Howard Stearn's rant on why I think why many Americans hate immigrants...and it's not policy

And watch farm work, manufacturing and service jobs sit idle in the country with no one doing them... great solution.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57551.html

Georgia immigrant crackdown backfires

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal’s program to replace fleeing migrant farmworkers with probationers backfired when some of the convicted criminals started walking off their jobs because field work was too strenuous, it was reported Wednesday.
And the state’s farms could lose up to $1 billion if crops continue to go unpicked and rot, the president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council warned.

In a story datelined Leslie, in rural south Georgia, The Associated Press writes of convicts calling it quits at 3:25 p.m. — more than 2½ hours before the crew of Mexicans and Guatemalans they replaced.
“Those guys out here weren’t out there 30 minutes and they got the bucket and just threw them in the air and say, `Bonk this. I ain’t with this. I can’t do this,’” said Jermond Powell, a 33-year-old probationer working at a farm in Leslie. “They just left, took off across the field walking.”
Georgia, which passed an Arizona-style immigration bill in April that is due to take effect next month, has seen thousands of undocumented immigrants flee the state. A state survey released last week found 11,080 vacant positions on state farms that needed to be filled to avoid losing crops.
At the same time as the survey’s release, Deal, a first-term Republican, announced a program to link the state’s 100,000 probationers with farmers looking to fill positions, the vast majority of which pay less than $15 per hour.
The AP reported the first group of probationers began working last week at an Americus farm owned by Dick Minor, president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association.
Minor’s farm was the second-largest recipient of federal farm subsidies in Georgia, receiving $11.4 million between 2000 and 2009, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The executive director of the fruit and vegetable growers group, Charles Hall, said the Minor farm is one of two participating in a pilot program to see if Deal’s proposal is operable.
Hall told POLITICO that as many as two-thirds of probationers who have tried working on the two farms in the last week have either walked off the job or not come back for a second day.
“The thing that you gotta have when you have crop in the field, you have to have a dependable work force,” Hall said. “You got to work through enough people. If you need a crew of six, you may have to start with 20.”
In prior years, Hall said, “you probably had a crew leader who had people who worked with him. He put six people in the field and he got your squash picked.”
Bryan Tolar, president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council, said farms have already lost $300 million and could lose up to $1 billion if it does not get access to a reliable workforce.
“People come out and they have an idea of what they’re going to be doing,” Tolar said. “As soon as they start doing it and find out that its more difficult and more work required than they’d anticipated, they leave.”

Tolar was on Capitol Hill Wednesday urging the Georgia congressional delegation to pass a guest worker program that streamlines the process through which farmers can hire temporary migrant workers. He said using probationers — or anyone unfamiliar with the rigors of farm work — is not a useful long-term solution to the state farm labor shortage.
Georgia’s crops, Tolar said, are “already rotting in the field and falling off the vine. We’ve got blackberries that are mature. And when they’re not picked, they drop. When they drop, they’re done.”
Former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, on her blog, compared the practice of sending probationers to work on farms to an earlier practice of Southern police departments arresting black men on dubious charges and sentencing them to work on local farms that needed the labor.
“The suggestion of sending probationers into the fields to solve our self-inflicted economic wound is nothing more than retrogressing to an earlier shameful time in our state’s history of victimizing hundreds of mostly black men and condemning them to near slavery, while the rest of us watch silently,” she wrote. “Now as then, many of the potential victims have poor if any legal representation and few employment opportunities.”

this is easy to fix.....

Aww. The poor, greedy farmers can't get by without their slave labor so they resorted to convicted criminals. I'm heartbroken. Good news for the farmers. The H-2A visa allows for farmers to bring in an unlimited number of workers. Of course, this visa protects workers which will undoubtedly cut into their profits. Can't have that! Because without slave labor, apparently the US economy will screech to a halt. One has to wonder how the world's only super power made it this far without illegal aliens.

