Headline from the NY Times:
Farmers Call Crackdown on Illegal Workers Unfair
Really, all I have to say about that is:
Boo-fucking-hoo
Now quit breaking the damn law, go collect your tax-payer subsidies, and find a legal way to pick my apples and peaches.
__________
James Joyner adds:
Unlike the silly omnibus bill that was the focus of so much political controversy the last few months, these crackdown will force us to actually deal with the real issues. The bottom line is that major sectors of our economy depend on low wage workers. We’re going to have to either learn to get by without them and pay much higher prices to attract legal workers, substitute with imports from low wage countries, or figure out a way to legally admit tens of thousands more workers.
They’ve been on a publicity campaign. Besides all the subsidies, the individual state taxpayer has to pay for the health care they don’t provide their workers and their families. Also, the education, housing, etc. California spends, last I heard, 14 billion a year on illegal aliens. That is thousands of dollars a year for each taxpayer to shoulder — for what? A nickel off a head of lettuce?
For the record, it’s my understanding that fruit and vegetable growers do not collect subsidies.
A lot of the orchestrated complaints this week have been from dairy owners. They do collect subsidies.
Don’t feel sorry for the farmers. If they wanted to, they could get the migrant workers exemption (can’t remember what it’s called) for their workers. This is simply bullshit.