-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
A little over a month ago, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal (left) signed HB 87, an Arizona-like immigration law. The law was designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, and now state officials are shocked feigning shock that it worked.
The resulting labor shortage has meant that millions of dollars of unharvested blueberries, onions, and other crops will be left rotting in the fields. Since many farmers live harvest-to-harvest, the loss of one crop could mean the loss of their farm.
Agriculture is Georgia’s number one economic activity, so Deal called for an investigation. The results of a survey show that at least 11,000 workers will needed. More than 6,300 of the jobs pay an average of $8 an hour, have no benefits, and are even not covered by workman’s compensation.
In an effort to downplay the effect the law would have on the farm labor force, Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black claimed that workers can earn $12 to $18 an hour. “Can” being the key word. However, that wage range is not reasonable. Vegetable and melon workers’ wages are near $7.78 an hour, and blueberry workers make about $6.70 an hour. These are, of course, seasonal wages.
Georgia farmers could try to solve their labor problem by offering higher wages, but passing that additional cost on to consumers would put their crops at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis other states that haven’t chased out the cheap labor. The Vidalia onion, Georgia’s official state vegetable, is going to be in scarce supply this year.
What did they think would happen? You don’t have to have a Nobel Prize in economics to have foreseen this crisis. And what is Deal’s contingency plan? He acts shocked.
H/T: AJC, Steve Benen.
Mike and O.S.-
Tootie doesn’t hate. She’s a Christian. Just ask her.
If there was real justice in the world, 2T would be one of those farmers whose crops are rotting in the fields because of hatred and xenophobia. And greed.
I am skeptical that the farmers will actually learn something as the result of voting against their own self interests. They will continue to listen to the demagogues and vote for hate instead of economic self-interest. They will be convinced it the all the fault of that foreign-born Kenyan, socialist, Nazi and his “Democrat” henchmen. Just like 2T and some of the other economic knuckle-draggers we have had around here lately.
Tootie,
You are one of the xenophobic fools that has fallen for your conservative politicians line. They don’t want to stop illegal immigration, They want dupes like you voting for them, while they take handouts from those who benefit from illegal immigration. However, since it’s ethnic hatred they’re hypocritically pushing, they’ll always have people like you to vote for them.
They know from past experience that they really don’t have to do anything once elected, because they’ve so focused your hatred you won’t even know they’re picking your pocket.
The big mistake that we mostly all make, including me at times, is that we believe that the average politician feels responsible to all his/her constituents and not just the ones with money. Operating out of that mindset the anti-immigration efforts have always been more about getting elected through xenophobia, rather than any benefit to the public. The fairly open, yet to political discourse a “dirty little secret” is that illegal immigrants have been vital to business interests for years in order to avoid paying fair wages and benefits. This has always been true in border states and in the South, primarily in agriculture. Rail all you want to get people to support your xenophobia, enforce the law on poor individuals and look the other way as your campaign donors using them, fill your coffers.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2yis9hXDz0&w=560&h=349%5D
BS is right. (11:23 am)
BS by the immigration genocidal maniacs who still think 10,000 year old harvesting techniques is “progressive”. Leave it to the Marxist pigs among us (not me, of course) to claim a superior interest in something called “progress” and “science” but yet wants to relegate a certain portion of the human race to the ancient back-breaking work of the peasant in the field for low wages merely because that is what has been done for ages.
The progressive thinker is the most regressive among us. He is always clinging to old ideas that don’t advance civilization (as long as he is above it all and doesn’t have to get his hands dirty).
Mechanization is the answer.
Engineering and technology provides the solutions, but the anti-science and anti-progressive Marxist dirt-bags on the left won’t allow it because it doesn’t fit into their communist scheme to make the rest of us live like dogs. They want us behaving like we did ten thousand years ago. In particular they want others to behave that way so they can sit around in clean clothes, climate controlled rooms, and let others serve them their food by their seat of their brow.
http://www.vdare.com/misc/archive00/mechanization.htm
What we have here is lies, lies, and more lies. Lies that farmers cannot harvest without massive imports of “fruit pickers” (the name Singapore’s former premier used on the Charlie Rose show one night to describe the uneducated immigrants (barbarians) America brings in to work in “the field” as opposed to the intelligent people Singapore brings in through its immigration system. Yeah, don’t bring in intelligent people. Find the dumbest ones you can locate and flood the country with them so you can reap the rewards of cheap food you don’t have to sweat over.
What a freaking hoot that interview was.
Then there are the lies by farmers that the only alternative to their problem is genocide of WASPs (and I don’t mean the bugs). No, they don’t admit this openly, this is just the results of their whining. They REFUSE to innovate and continually complain about “food rotting in the fields to scare people. Geeze, maybe they should stop planting so much?
Ironically, the answers to the problem appear to lie outside the limits of our border–in Asian in particular. They recognize the need for mechanization and are not afraid to address it.
http://www.agnet.org/library/nc/148a/
Maybe we should import those guys to work for us? They, unlike the retrograde and backwards progressive/leftist/Democrat in the America, actually want to progress. Oh wait, the Democrats prefer the barbaric peons with the low IQ who can help them return to the blissful and bucolic neanderthal knuckle-dragging state of perfection.