In related news...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47695087

Another Phony Farm Crisis
Published: Tuesday, 5 Jun 2012 | 4:00 PM ET

By: John Carney
Senior Editor, CNBC.com

AP

Here we go again. If it’s getting close to summer, it’s time to start reading about farm labor shortages.
“California's Central Valley farmers struggle with worker shortage,” warns the Sacramento Bee.
“Immigration crackdown in Ala. means farm labor shortage,” the Associated Press declares.
“Immigration issues at center of labor shortage for Washington State farmers,” Fox News trumpets.
That sure sounds like trouble.
Do you remember the great agricultural crisis of 2011?

The severe lack of migrant workers left crops rotting in the fields and orchards, devastating farm economies across the country. There were warning signs from all over the country.
From California:

Farmers across California are experiencing the same problem: Seasonal workers who have been coming for decades to help with the harvest, planting and pruning have dropped off in recent years. With immigration crackdowns, an aging Mexican population, drug wars at the border and a weakened job market in the United States, the flow of migrants has stopped and may actually have reversed, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research firm that has been studying the trend.

The Washington apple growers blamed tensions around illegal immigration for a labor shortage. Alabama farmers warned of a “labor crisis” caused by laws aimed at illegal immigration. Similar laws in Georgia rendered the harvest “rancid.” Arizona’s illegal immigration measures were “destroying the state’s farm sector.”
This is why Americans farmers had such a devastating year last year.
Oh. Wait.
That’s not what happened at all.
Despite the dire predictions of labor shortages, American farmers had a record-breaking year of profits in 2011. Farm profits rose 24.1 percent last year, to $98.1 billion. Cash income, a measure of farm solvency, rose 17.8 percent to $108.7. Agricultural exports topped $137 billion. Crop receipts rose 16 percent. Livestock sales receipts averaged 17 percent higher than in 2010.
Never before in American history have farms been this financially sound and profitable.
"We're just experiencing the best of times," Bruce Johnson, an agricultural economist at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, tells the Huffington Post.
The Department of Agriculture doesn’t release more granular data by region and crop until August. But anecdotally, it seems like the horror stories of 2011 haven’t come true. In Washington, for instance, apple growers had a very good year.
You can expect to hear a lot about farm labor shortages over the next couple of months. But if last year is any indication, complaints about farm labor are not correlated for farm performance.

For that reason I doubt you'll see nearly as much resistance to Asian immigration compared to Hispanic immigration.

Sane people would argue that America is much greater now than it was under our grandparents.

My article directly showed Americans (prisoners no less) refusing to do the work of migrant workers. Your article is really just conjecture. You need to find something that actually directly refutes an actual occurrence.

But it also appears that you have no real experience dealing with unskilled workers. My point is that we have plenty available in this country. We just pay them not to work via welfare, disability, and UI. Until that ends we have no real choice but to import labor and pay those who will do the job.

But hey, we can do it your way, we can double minimum wage, and let manufacturing jobs leave. The agricultural jobs that stay will end up passing along inflationary increases thereby valuing the same paychecks worth less... all told a zero sum game, but I'm even ok with that because this has happened before and low paid workers still end up with low pay.

But blame the "greedy farmers" because that's really going to solve the problem of having undesireable jobs that require only manual labor to do them.

Pointing out that the farm industry is doing better than ever is hardly conjecture. If those Georgia farmers are having problems, maybe they should start emulating other farmers. Start with the unlimited Ag visas and go from there. Or, modernize. Hard to cry poor when the industry has never been healthier. The fact that they went from illegal aliens to prisoners just shows you how greedy these farmers can get.

Last year, one million people applied for 62K McJobs. Today, young adults are facing record unemployment and you think we need to import labor? Simply amazing.

It's not just the farmers, it's all greedy employers who hire illegal aliens for cheap labor and then pass the social costs onto Americans. If illegal aliens are so vital to our economy, why is California's (and particularly L.A.'s) economy in shambles?

Yeah...I just don't see it. But hey I'm just some guy on a Stern board. Just my guess that's all.

