tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5548695401579410439.post3820192424245902894..comments2024-01-04T07:05:27.381-06:00Comments on Immigration Talk with a Mexican American: Protesters rally against Georgia immigration law: Tens of Thousands March Against Racial Profiling Bill!Deehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09583438645860375661noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5548695401579410439.post-57312073288452949112011-07-05T12:48:37.126-05:002011-07-05T12:48:37.126-05:00Atlanta Journal Constitution : "Acres and acr...Atlanta Journal Constitution : "Acres and acres of crops now rotting in the south Georgia sunshine offer mute testament to the fact that agricultural labor is hard, and that most people in Western industrialized countries don’t want to do it".<br /><br /><br />Georgia’s Crops Rotting in Fields. - Politicians have crippled Georgia’s largest economic sector: agriculture, farmers are losing millions, farmers were ignored when the law was crafted.<br /><br />Georgia's exconvicts do not want to earn the average farmworker pay of only $8 an hour, with little or no benefits - Georgians, ex-convicts, probationers or not are not flocking to fill the void left behind by the vacating illegal immigrants. Few people enjoy the sun at temperatures above 100 Fahrenheit which is 38 centigrades. And working 10 or 12 hours a day.<br /><br /><br />Atlanta Journal Constitution<br />Immigration bill clarifies a once-muddy debate<br />by Jay Bookman<br />July 5, 2011<br /><br />http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2011/07/05/immigration-bill-clarifies-a-once-muddy-debate/?cxntfid=blogs_jay_bookman_blog<br /><br /><br /><br />Some excerpts :<br /><br />For example, do illegal immigrants perform labor that most Georgians are unwilling or even unable to do? The once contentious question now has an answer: Yes, in many cases they do. Acres and acres of crops now rotting in the south Georgia sunshine offer mute testament to that fact that agricultural labor is hard, and that most people in Western industrialized countries don’t want to do it.<br /><br />And have Georgia farmers become dependent on that illegal workforce, in many cases building their entire economic structure on the availability of cheap and undocumented labor?<br /><br />Until recently, the state agriculture community had clung to the fiction that only a small and unknowable percentage of their labor was here illegally. However, as their workforce shrinks in the wake of HB 87, such denials have become impossible to sustain. The degree to which they have relied on illegal labor is now painfully clear, and will be reflected on many a bottom line.<br /><br />In fact, farmers have until now enjoyed the best of both worlds. As long as lax enforcement of federal immigration law gave them access to a large, docile and for the most part invisible workforce, they could sit back and remain quiet in the politically charged debate over amnesty and other measures intended to rationalize immigration. (It didn’t hurt that keeping those workers illegal created an all-but-captive workforce that had few other options.)<br /><br />Members of Georgia’s congressional delegation have long been complicit in that two-sided game. They have quietly blocked periodic attempts by the federal government to enforce immigration laws more stringently, while simultaneously railing against the presence of the very illegal immigrants they were helping to protect.Defensores de Democraciahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01990488344886411353noreply@blogger.com