The Glade 4.0

Well, here's a useful data point in the debate about whether and to what degree US agriculture is dependent on illegal immigrant labor:


Megan McArdle makes a good point as well:

Why can't they follow the rules? My ancestors followed the rules; I'm sure yours did too. Please note I'm against a minimum wage so don't use that in your argument.

I think "American's won't do those jobs" are quickly becoming a thing of the past with the economic situation being what it is. I think people can and are willing to learn. and if these high skilled pickers are so great we can get them on a guest worker program - legally so they can pay taxes.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

It should be fairly obvious that if you kick out the illegal immigrants, people will not just magically appear at farms to replace them. You have to make them aware that the jobs are available, and you have to pay for the labor you're getting.

As for Americans not having the "painfully developed musculature".. well, I haven't noticed that the average illegal immigrant has any special muscle development. In regard to Americans not wanting to live as migrants following crops, I would point out that there is no shortage of Americans that essentially do live as migrants, constantly moving from place to place. They just tend not to really have jobs.

There obviously is going to be a period of adjustment from getting rid of illegals, but this constant mantra of "but Americans don't want to!" is nonsense. No, they don't, because harvesting jobs have a reputation as underpaying jobs done by illegal immigrants. No one wants to do hard labor for a pittance, but other jobs that involve a lot of hard labor, such as working aboard a cargo ship don't have this problem despite demanding work schedules because they don't underpay.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Honestly, this is the first thing that popped into my head.

Get rid of minimum wage so American's can compete in that job market.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I remember back after high school (Around 1999). Minimum wage was ~4.75. Because the job market was was it was back then you couldn't find people to work at Mc Donalds for 4.75, so they were paying up to $7 per hour for new hires. Now that minium wage is ~7.50, they pay 7.50. I don't see how this arbitrary number helps people.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

By the same token, that means the minimum wage isn't actually hurting the situation, since they'd be paid $7.50 anyways.

The real problem with farm workers is not that they're not worth $7.25 an hour, it's that if you hire legals you have to pay them $10.88 an hour after the first eight hours every day and in some states you have to go up to $14.50. With farm work requiring 12-14 hour days that just makes the whole exercise unprofitable.

That said, the minimum wage has its issues but there's too many people who say that the best way to fix our unemployment problem is to get rid of the minimum wage and put all the unemployed Americans into the farm jobs that illegal immigrants were doing. Namely, the grand solution is to force 10 million Americans to do hard labor for less than five bucks an hour for 14 hours a day with no benefits or workers compensation insurance. If they get injured? **** it, they're worthless $5/hour workers, scrape him off the field and bring in the next guy.

Just as a comparison, in the EU it is a violation, in ANY industry, (there are NO exceptions like in the US) if there is ever a period of 18 consecutive weeks where the average hours worked per week by an EU citizen exceeds 48. Individuals can voluntarily work more hours but if an action is filed the burden of proof is on the employer to prove that he did not in any way coerce the worker to work longer, as a result very few employers even allow additional work because that is very very hard to prove. How does all the manual labor **** requiring longer working hours get done? They use illegal immigrants and migrant labor, just like we do.

Except for the part where it contributes to inflation in general. Now they have to raise the price of everything at McDonalds to pay for the wage increase.



How do you know there's be no benefits or compensation, if employers had no choice but to hire American workers? How do you know that the wages would be $5/hour? You don't. You're pulling this out of your *** by assuming that American workers would be working under the same conditions as.. people who are here illegally, and just making up numbers in the process. Not only would that mean you had a smaller labor pool for farm workers which would force wages and conditions to improve anyhow, but these people would be working legally, which would mean a lot more recourse to unionize or do other things to prevent abuse.

As for 14 hour workdays, that's 14 hour days during the harvest season. It's not a year-round job at that schedule. We have plenty of people that work 14 hour or more days on a regular basis under far harsher conditions than farm labor. Americans are perfectly capable of performing hard, physical labor; they just won't perform it when the wages it commands are artificially depressed by people from other countries coming here and taking the jobs because $5 an hour is an assload of money in their country.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm not for forcing anyone to take any job for any rate of pay. I for allowing them to if they see fit.

Also I still want to know why they can't/shouldn't have to follow the rules. Both the workers and the farmers who are acting against the law.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Sometimes the law is dumb.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Dumb is subjective.