You make some interesting points. But is the farm industry so healthy because they get government subsidies? If it's not because of subsidies then I say stop the subs and let them fly on their own.

Young adults aren't facing unemployment because there are no jobs. There are a lot of jobs they don't want to do. I can't blame them because we as a country enable this via handouts.

With regards to farmers, modernization is an investment and when the payback isn't there, then what?

Employers hire illegals not for cheap labor but for labor period.... these are jobs we as a country don't want to do... not sure if you get that.

Lastly, CA's economy is in shambles because of spending, especially on public sector benefits... to wit:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/06/06/69595/schwarzenegger-illegal-aliens.html

http://reason.org/news/show/california-budget-deal-is-a-ba

http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/understanding-the-california-budget-crisis/


Edit: And to Stearn's point, yes we need to end farm subsidies.

To your point on California.
California has a gap of 112 BILLION in state employee pension benefits for what's been promised to the state employees and the money on hand to meet these obligations.
The state was counting on the market to cover the shortfalls but when that doesn't happen then you're in a tough spot.
But they do have 78% of the money but it's gotta take some work to close the gap even more. It can be done but they need to get serious. But those workers deserve to get what was bargained for and what they paid into the system. It's only right.

Who's going to do this ? You'll need to hire thousands of new ins agents . And where u going to put all theses people ? In our already filled jails??

Plus there is that pesky constitution to deal with!

I would employ obama's 20% unemployed for this police service. I would give them minimum wage plus some commision (based on results). What part of the constitution covers illegal immigrants by the way? They aren't citizens.. No need for jails. Only interrogations and then instant deportation. Its so easy and cost effective..

Also, the unemployed masses could be employed to build and guard the wall between the Southern states and the Mexican wasteland. 100% secure border all built and guarded by the unemployed. No more need for 1 in 7 food stamps.. Time to get real and crack down on those illegal criminals. Solving unemployement at the same time. No more poverty! All the while, doin it doggy style!

no offense
i usually like most of your post but
ending farm subsidies is just a catch phrase like being the most transparent president
there is so much that goes into farm subs it will make your mind spin
yes there is abuse of the system
but stop and think farmers going under...it ends in one place
trust me i see subs work and i get frustrated by them
but they are needed
i have never taken or applied for any
and every year i turn my ag agent down of countless programs they want to put me in
i figure if my grandparents and parents never took them
then i shouldnt
but honestly if i didnt have a good paying job off the farm i dont think i would have a choice
farming is a mother fucker
but farmers on the whole are the greatest people you could ever come in contact with(excluding me of course)

I agree that farmers are the greatest btw, but I just don't believe in subsidizing any industry. Since we are an exporter of farm products I question that the market can't bear higher domestic prices spawned from removing what subsidies we can.

My goal in the case of removing subs isn't to consolidate farms or make them more corporate but rather to raise world prices (that should not get the benefit of our subsidies).

We need to put a stop to this 'anchor baby' nonsense where a child born to an illegal alien because a U.S. citizen, then protect our borders like other countries. We're demonized for it while it's fine for everyone else.

last time i checked pot is illegal

What do you mean "then what?" If they fail because of poor business decisions, so be it. It's not our responsibility to coddle business owners into making the right decision. Let their failure serve as a lesson for others.

No, I don't think you get it. This isn't 2006 anymore. The whole "They come to do the jobs Americans don't want" schtick doesn't work anymore, as evidenced by last year's one million McDonald applicants.

Illegal aliens might not be the cause of California's economic woes, but it's impossible to think they're aren't contributing. No state protects illegal aliens like California. Meanwhile, with an estimated 2.5 million illegal aliens, California has the third worst unemployment rate in the country. This isn't difficult. Any job that an illegal alien holds is one job that an American isn't.

I was shocked at the number of people sleeping and begging on the streets in San Francisco....Asians will control that city within 25 years....

