Burning Atlanta

There are some good things in this article. I'm having a credibility issue with this farmer on several issues but we'll see. As said before, I have an iota of sympathy for some farmers as I know that there are areas of this country that have used migrant workers for over a hundred years. They've become addicted to cheap labor. That has spread all over this nation to many different occupations over the last 20 years. I've read other stories where farmers have changed to less labor intensive crops. Good idea.

Grow something else.

Saying the nation's immigration system is broken, Pennsylvania's largest grower of fresh-to-market tomatoes announced Monday he will no longer produce the crop because he can't find enough workers to harvest it.

Keith Eckel, 61, a fourth-generation farmer and the owner of Fred W. Eckel Sons Farms Inc., said he saw a dramatic decline last summer in the number of migrant workers who showed up to pick tomatoes at his 2,000-acre farm in northeastern Pennsylvania. Excellent. That means some of the enforcement measures are working.

The Labor Department has announced plans to overhaul the H-2A system, but the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau is calling for a guest-worker program to be built from scratch that will provide a stable, legal supply of labor. As we all know, the plantation owners want a steady supply of cheap labor. I've heard that the H-2A could stand some revamping but I haven't really studied it.

Though Eckel's tomato pickers made an average of $16.59 per hour last year, he said the relatively high wage is not enough to attract local labor to work the fields. Humm, I'll reserve comment on that claim.

"A lot of people think with immigration that we're talking about immigrants taking jobs from others. Let me tell you, there is no local labor that is going to go out and harvest those tomatoes in 90-degree temperatures except our immigrant labor," Eckel said. "They come here to do a job that no one else will do in this country." Bullshit. Pew says that 76% of farm workers are legal. As said, some areas of this country may have a much higher percentage but that's not true of the whole country and who did all the picking before the flood of illegals?

Also, he claims there will be 175 fewer jobs on his farm. If most of those jobs are going to illegals then GOOD!