Re:Alabama immigration: crops rot as workers vanish to avoid...
by monodeldiablo on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @07:26PM
(#13648672)
It's not "complete bullshit". Even at the height of the Great Recession, with unemployment through the roof, American citizens were turning down field work in droves.[1]
I've seen it myself. Some of it's cultural -- manual farm work is seen as "beneath" people -- but most of it's economics. Nice that you grew up in a time and place where a citizen could afford to work in the fields, but those days are long gone. If you're not single and sharing the rent for your three bedroom house with 10 amigos, you're not going to make ends meet on farm labor wages and hours.
[1]: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/despite-economy-americans-dont-w...
Re:Alabama immigration: crops rot as workers vanish to avoid...
by flukus on Wednesday February 15, 2017 @02:03AM
(#13650257)
Missing from that article is how much it costs people to take those jobs. Travel expenses, lost benefits, etc.
Re:Alabama immigration: crops rot as workers vanish to avoid...
by keyanp on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @08:07PM
(#13648886)
Do you mean children/teenagers? Sure, you can get kids to do farm work. I picked crops when I was much younger and it was indeed back-breaking labor. Now if you can find ~1 million adults to do that work then that is another story.
This is complete bullshit and needs to quit being touted. Americans are not afraid of hard, back-breaking labor. I grew up in the Midwest surrounded by corn and soy beans (and not too many illegal or legal immigrants). Tons of my white, middle class friends went out into the field to pollinate corn in the summers or went down to strawberry fields to pick when they came in season.
What a sheltered life you must lead if you've never met an American that does manual labor or works in a field...