I'm agree we want the best and brightest and the current quota system doesn't allow that. That doesn't make it right to break the law. It's generally agreed that it's illegal to steal, even bread when you are hungry, but we still prosecute shoplifters.

I don't think throwing a magical blanket of Amnesty (even a +5 one) over our current problem is the best solution either. We need to secure our boarders and deal with the gang bangers before we can evaluate all the supposed honest hard working upright folks who are oppressed by the current system, and find out what ones really are. By all means I'd be for any plan that does the first two that does the third. Anyone who wants to come to this country, work hard, and contribute to American society should be welcome. I'm even willing to support those who want to work here for a season and send the money home provided they follow the law and pay taxes.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

There isn't any quota system for the H-2A visa that allows temporary agricultural workers. The H-2A also provides for significant protections for the workers, mainly to prevent "company store" type debt slavery. However, we only have about 30,000 H-2A visa holders right now out of 10 million or more illegal immigrants (who, granted, are not all interested in working in agriculture in the first place.)

The basic problem is that most illegal immigrants simply do not give a **** about anything except getting a better deal for themselves. This is understandable because they often have a shitty deal where they come from, but they are not hardworking, honest people being kept out by overly restrictive U.S. laws or some ****. They're mostly poor, ignorant people who don't care about anything beyond the next dollar because they simply don't know how to care.

They'll happily pay a coyote thousands of dollars, or if they're a young, fit man, they'll haul the mota as their fare of passage, just to avoid having to go through the process to get an H-2A. Never mind that they have to get a loan shark to get the money, and if los diablos verdes gets them before they get work they're ****. They just don't give a ****. they want that job and that cash and want it now, and **** everyone else.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt DE. If there are any honest hard working good souls out there by all means I want to welcome them to the USA.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Once we've secured the borders, I don't see anything wrong with giving those inside a chance to surrender and do right now rather than having them remain and hope we can find them. In my perfect legislation, the window for such actions would be pretty short

Basically what I'm saying is: If I were a legislator trying to garner bipartisan support for an immigration reform bill, I'd be willing to offer a limited amnesty program for the honest hard working victims of the system that my liberal colleges are so worried about. In exchange I'd want better border security, e-verify and an express system to get the current crop of gangbangers and any future individuals unlawfully present in the United States out of the country

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Many of the ones that are simply looking for a job are honest and hardworking in the sense that if they're getting paid to pick tomatoes for 14 hours a day, they'll pick tomatoes for 14 hours a day, diligently. That's it. They aren't "honest" beyond that; they're going to seek out that job because its the best deal going for them, not because they love being hardworking people getting a good wage for an honest day's work or some ****. If Mexico had its **** together and they could get a good job there, they'd be gone in a heartbeat.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You're completely ignoring the fact that the employer also has to apply for H-2As to provide to workers. In this process they must first try to find American workers to take those jobs, then prove to the INS that they did so. Quite frankly, if my personal experience with the INS is any indication, they will find any excuse possible to deny an application that give a job that could potentially be filled by an American to an immigrant, or to get rid of that immigrant once they are here. INS employees do not like the people who are "stealing our jobs" and seize on any opportunity to rectify this "wrong." We lived in constant fear of this when we were here on an H-1B visa. I saw someone deported for being at-fault in an auto accident, when I say any excuse, I really mean it. You have a very high chance of being automatically deported simply for being arrested on suspicion of committing a felony. Not even a grand jury indictment, let alone a conviction, simply an arrest. They don't even let you post bond, they just hand you over to the INS for immediate deportation. This makes nonimmigrant workers, especially low-wage workers that have a propensity for getting into trouble, very unreliable because they can be randomly deported at any time.

Also, you are implying that there is a huge surplus of H-2A jobs available, but that Mexicans would prefer to put their lives at risk hauling drugs or selling themselves to loan sharks rather than wait a few weeks to process an H-2A application. This is utterly ridiculous.

Employers are generally not going to bother with H-2As. Not only are there all the pitfalls I just listed, but the whole point of hiring illegal immigrants in the first place is to skirt U.S. wage laws. H-2A workers must be paid minimum wage and overtime pay, the same as American workers. The company also must provide food and shelter to the workers. They're not going to apply for H-2As, it's simply not profitable. If they have jobs that are profitable for H-2As to do, they'll just pay a few bucks more an hour and hire Americans. That's why there's only 30,000 of them.