No, I don't think you understood what I said. My "then what" was in response to your flip reply that farmers should modernize and get rid of the manual labor. My point was that modernization costs money that farmers don't have. So when you can't afford to upgrade (or the payback isn't there), you are stuck with manual labor. So, then what?

And btw, contrary to your belief, these "greedy farmers" aren't cornering the market on Maseratis

I have direct experience with this and you are dead wrong. I don't care how many McDonald's applicants applied, many people will work in a low paying job for a day or two, not many will stay with it. People leave to get back on UI (they get themselves fired and claim), or the applicants will simply not accept the jobs when called to come in. So ask yourself this: all of these jobs that were being done by illegals in 2006... how many of them are now being done by legal people now? Did all of those illegals go home? Of course not. Employers would prefer to have all legal English speaking people working hard, but that still is not an option no matter what you may think.

Even if you offer $15/hr to do manual labor, the people making that wage now would rather do what they are doing than make the same at a physically more taxing job. And all of that assumes that the company paying that could even compete at that wage, which we all know couldn't happen.

Illegal aliens aren't the cause, so there is no reason to bring it up. And you're simply ignoring the taxes that they do pay, both sales and any withholding/fica/etc at the time of being paid. Now take the same person who sits idle on UI or welfare... how many taxes are they paying? I'm saying negative because any tax they paid comes directly out of what they're given. The fact that they are citizens does not entitle them to take money earned by the rest of us. In fact, I'm much more sympathetic to those that are working, legal or not because they are pulling their own weight.

We can fill every position in this country with legal people, all we have to do is end the handouts that enable people to turn up their noses at jobs they'd rather not do.

Yeah that`ll get those crops harvested in Ga.

subsidizing has a lot more to do with protecting the soil than producing the crop
its the thing people who dont understand farming never think about
rotating crops is a must unless your farming hay

H-2A visa. They're unlimited for farmers. I think I see this where this is headed. Let's cut to the chase. Are you implying that farmers should be allowed slave-like labor if they can't afford to modernize or follow the rules?

It's funny how I show you how desperate American workers are getting and you brush it off as if it's nothing. Dunno how many 2006 jobs are done by Americans now. But, I do know that since Alabama enacted HB56, their unemployment rate plummeted. Illegal aliens left. Americans (or legal residents) are working. Everybody wins. What exactly are you saying? We should allow employers to hire illegal aliens because some Americans have a shitty work ethic?

Oh well, illegal aliens pay some taxes. I guess that makes up for some of the social costs, namely crime:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...new-burglary-charges-fraud-and-identity-theft

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1109/110915chicago.htm

http://www.ojjpac.org/memorial.asp

Totally agree about ending the handouts, though. If able-bodied Americans would rather sit on their ass and collect welfare than work, I think it's time to re-evaluate welfare benefits.

But even if you rotate crops (I know very little about this) and have to plant something useless 1 out of 3 years, wouldn't you price your product accordingly?

I'm saying that at the outset, "slave-like" labor is already begging any kind of question. They have jobs and need people. People who come here don't have jobs and need work. I don't see a problem, except that visas are too hard to come by, and are useless for other sectors that also need unskilled labor and can't find it.

You really didn't show me anything other than saying that things are different than in 2006. My experience during then and now shows otherwise.
I can't speak intelligently about Alabama but I don't believe it is an industrial powerhouse like many other states. I don't know the make up of their economy, nor do I know how many people there were illegal in the first place.

I'm saying that some Americans have a shitty work ethic. Some of this is inherent, and some because we subsidize their existance. As a direct result of either or both, we have labor jobs that need to be done. We'd rather hand out welfare and complain that these people can't find jobs than cut the spigot and see how fast they suddenly are inspired to work.

I'm glad that you're on the same page as welfare/disability/ui because that is the whole of my argument. In the while that we continue the handout, we will need illegals to do the work that these people won't.

BTW, with respect to your articles above on Chicago crime... not sure where you're from but I do live in IL (maybe you do too?), most of Chicago's crime isn't because of illegals. You can find bad people everywhere in every demographic, especially in low income/low education situations.