Meat packing plants are not the only ones crying about the crackdown on the hiring of illegal aliens. Citing the example of a vine-ripe tomato producer that lost three-quarters of its workforce at the beginning of harvest season when a federal crackdown found them to be illegal, Farm Bureaus are claiming a huge shortage of farm workers due to increased enforcement against illegal aliens.
The 1986 amnesty was supposed to halt illegal immigration and make employers liable for hiring illegal aliens. But the agricultural lobby succeeded in adding a provision that required search warrants before going into a field to check worker documentation.
This enabled agricultural interests to maintain substandard working conditions and hold down the wages of the illegal workers. It was a major reason for the tripling of illegal immigration, and the billions of dollars in associated costs to the taxpayers.
”Uncle Sam's teat,” the title of a farm subsidies article in The Economist, is very appropriate. The American Farm Bureau was successful with its lobbying to continue the present federal farm subsidies of over $20 billion yearly.
Not included in that figure are the billions of our tax dollars that go to support illegal farmworkers, which is just another form of farm subsidy.
Cheap, exploitable labor also stifles innovation and automation. The tomato products industry claimed guest workers were necessary for their economic survival. But after their termination, tomato production quadrupled due to increased mechanization, and the price of tomato products such as ketchup has actually gone down.
David Abraham, a law professor at the University of Miami and an expert on immigration issues, says, "It's not that it (the 1986 amnesty) failed, but it was abandoned.”
Businesses, with governmental complicity, exploit illegal aliens to drive down labor costs. The non-living wages they pay result in taxpayers subsiding their illegal workers at a cost far greater than any savings we might realize from lower prices.
Farm workers' wages increased by 40 percent when the guest worker program ended. But labor is less than 10 percent of the retail price of produce, and a 40 percent increase in labor costs equates to a 4 percent increase in consumer prices. Balanced against the billions the illegals are costing the same taxpaying consumers, we would be far ahead without them.
The effectiveness of 1953-54 “Operation Wetback” and the ineffectiveness of the1986 amnesty farce, puts the lie to claims that our economy needs illegal labor to survive.
Agriculture set all-time record highs for net farm income over the last four years. And the meat-packing plants had people standing in line to replace the arrested illegals.
Focusing on the illegal aliens, with claims that the only solution is a new amnesty, puts our economy seriously at risk. The fault is with illegal employers. If it were not for their glaring “in your face” refusal to abide by the law there would be no problem.
What's needed is more enforcement, such as the $3 million fine against the Golden State Fence Co. Its two executives, who plead guilty to hiring 10 illegal immigrants in 2004 and 2005, may actually go to jail.
