cheap food meant beans and rice. These places have gone corporate too, and the food ain't cheap but they still do a good business. Turned from hippies to yuppies.

Haven't tried Wal*Mart for food shopping, and probably won't. Safeway is more to my liking and I know the meat comes from local ranchers in some kind of co-op. Wal*Mart imports it. Then slow cooking to make the cheap cuts super tender, and voilà, the beans and rice get a real good shot of protein.

But then I've noticed the produce, some of it, being imported from S. America and even Japan. Japan? That is strange. The apples come with sunroofs (just kidding).

The point I'm making here is that Americans are also good at dealing with inflation. We know how to make it on a tight budget. Seems that policy makers have either never experienced this or ignore it. Cheap food is not an issue. We know cheap food. Profit is the issue, as in the corporate types have to make ever more of it, and so we get these situations.

That also explains the attitude that Americans won't do the low-level jobs. No, the policy-makers won't do them. They are spoiled little brats grown to be spoiled big brats. I am pretty sure that Dick Cheney never hauled mud or worked the sewers of his hometown. GWB likes to cut brush, ye-hah. Yep, I used to do that for free on my father's lake place, which we affectionately called Lake Swampy. I know how to work both a brush hook and a scythe. I know what it's like to go knee deep in muskeg. But ducks nested there and the red-winged blackbird was thick. So were the skeeters.

Nostalgia is a pretty cool feeling. So is physical labor and that six-pack at the end of the day, good el-cheapo domestic brew. Guess I'm nostalgic for my youth. It was a good one, an honest one, calloused hands and strong like a bull moose. Still like to do some of that around the mountain place, hand tools and gloves. I call it gardening, but maybe up here it's the victory of hope over common sense. Yams grow. Yes, they do. Not very big. Trying bulbs this time around.

The point! Oh yeah, well, the youth of America would like to get nostalgic memories down the road too. They just don't know it yet.

So,
Should Congress allow "undocumented" workers to work on our farms so that we can continue eating cheap food?

No the difference in price is small and the jobs should go to legal immigrants or born here citizens who should be paid minimum wage or better. I find it ridiculous that one industry or two get away with this stupid argument and are allowed to cheat the system and their workers on a massive scale.

Should Congress allow "undocumented" workers to work on our farms so that we can continue eating cheap food?
Or should the Farmers pay a living wage to their workers?

Are you familiar with the primary caveat of living in a city, or in a country as urbanized as ours? The larger we become, the more we rely on imports to feed us, clothe us, and support us. If we stop employing illegal immigrants in our farms, that means that the amount of food we are forced to import will increase by a proportionately sized number.

Illegal immigration--taking jobs away from citizens, and breaching almost every humanitarian worker's code there is--yes, we all know. Its terrible. But there's a reason that no one's done anything yet. That's because, as much as we hate it, we need it, as well.

Lawmakers are panicked. America is relying more and more, on cheap imports from countries that growing ever more hostile to us. You can see it their legislature- How many years has this immigration debate been going on? Five? Six? I think you can sum it up fialry well with a single word; stalling.

Immigration is evil. But perhaps it is a necessary one. We allowed the foundations of modern america to be built with cheap, illegal labor, and we waited years, decades, before we decided to set things right.

You cannot be a succesful world financial power and a humane, pro-worker state. That's called eating your cake, and having it too.

.



Wrong wrong wrong. Most farming is done by very large businesses. The idea that we could not harves food without illegal aliens is ludicrous. As in any job done in a capitalist society the farm will have to pay the worker what is demanded (wages) in a free labor market. Wages will go up and eventually this may spur more automation but we certainly will have no food problem.

I applaud everything said so far along the lines of "no, let the farmers pay wages high enough to recruit domestic labour and if it costs more, so be it".

But let's not forget that doing so will not come off the agribusiness bottom line (be they large or small agribusiness), because the first thing they'll do is raise prices (they won't be able to drive efficiency through mechanisation etc. in one growing season enough to offset the increased labour costs) to keep their profits healthy.

And the retailers in turn will do one of two things:

• Jack up their prices to protect their margins, which will feed straight through to inflation indices, which in turn (with current targets) will force the Federal Reserve to ramp up interest rates to stave off that inflation - knocking on to every other aspect of the economy
• Import their food from overseas countries that haven't got such high labour costs so that they don't have to increase their prices, so sales of domestic agriculture fall of a cliff and most, if not all, smaller farmers go to the wall even faster than they already are

It can be handled, but only by (temporarily, maybe) re-framing the remit of the Federal Reserve in setting interest rates, and/or by imposing some kind of local sourcing percentage onto retailers (similar to the rules in France that force every supermarket to source a minimum level of x% of their fresh produce from within 100km - about 60 miles - of the store). And then be prepared to defend those new rules against foreign producers who might want to export their produce to the USA, and international financiers who might have a view and/or influence over the way the economy works in today's global market.

All I'm saying is that, however much the pond needs to have a brick thrown into it, do be aware of how far the ripples will travel and how big they will be, or else don't complain when your feet get wet.

Everyone is making the same analysis, but like so many other problems, if boils down to this: We are in a global market; either our labor costs adjust to match our productivity, or we will lose jobs. If our workers are not as productive as Chinese laborers, we'll have to lower our wages below that of the Chinese to make a match.

Now, productivity today is as much a result of production technonlogy as anything else, so we need to invest in the best production tech available and spend liberally R&D dollars to make sure our prod tech is first rate. But, either we will meet the competition, or we will import not only all of our consumer goods and much of our oil but also our food from overseas, making us even more vulnerable to terrorist threats and global blackmail.