The whole farm industry as currently structured simply does not function without low-paying cheap labor. Is it impossible for the farm work to be done with Americans? Of course not, but it would require a major restructuring of the entire industry.

Then we need to fix the H-2A issues as part of a comprehensive deal on illegal immigration.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I'm not "ignoring" that at all. It's supposed to be that way. However, first of all, INS is gone; it's Immigration and Customs Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection now, depending on which aspect you mean, and since it's been that way since 2003 and you evidently don't know this, I doubt your experience is that extensive.

Second, once you have a visa, H-1B, H-2A, or for that matter any other class, no immigration service can just look for an excuse of "taking jobs" to toss you out. It does not work that way. You cannot be deported for being in an auto accident; it does not work like that. Auto accidents are not a deportable condition. You cannot be deported just for "suspicion" of a felony. You can be refused admission in the first place for certain felonies, or suspicion of them, but once you are admitted, deportation requires a higher standard fo proof, generally conviction. I can get my textbooks out and specify for different offenses, but the bottom line is that you simply do not know what you are talking about.

If this is what your parents were worried about then they didn't **** understand either. Furthermore, you can definitely get deported for being here without any visa at all, so even if this bullshit you were spewing were true it still wouldn't explain the unwillingness of illegals to go through the proper process.



No, it's not utterly ridiculous. If there weren't a huge surplus of jobs,we wouldn't have a flood of illegal immigrants working them. What agricultural jobs do you think we're talking about?



Employer misconduct is a problem, but that does not change the fact that an H-2A could still be hired for a fairly token increase in expense. Minimum wage would be a raise for them, and the other costs are all pretty minor. Transporation, room, and board? Not exactly bank-breakers; we are not talking about college dorms or Army barracks, much less anything fancier.

More importantly, this illustrates exactly how short-sighted most illegals are. They could have a much better deal with an H-2A, and no debt to a coyote or loan shark. But they don't give a **** because they just don't get the concept of following a legal process. It seems easier to just cross the river, and it satisfies the sense of immidiate gratification that is part and parcel of being poor and ignorant.



Bullshit. You're just pulling **** out of your ***. The bottom line is that you're a **** LAPR who thinks he's entitled to live here and views everything through the fairly typical sense of entitlement to American resources that the rest of the world seems to have.

Even if it did, so what? If the entire industry is designed around reliance on cheap labor that's come into this country illegally, then it needs to be restructured. I seem to recall that there was a period in which another major agricultural industry in this country relied on cheap labor...

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is complete fabrication. Its near impossible to get illegal aliens arrested for real crimes deported, much less someone here on a valid visa who's only infraction was an auto accident.

It's laughable that there are people who think that this is actually remotely possible to do in any real sense of the word.

If you define "secure" as "completely impossible for anyone to ever sneak through", sure, it's impossible. That's an absurd standard, however.

Most drugs and aliens, however, come through in certain specific areas; the long stretches of open desert don't see nearly as much activity because there aren't as many people out there to be sneaking across, and because of the distances and rough terrain - water consumption is a seriosu problem for sneaking both drugs and people across out in the middle of nowhere. Therefore, assets can be concentrated on the most needful areas.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm not fabricating anything. The nonimmigrants here legally are held to a huge double standard, compared to the illegal immigrants. While the guy I know who got deported may have had other offenses other than the auto accident, he certainly never got brought up on criminal charges and the company wanted to keep him here, but he was thrown out anyways.

You're providing an anecdote without the actual specifics. In any case you cannot get deported for having an auto accident. Period.

Nonimmigrants are not held to any double standard, either. The system is specifically set up to avoid that. An illegal alien, when apprehended, is considered to be "seeking admission" just like an alien arriving at a port of entry (citizens are never "seeking admission"). He is then deemed inadmissible as an alien present in the United States without having applied for admission. Depending on the exact situation he might be Voluntarily Returned, subject to Expedited Removal, subject to deportation, subject to reinstatement of a prior removal order, or prosecuted, but there is no double standard. The system is designed that way for the express purpose of making sure that illegal immigrants do not have more rights than those who lawfully apply for admission.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

My beating heart be still! Who ever could have predicted that the most basic laws of economics would trump the foolish and arbitrary laws of governments?!? Who?!?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

So you weren't fabricating anything when you stated that the person was tossed out only because he caused a traffic accident? Ok.