February 05, 2006

The Guardian: American crops rotting in the fields

The Guardian Unlimited (aka "al Guardian") chimes in on the long running series containing dire predictions from growers in which they complain about not having enough cheap foreign serf labor: "US crops left to rot as Mexicans leave the fields for better-paid jobs" by Dan Glaister.

If you've been following along, yes!, the article does include a quote from Jon Vessey. And, as with the WaPo, the CSM, and the LAT, they don't mention that he's on the board of the Western Growers Association. And, he's got something to say:

"Last year money was being thrown at border patrol and homeland security," Mr Vessey says, sitting in his office in the nearby town of El Centro, a signed photograph of him with George and Laura Bush hanging on the wall. "They've got to get numbers. So what do they do? They pull over labour buses. The bottom line is, we're not getting people on to our buses with bags of marijuana and bombs. These are hard-working people."

..."There is a hysteria around the border and terrorism that has nothing to do with agriculture and people who want to earn a good living," says Mr Vessey. "The idea of spending millions building a fence from the Gulf of Mexico to San Diego is ridiculous. Shouldn't we be building bridges rather than walls? If you have a free trade agreement, you should have open borders," he says. "But that would never fly."

Of course it would never fly, because almost everyone else knows just how much damage that would do to the U.S. Whether George Bush and those who would profit off the open borders would care about that is probably not too likely. They're just here to make money, and everything else takes a backseat.

Previous examples start in "Dania Akkad of Monterey Herald warns: crops may rot in fields".

Posted to Immigration at February 5, 2006 08:53 AM

Comments

One fallacy with the rotting vegetables story, is that it sets up a false dilemma. Our options are not limited to deporting millions of illegals in less time than it takes for planting decisions to be switched, or tolerating the lack of a net reduction of the size of the illegal population, by many millions. There are a hundred options between those, and even more alternatives available, if the choices are fraudulently presented as : open borders vs. immediate removal of all illegals.

Posted by: John S Bolton at February 5, 2006 10:11 PM

The problem with this is that many of these illegals come up here maybe to work in the fields and they find out that they can make more money in construction or yard work,etc. Where years ago they mainly came up here and worked in the fields on a seasonal basis, their family stayed back in Mexico and they would return home after the picking season. No longer, now they try to bring up the whole family as soon as they can get enough money together. The children that are born here go to school and do not want to work in the fields as their father's did. So again we have a problem of not enough working in the fields and so they want to bring in more illegals to work the fields. But as you can see it is a never ending problem,as the children don't want to do this work and so you need an never ending fresh supply of cheap workers from Mexico. They need to start using mechanical devices to pick the crops but they will never do that as long as they are given easy access to cheap foreign labor.

Posted by: DG at February 5, 2006 11:40 PM