Quote:
Originally Posted by rogue
20 plus million illegals in this country and the farmers can't find any farmworkers? How do you explain that? I haven't heard of ICE raiding any farms and arresting any fieldhands. Maybe the farmers could raise their prices to attract back those former illegal aliens fieldhands who moved on to better paying jobs.
What the farmers really want is a steady supply of desperate illegal aliens who will gladly work for the meager wages the farmers want to pay and have become accustomed to paying, and as each and every one of these illegal alien farmworkers eventually slip away into the vast illegal underground, the farmers will want immediate replacement illegal farmworkers.
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first, your numbers are way off. The best conservative estimates are in the 11 to 12 million range, of whom roughly 3 to 4 million aren't even Latin Americans or Mexicans but come from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and, my favorite, Canada. Yep, no one knows for sure but it's estimated there may be more than 2 million Canadians living and working here illegally.
numbers:
Number of Illegal Immigrants Hits 12M
Second, farm workers aren't really the issue here. Yes, if we were to raise wages to the level that those here legally would willingly work in the fields, prices would increase drastically, which they are likely to do now anyway due to fuel costs.
Most of those here illegally, whether Mexican or not, are working primarily in building trades, processing and manufacturing where, yes, as you've said, they're being taken advantage of.
But let's not ignore the fact that the FED put into place one of the many things that has helped fuel a rapid increase in the number of those entering this country illegally from south of the border, namely, NAFTA.