Well some of them must return to the life of the peasant, of course, just not the people who advocate it. They who want the peons to flood the border won’t be living that back-breaking life themselves. Hell no. They are too dainty and superior for that sort of thing and will insist others do it for them.
“Government actions limiting the labor pool and setting artificially-high wages will simply push production out of the United States over time.”
puzzling,
If our government started charging import duties, like for instance those in China and Japan, perhaps we could keep jobs here and still be competitive.
All the NAFTA’s, CAFTA’s etc. have done is to put American manufacturing, in America, at a disadvantage. It has cost us industry and jobs but has made multi-nationals big bucks. The fault for this lies with both parties.
http://projects.wri.org/sd-pams-database/china/import-duties
http://www.ustr.gov/trade-topics/industry-manufacturing/industrial-tariffs
Compare the rates. US rates are about 2% on average. China’s are about 23%. Any wonder why their goods flood our markets and take away our jobs?
“oh, oh, wait. You mean our hate has CONSEQUENCES?”
“Nathan Deal for Governor of Georgia. Join the campaign today and help bring new jobs to our state in order to put Georgia back to work!”
Promises, promises …..
Gee rising production costs reduces production, who would have thought. I still have a suspicion that if this had been a democrat governor this post would be lit up with applause for him fighting for a “living wage” and “workers rights”. Ill give you credit though, you finally managed to analyze an economic phenomenon properly, lets see how long you can keep it up.
Manufacturing the first to go….Politics….Bull Shit….still here…
Dredd:
I caught a gentleman going off the radio at the end of his talk on the very subject of our natural
resources and how we should take care of them,and he made this point at the end of his talk he said”NAFTA has hurt more young children than NAMBLA could ever do”
Quite a way to make a point.
Agricultural wages will probably rise modestly this year in Georgia to meet some of the labor shortage for the most profitable crops.
This could make the price of Georgia crops high enough so that people will opt for product imported from South America and Asia instead, like OsoSweet onions instead of Vidalia.
Even so, the increased labor costs and harvest shortages will raise prices somewhat. Georgia is a small producer, but even were this to happen in a larger producing state this would impact poorer consumers of US export markets the most. While food importers like Japan can easily afford higher prices, places like Egypt and Malaysia may have a harder time.
Government actions limiting the labor pool and setting artificially-high wages will simply push production out of the United States over time.
Duh…..
For now there are high fives in the Christie camp on this one,I guess it was the same in Deals camp as the chickens are coming home to roost.
I fear similarities here in Jersey with this bill.
N.J. Assembly passes landmark employee benefits overhaul
Published: Friday, June 24, 2011, 7:00 AM Updated: Friday, June 24, 2011, 11:20 AM
TRENTON — New Jersey lawmakers tonight voted to enact a sweeping plan to cut public worker benefits after a long day of high-pitched political drama in the streets of Trenton and behind closed doors.
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/06/assembly_passes_landmark_emplo.html
When I was younger, I could not wait to turn 14 so that I could work on the tobacco farms and earn money. The farms sent buses into the suburbs to pick up the high school kids and those who were of age. It enabled the kids to earn money before going back to school, and most importantly to meet the opposite sex. Unfortunately, the airlines were expanding and tickets got cheaper, and the farms discovered Puerto Ricans. They did not have to go back to school, and were cheaper, thus I got aced out of a great opportunity.
Most of the guys I worked with in an oil refinery in Houston had personal experience of picking cotton and farm work too. All of those ag jobs were done by Americans for most of our history.
In GA most of that work was done by black Americans previously, and they were forced out by the illegals. So the farmers are mostly to blame for their own situation. Also they CAN hire immigrant workers, BUT they have to abide by the laws about conditions, wages, etc.. I know that obeying the law is foreign to most of those folks as well as the illegals, and it is too much of a hardship to do it. Though I think that doing so is not as hard as field work.
Frank,
“Don’t be surprised if some genius there does not propose making the unemployed pick for their checks, or prisoners. Anything so they don’t have to pay a living wage for the work.”
So Deal’s plan did work out pretty good…
I mean Deal hasn’t figured it out just yet…
See why we have to have stupid drug laws… Keep those prisons full so we have a source of free labor.
I am glad to see this post, which is obviously a study in “lack of vision”.
That is these governing officials are governing like someone who drives by looking out the rear view mirror instead of the front windshield.
It is a microcosm for the way we are treating the Earth, because as in this case there will be pure hell to pay.
During the last prez campaign Grandpa Walnuts made a statement to a crowd, “You wouldn’t pick lettuce for $50 an hour.” He, of course, was heckled by the crowd who understood that $50/hr would be $100k a year – on average more than twice what they were probably earning.
It is miserable work, made more so by the fact that so many who do it have to live in a shadow & the growers know it.
Don’t be surprised if some genius there does not propose making the unemployed pick for their checks, or prisoners. Anything so they don’t have to pay a living wage for the work