Our high std of living was built on our great productivity. While we are still the most productive nation, according to The Economist, the gap is small and narrowing, and it does not exist across the board.

We have some decisions to make....

Quick, what you said is true to an extent. If America doesn't lower the wages for all its workers, then China and other developing countries will want to export more and more goods to America, including food. But lowering the wages of American workers is the wrong way for America to compete. If other countries want to manipulate their currencies and pay their workers 10 cents on the hour, I would have no problem if Congress raised tariffs and had you and I pay a few extra dollars for things like radios and shoes. The idea of investing in R&D and working on raising worker productivity in America is a much better idea.

One big problem with America's economy is the reward system for workers. In many corporations, a CEO can make several million dollars by going to a few boardroom meetings a year, while someone toiling out on a plantation often makes less money than a school janitor. There is no reason why America cannot pay its farm workers more. After all, we pay our firefighters, our trash collectors, and our construction workers a living wage, and we don't complain about the price of their services. People who do hard physical labor should get paid a decent wage for their work, no questions asked.

Should Congress allow "undocumented" workers to work on our farms so that we can continue eating cheap food?The prime areas in the farming industry, and it is an industry in most cases, that uses "cheap labor" is fruit, nuts, vegetables and dairy operations. Farms producing the primary crops of wheat and corn or producing animals for meat consumption are pretty much automated and use machines with limited labor forces.

Regardless whether we have cheap labor or not our food prices are going to go up because the demand for food world wide along with the ability to buy the food will cause the prices to go up considerably. I've watched the price of copper quadruple in the last five years. So what we can't eat copper but copper, like food is a commodity in limited amounts and as a result for demand the price is bid up on the open market.

The question should be does America still demand slavery or near slave labor wage to produce its food? Do we demand our lettuce be produced in America or would it be acceptable to import it from Mexico? When slavery ended there were workarounds to produce cotton and America enjoys economic cotton production today. Perhaps if apples, lettuce, nuts cannot be economically produced in America then we should import these products and renovate the farms into another production that is economical.

There should be no immigrants in America without proper documentation! America fought wars to establish our borders and lost many soldiers establishing those borders. The Mexican-America border cost in excess of 10,000 soldier deaths! Imagine Generals Lee and Grant standing in the center of Mexico City with no army willing to continue the fight. These 10,000 soldiers are equivalent to nearly a million soldier casualties in percentage of today's population in comparison to the population of the time. Sovereignty means having enforceable borders and all that "is America" is our sovereignty.

Or should the Farmers pay a living wage to their workers? As stated above the farmers should meet free market capitalism requirements without false crutches that will disappear as other nations progress. We should demand American workers work in America and if another nation can produce the product more efficiently then we should adjust what we produce, we've proven this in other products we buy from cars to TV's this is what Ameicans will buy.

And thus, Skeeterses, does the problem arise. The workers in question are not american citizens. They are menial wage-slaves, forced to do our bidding, simply because they have no recourse. This is why we can keep a competitive edge. Even though they do our work, we do not have any obligation to feed them, clothe them, insure them, or even to protect them in the event of an invasion. They have none of the rights accorded to your average citizen.

THis is the price of productivity. In order to keep up with other countries on a global scale, we must became heartless. We need these immigrants, in our farms, and elsewhere.

All "persons" in America have almost the same rights and protections as American citizens. The protection illegal immigrants are missing is ability to complain or join in groups to improve working conditions. Citizens working legally work under contract and illegals work under a promise. A promise can be broken and an employer may not compensate or under pay the promise. For a citizen working under a promise, such as a kid mowing the neighbors lawn he/she has recourse if the promise is not lived up to the handshake.

That sounds like we must race to the bottom to compete with persons in other countries that earn $50 a month. If these illegal workers are doing farm work then we can only look at the impact on international trade for such items they are associated in producing. Your statement seems to contend that without cheap labor we cannot compete in trade of nuts, fruit and vegetables. Actually, these are not the reason we have trade imbalance but the trade of grains, sugar, poultry, beef and swine are our main exports and illegal workers have little impact on these sectors.

Edited to add the italicized above.

Should Congress allow "undocumented" workers to work on our farms so that we can continue eating cheap food?
Or should the Farmers pay a living wage to their workers?

Neither. Congress begin enforcing penalties on those who knowingly violate our immigration laws. As I have stated in the other immigration law threads, there is no point in having immigration laws if they are not enforced, and those who violate them punished.

True, but only so long as container shipping costs are low enough that low-wage economies outside the USA are still significantly cheaper as a production source than domestic factories.

And, with oil production declining in the foreseeable future, rising living standards and the development of a large middle class that demands increased wages in producer economies, and environmental concerns pressuring changes in consumption patterns (so a straight shift back from diesel engines to coal-fired steam not necessarily possible), it may be the case that - within a generation, perhaps - the same factors of global supply and demand that have moved most production jobs to South and East Asia, and most agricultural production to Africa and South America, may moved them right back close to the main consumer markets where they started out.

Especially as current climate change predictions tend to indicate (I go no more strongly than that) that the new food production powerhouse areas are likely to see reduced rainfall and higher summer temperatures. North Africa wasn't a desert until the Roman Empire exported all it's food and grain production there for a couple of centuries and simply farmed the place to death.

And other areas now warmer will produce more and take up the slack. Right now the biggest push on food prices is the stupid ethanol subsidies – they drive up the price of corn and use up acreage that was used for other crops. It is raising the price of all grown food.